Extendable storage framework for reliable clustered storage systems

The total amount of information stored on disks has increased tremendously in recent years with data storage, sharing and backup becoming more important than ever. The demand for storage has not only changed in size, but also in speed, reliability and security. These requirements create a big challenge for storage system architects who aim for a one system fits all design. Storage policies like backup and security are typically set for an entire file system. However, this granularity is too large and can sacrifice storage efficiency and performance, particularly since different files have different storage requirements. In this work, we provide a framework for an attribute-based extendable storage system which will allow storage policy decisions to be made at file-level granularity and at all levels of the storage stack, including file system, operating system, and device managers. We propose to do this by using a file's extended attributes that will enable different tasks via plugins or functions implemented at various levels within the storage stack and provide a complete data-aware storage functionality from an application point of view. We provide examples of how our framework can be used to improve performance in a reliable clustered storage system.