Japanese
IndelibleFS

Indelible FS

Overview

Indelible FS is a distributed, scalable storage management system. Indelible FS is broken into a number of modules.

 

At the heart of Indelible FS is the UniBlock Content Addressable Storage (CAS) module. A CAS system computes a hash value for each block of data stored, in the case of UniBlock the SHA-1 algorithm is used to compute a 20 byte unique identifier for each block. Data can be retrieved by its hash ID and, also, if the same data is stored again, it will receive the same hash ID and UniBlock will know that the data has already been stored and that it does not need to be stored again. UniBlock provides automatic data deduplication, reducing the amount of storage needed.

 

UniBlock breaks data up into Collections, which are similar to logical volumes. Collections do not have a fixed size, allowing for flexibility. A maximum size can be specified.

 

UniBlock servers can be accessed via a network API.

 

The Indelible File System module uses UniBlock storage to implement a POSIX style file system and allows users to store files identified by directory paths. Indelible FS provides extended meta-data and multiple forks per file. Also, Indelible FS is a versioned file system. Whenever a file is changed a new version is created, allowing for the ability to go back in time. Indelible FS supports Copy-On-Write for high speed duplication of large files.

 

In addition, Indelible FS provides support for object storage. A traditional POSIX file system consists of a file layer (often referred to as "inodes") and a naming layer that provides file and directory names. Typically, the inode layer is not usable outside of the kernel, requiring each file object to have a path. This becomes a problem with modern systems that store huge numbers of objects that are not hierarchically organized. Traditional systems have difficulties with directories that store more than few thousand entries. Indelible exposes the file layer and allows it to be used without assigning paths.

 

All objects in Indelible are identified by a globally unique Indelible Object ID. This allows files and objects to be created anywhere in the distributed system.

 

In addition to the core system, Indelible FS has layered products that use the capabilities of Indelible FS.

 

Indelible Virtual SAN provides an iSCSI target backed by Indelible FS with locally cached data. Indelible Virtual SAN takes advantage of Indelible FS's data deduplication technology to reduce the amount of bandwidth needed to transfer virtual machines between hosts. Indelible FS's Copy-On-Write facility makes the duplication of virtual images nearly instantaneous.

 

Indelible Web Access provides web browsing for Indelible FS file systems. It also provides an photo library display system that works with Apple's iPhoto.