The Storage Solutions defines a set of modular solutions based on a service-oriented architecture. It contains geographically distributed physical storage, heterogeneous networks and protocols. Each property belongs to a different owner. How do we decide which physical storage should be used when a storage request comes from a client? And how can we provide smooth interoperability among various storage devices and software requesters? Further more, the cost of different storage device varies greatly. We would prefer to choose the appropriate storage device for the storage request. In Storage Solutions, storage is a distributed environment, and each one may have different networks, protocols, file systems and operating systems, and it requires secured access. A Storage Solution is required with a storage management system that provides data-path interoperability and has storage intelligence.
To provide such a system, we begin by abstracting all the elements including: Storage Network, Storage Protocol, and Storage Array. Next, a virtual concept is introduced – storage group to classify the combination of elements, and we will expose storage groups as Web service.
The Storage management service provides the ability to manage the assets storage in a structured way. It provides the low level services to upper applications and hides the detail of the asset storage. Before Storage Solutions directories can be created, several basic elements such as protocol, network, and storage must be defined. The relations that combine them are defined as group. Figure 1 belows, displays the structure of the system where groups A111, B212 and C323 have been formed.
Figure 1. System Structure
From figure 1, we can see that groups are composed of protocols, networks and storages. A client can own specific groups if they are assigned by the administrator to that client. By this way, different groups could be made according to the properties of storages, networks and protocols.
Storage Management Service (SMS) hides the detailed information of how content is stored and provides interfaces to all. To successfully develop SMS, we first store some predefined rules within the SMS, for example, storage groups are created to provide a means to virtualize the storage arrays. In addition to this the storage service takes requests from applications and services regarding suitable storage locations for any content that may arrive on the system, the various content types and their attributes are stored in a database and a lookup table is used to cross map content types to the various applications and services, the relevant information is returned to the application for use. The storage service also works extensively with the security service to maintain virtual repositories. Then SMS will use these rules to decide which group is the best one matching client’s request, and generate a dedicate path which includes information such as host name, protocol, user name and password. Then the path and all related info are returned to client. Next, the client uses this information to contact the storage. The process is illustrated in figure 2.
Figure 2. The Process
Since Storage Management is facing managing geographically distributed network, protocol and storage, it is recommended to be implemented via Web services. Each network, protocol, and storage will be registered as a Web service and also have the potential to be accessed by adding interfaces.
In Storage Solutions, Storage services are accessed over the Web, they are described using an XML-based description language and communicated with clients (both end-user applications and other Web Services) through XML messages that are transmitted by standard Internet protocols, such as HTTP.
Figure 3 shows the structure of the Storage Solutions working as a Web services to communicate with other modules.
Figure 3. Storage Solutions Structure
Storage management is an important component of an SOA solution. The article highlighted how to successfully implement the group concept to manage the different network, protocol and storage.
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