The Livermore distributed storage system: implementation and experiences

Several key design goals and implementation areas which support the extensibility, modularity, and flexibility of the LINCS storage system are discussed. The separation of data and control messages has had a positive impact on performance and modularity by allowing third-party copies without the actual passing of data through the bitfile servers. Efficient management of storage media and bitfile headers has increased storage utilization and provided integrity of the header information. A network-wide locking mechanism that preserves an object's consistency when accessed concurrently by multiple applications has been designed. The separation of the human-oriented naming mechanism from the other object servers, has given the system and its clients flexibility, extensibility, and modularity not found in an integral naming mechanism. >