WO2008111971A1

WO2008111971A1 - Lan and internet data storage aggregation gateway

Info

Publication number: WO2008111971A1
Application number: PCT/US2007/063746
Authority: WO
Inventors: Audrius Stripeikis
Original assignee: Audrius Stripeikis
Priority date: 2007-03-11
Filing date: 2007-03-11
Publication date: 2008-09-18

Abstract

The present invention relates to an internet and local storage aggregation gateway, device capable of aggregating local and internet storage resources. Internet storage resources are dislocated on the internet in the unknown location. Such gateway enables high availability for data stored on the internet in unreliable internet infrastructures. Internet storage is virtual and distributed storage array on the internet.

Description

LAN AND INTERNET DATA STORAGE

AGGREGATION GATEWAY.

DESCRIPTION

FIELD OF INVENTION

[0001] A system for aggregating local and internet storage resources into a single storage pool which is exposed and available to the usage for devices connected on the local area network.

BACKGROUND OF INVENTION

[0002] Continuously expanding amount of digitized data is driving up computer storage needs. Home users, small and medium size businesses typically keep all their digital data on the workstations or server/s located in office or at home. Every day more and more important data gets stored on the computers. Businesses more than ever are susceptible to losing their data. Very few could afford expensive data replication systems. Data backups are mostly done on tapes. People tend to keep backups in the same location where primary data is stored. Backup management is tedious and time consuming work.

[0003] Online data storage opens new horizons for securing important data in a cost effective way. Rapidly increasing storage needs, network interruptions, slow internet connections and internet security concerns create an opportunity for a device capable to address these issues.

SUMMARY OF INVENTION

[0004] The present invention, which may be implemented using a general purpose digital computer, includes novel idea of aggregating local and internet storage into a single entity with unique attributes and features. In an embodiment, a storage aggregation system is disclosed. Such system includes computers local area network, gateway and internet storage. System requires no agents to be installed on any of the parts.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF DRAWINGS

[0005] FIG. 1 Shows gateway's placement in the whole storage aggregation system according to claim 2. [0006] FIG. 2 Structure of data stored on the internet storage

[0007] FIG. 3 Shows state diagram of uploading and downloading processes.

[0008] FIG.4 Shows data aggregation gateway's components.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

[0009] The subject of the invention is described with reference to the included drawings. However the drawings and related detailed description are not intended to limit the claimed subject matter to the particular form disclosed. Rather, the intention is to cover all modifications, equivalents, and alternatives similar to the idea and scope of the claimed subject.

[0010] The terms "method", "system", "storage", "gateway" and the like are referring to a computer hardware, software or a combination of both. For example, a gateway may be, but is not limited to being, a software running on a processor, a device, a processor, a software program, a thread of execution, and/or a computer.

[0011] The word "exemplary" is used herein to mean serving as an example, instance, or illustration. Any aspect or design described herein as "exemplary" is not necessarily to be construed as preferred or advantageous over other aspects or designs.

[0012] As used herein, the term "storage aggregation gateway", "storage gateway" or "gateway" refer to the device or process of aggregating local and internet storage into a single virtual entity.

[0013] Figure 1. Illustrates an exemplary storage aggregation system 100. System comprises local area network (LAN) 110, storage aggregation gateway 120, network router 130, internet link 140, internet storage 150 and plurality of network devices 160. Network router 130 may be part of storage aggregation gateway 120.

[0014] LAN 110 may interconnect variety of devices 160, capable to communicate UDP and or TCP/IP protocols, via wire-line or wireless links. LAN 110 is connected to internet through the network router 140, capable of routing local network addresses to the internet ones. LAN 100 has plurality of internet connections 140.

[0015] Storage aggregation gateway 120 is connected to the LAN 110 and capable of: discovering internet data storage resources and integrating them with its own storage resources; sharing aggregated storage resources on the LAN 110; cache data stored on the internet storage 140; encrypt and compress data to be send to internet storage 140; decompress and decrypt data received from the internet storage; manage encryption key; index and search content stored on the aggregated storage.

[0016] Aggregated storage resource pool is shared for the LAN devices 160. LAN devices 160 can discover LAN storage resources and use them for storing digital content.

[0017] Storage aggregation gateway 120 can function in one of 3 different modes: as full internet storage replica; cache subsystem for outgoing/incoming data; combination of internet storage replica and cache for most frequently used files.

