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Name Transparency in Very Large Scale Distributed File Systems

Richard G. Guy, Thomas W. Page, Jr., John S. Heidemann, and Gerald J. Popek
University of California, Los Angeles

Abstract

Previous distributed file systems have relied on either convention or obtaining dynamic global agreement to provide network transparent file naming. This paper argues that neither approach can succeed as systems scale to the kind of size that is anticipated in the current decade. We propose instead a novel name mapping scheme which relies on a fragmented, selectively replicated name translation database. Updates to the naming database are coordinated by an optimistic concurrency control strategy with automatic propagation and reconciliation. A prototype of the name mapping mechanism has been implemented and is in use in the Ficus replicated file system.

Availability

This paper is available in several formats: abstract web page with pointers and cites, gzip'ed postscript, PDF, paper copies can be obtained by mail to the authors. Copyright terms for this paper appear below.

Reference

Guy90d: Richard G. Guy, Thomas W. Page, Jr., John S. Heidemann, and Gerald J. Popek. Name Transparency in Very Large Scale Distributed File Systems. In Second IEEE Workshop on Experimental Distributed Systems, pp. 20-25. Huntsville, AL, University of California, Los Angeles, IEEE. October, 1990. <http://www.isi.edu/~johnh/PAPERS/Guy90d.html>.

@inproceedings{Guy90d,
	author = "Richard G. Guy and
				Page, Jr., Thomas W. and John S. Heidemann and
				Gerald J. Popek",
	title = "Name Transparency in Very Large Scale Distributed
				File Systems",
	booktitle = "Second {IEEE} Workshop on Experimental Distributed Systems",
	pages = "20--25",
	publisher = "{IEEE}",
	year = "1990",
	month = "October",
	address = "Huntsville, AL",
	keywords = "Ficus, automounting, autografting,
                         cs555-sp1998",
	url = "http://www.isi.edu/~johnh/PAPERS/Guy90d.html",
	psurl = "http://www.isi.edu/~johnh/PAPERS/Guy90d.ps.gz",
	pdfurl = "http://www.isi.edu/~johnh/PAPERS/Guy90d.pdf",
	oldurl = "ftp://ftp.cs.ucla.edu/pub/ficus/ExpDistSys_90.ps.gz",
	organization = "University of California, Los Angeles",
	copyrightholder = "authors",
}

Copyright

This paper is copyright © 1990 by its authors. Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that new copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Abstracting with credit is permitted.

To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission of the authors.