ITEC -  Operating Systems Group

Flashlog: A Flexible Block-Layer Redundancy Scheme

  • Type:Diploma Thesis
  • Date:13.08.2010
  • Supervisor:

    Prof. Dr. Frank Bellosa, Konrad Miller

  • Graduand:Eric Hoh
  • Links:PDF
  • Abstract:

    Data redundancy has been used by companies for many year to protect their data. The price for disk space was high and you often needed additional hard- and software which was even more expensive. This has changed in the course of time and data redundancy has become more and more interessting also for private users. But most standard redundancy schemes are designed for commercial users and not for private ones. In this thesis we want to present a redundancy scheme designed for the needs of private users. This user group is often more price-sensitive, needs less disk space, has often less experience with storage systems and has no need for increased availability. Another group of users our redundancy scheme is designed for are mobile users. Most common redundancy schemes need additional storage devices which are often impractical for mobile usage due to their size and weight. Our scheme consists of three devices, a main device, a backup device which holds a copy of all data from the main device and a log or delta device which stores all data, that has been modified since the last backup, in a log structure. Our scheme is designed to use a flash memory device like a USB memory stick as log device and therefore we have named it “Flashlog”. Such a USB memory stick has a small form factor, is leightweight and consumes very little energy. That makes it perfect for mobile usage. For desktop users the USB flash device can be replaced by faster and bigger flash devices like SSDs.

    BibTex:

    @diplomathesis{hoh10flashlog,
      author = {Eric Hoh},
      title = {Flashlog: A Flexible Block-Layer Redundancy Scheme},
      type = {Diploma Thesis},
      address = {System Architecture Group, University of Karlsruhe, Germany},
      month = aug # "~13",
      year = 2010,
      url = {http://os.ibds.kit.edu/97_2051.php}
    }