[0018] Full internet storage replica mode._Storage aggregation gateway 120 mirrors whole data stored on the internet storage 150 to the local storage. Gateway 120 synchronizes local and internet data images in the given time intervals or on the events. Events can be triggered by storage aggregation gateway 120 or internet storage 150. Data may be required to be decompressed and decrypted before it gets stored on the local storage.

[0019] Cache subsystem for outgoing and incoming data. Access from the LAN devices 160 to the internet storage 150 is significantly slower compare to the access to the storage aggregation gateway's 120 storage. A gateway 120 acts as a cache device for slow incoming/outgoing data from/to internet storage 150.

[0020] The third mode is a combination of internet storage 150 replica and caching modes. The gateway 120 monitors data usage frequencies, stores most frequently accessed data on the local storage and pushes older data to the internet storage 150 when local storage's free space threshold is reached.

[0021] Data may be converted into plurality of objects before it is being transferred to internet storage 150.

[0022] Figure 2 shows structure of internet storage object 200. Storage object 200 is a logical entity containing entire or part of the file system element's (file or directory) binary data 210, element's attributes 230, element's name 220 and object header 240. Attributes include element's creation time and date, last modification and access time stamps, size, author, etc. Storage object 200 may be encrypted and compressed.

[0023] The gateway 120 may provide searching capability for objects 200 stored on the aggregated storage. Such feature is very important considering that part of the data resides on the slow access internet storage 150. [0024] The gateway 120 periodically analyzes (index) all internet storage objects 200 stored on the internet storage 150. Indexing includes but is not limited to analyzing object's binary data and storing repetitive patterns of this data in a local repository. LAN devices 160 could quickly browse internet storage objects 200, names 220 and attributes 230 even without having internet storage objects 200 physically present on the gateway's 120 local storage. Gateway 120 stores index repository on the local storage and refreshes it in the given time intervals or on events.

[0025] Object header 240 contains internet storage object's 200 service information such as size, dependencies on other objects 200, etc.

[0026] Shared drive. Gateway 120 shares part of the internal storage resources to the local network users. For this reason gateway 120 may need to implement one of the widely accepted file sharing protocols, such as NFS, CIFS or proprietary one. Local network devices 160 can store and retrieve digital data to and from such drive over the network.

[0027] Gateway 120 periodically synchronizes data between local and internet storages. Synchronization process involves: authenticating access to internet storage; scanning objects located on the internet storage; comparing results with the list of files stored on the local storage; downloading or uploading files with the latest modification date attribute to or from the internet storage 150.

[0028] Figure 3 shows sequence of activities performed by gateway 120 while uploading files to the internet storage 150. Gateway 120 reads file 310 from the local storage converts it to internet storage object 200 and saves it on the temporary storage cache 320. Further gateway 120 encrypts internet storage object 200 those creating encrypted object 330. In the following step encrypted object 330 is compressed 340 and uploaded to the internet storage 350.

[0029] Gateway 120 functioning in a cache subsystem or 3^rd mode may delete files from the local storage if such files have been uploaded to the internet storage and allocated local storage threshold has been reached.

[0030] Figure 3 also shows sequence of download process which is opposite to upload. Prior to downloading gateway 120 scans local and internet storages and identifies files required to downloaded. Gateway 120 downloads the object from the internet storage 350, decompress this object 340, de-crypts it 330, stores internet object 200 on a temporary cache 320, extracts file A and stores it on the local storage.

[0031] Gateway 150 communicates with internet storage using HTTP, HTTPS or SOAP protocols. [0032] Gateway may have a snapshot creation capability at the file system's level therefore increasing a time slot for uploading data to the internet storage.

[0033] Gateway may allow users to choose to preserve data on the internet in the original format therefore enabling such data to be shared with other people.

[0034] Figure 4 shows elements of typical storage aggregation gateway 400. Exemplary storage aggregation gateway 400 comprise of plurality of executable code stored on the memory 420, processor 410 executing this code, network subsystem 430, main bus 480, storage subsystem 470 and network connection 490.

[0035] Processor 410 may contain multiple processing units capable of executing plurality of instructions.

[0036] Memory 420 may be implemented using various memory types including but not limited to flash, EEPROM, ROM and SRAM. Memoiy 420 is utilized for preserving executable code.

[0036] Network subsystem 430 comprise of computer network controller which provides connectivity to LAN. In addition network subsystem 430 may contain firewall, software or hardware device controlling access to the gateway 400; IP address router; broadband network connection module. Network subsystem 430 may also contain computer network switch possible connectivity of plurality of network devices.

[0037] Network connection 490 may contain several types, including but not limited to wired and wireless, physical connections to computer networks as well as physical connections to broadband network.

[0038] Main bus 480 interconnects processor 410, memory 420 and network subsystem 430.

[0039] Storage subsystem 470 is the physical media for storing files, indexes and temporary data. Storage subsystem may be deployed using various data storage media technologies, capable to read, write and preserve data for extended period of time. Such technologies include, but are not limited to, hard drives, flash memory and SDRAM.

[0040] Three virtual modules shared, drive 440, index repository 450 and cache module, reside on storage subsystem 470. All three modules may reside on the same storage subsystem 470 but every module will be located on the different physical address space. Shared drive module 440 holds files and directories shared to the network devices. Typical storage shared drive module 440 will be formatted as NFS or CIFS partition. Index repository 450 holds the search keys for the data preserved on the internet storage. Index repository 450 is used for searching internet storage. Various search algorithms may be used. Caching module 460 may serve as a cache for read/write operations to and from internet storage as well as a buffer for assembling and disassembling internet storage objects 200.

Claims

1. A method of aggregating local and internet data storage resources, into a single storage pool accessible by plurality of users.

2. A system aggregating local area network (LAN) and distributed storage resources, dislocated on the internet, into a single resource pool.

3. The system, according to claim 2, comprising: a storage aggregation gateway communicatively coupled to a local network and Internet, the gateway capable of selectively exchanging files among LAN devices and Internet storage, the gateway aggregating plurality available storage resources into a single storage pool and sharing this pool to the other LAN devices; the LAN devices capable of storing and retrieving data to and from LAN storage resources; the Internet storage, virtual storage resources available on the internet.

4. The system, according to claim 3, where request to read/write data is received via the network.

5. The system, according to claim 3, where at least one LAN device is identified by a media access control (MAC) address.

6. The system, according to claim 3, where at least one Internet storage account is available.

7. The system, according to claim 3, where LAN devices can access other device's storage via the wireline or wireless computer networks. Devices communicate using one or multiple of computer network protocols such as 802.3, 802.11, 802.16 and similar.

8. The method, according to claim 1, where system according to claim 2, is used.

9. The method of storing data backups using data storage aggregation method, as claimed in 1, on the system, as claimed in 2.

10. Internet data storage, administered remote distributed machine-readable storage resources accessible via the internet.

11. The internet data storage, according to claim 10, where data transfer is realized via hyper-text transfer protocol (HTTP) or simple object access protocol (SOAP).

12. The internet data storage, according to claim 10, where storage resources are allocated for a particular account only. Access to such resources is restricted by unique key and user chosen password.

13. The internet storage, according to claim 10, accessible by a single or multiple users from a single or multiple locations.

14. The internet storage, according to claim 10, where part or all data is stored in the original format and can be accessed by applications from different places in the world.

15. The internet storage, according to claim 10, where part or all data stored on the internet storage may be encrypted and compressed.

16. The system, according to claim 2, where internet storage, according to claim 10, is used.

17. A machine -readable storage device capable to store and retrieve plurality of digital data. Such storage may be shared using NFS, CIFS or other file sharing protocols and can be accessed by plurality of devices connected to the LAN.

18. A storage pool comprising of machine -readable storage device, according to claim 17, and internet data storage, according to claim 12.

19. The LAN and Internet data storage aggregation gateway, connected to LAN and Internet, capable of creating the storage pool, as claimed in 18, and sharing such pool resources to the plurality of network users.

20. The storage aggregation gateway, according to claim 19, comprising of processor, memory (RAM), network controller, local storage and executable code sections.

21. The storage aggregation gateway, according to claim 19, capable of encrypting, decrypting, compressing and un-compressing data.

22. The storage aggregation gateway, according to claim 19, which uses machine-readable storage, according to claim 17, to cache and index outgoing and incoming data.

23. The storage aggregation gateway, according to claim 19, complimented with broadband access module, which eliminates need of having separate broadband access equipment on the network.