Encrypted Chunkset Storage Across Dispersed Networks
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current distributed computing systems face challenges in ensuring data integrity and security during storage and processing, particularly in dispersed storage networks where data is geographically distributed across multiple sites, and there is a need for efficient error encoding and decoding mechanisms to handle data failures and unauthorized access.
Innovation Solution
The implementation of a dispersed storage network (DSN) with a managing unit, integrity processing unit, and computing devices that utilize error encoding techniques like Cauchy Reed-Solomon encoding to divide data into encoded data slices, which are then stored across multiple sites, allowing for secure and fault-tolerant data storage and retrieval, with mechanisms for rebuilding 'bad' or missing slices and secure access management.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If data is divided into encoded slices and stored across multiple distributed sites, then data availability and fault tolerance are improved, but system complexity and overhead increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent divides data into multiple encoded slices using error correction coding (e.g., Cauchy Reed-Solomon encoding) and distributes these slices across multiple storage units in a dispersed storage network. This segmentation allows the system to tolerate failures of individual storage units while maintaining data availability, as sufficient slices can be recovered to reconstruct the original data even when some slices are lost or corrupted.
2Reliability
If error correction encoding is applied to data before storage, then data integrity is improved, but processing time and computational resources increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies error correction encoding (such as Cauchy Reed-Solomon encoding) to the data before it is stored in the dispersed storage network. This preliminary encoding action ensures that the data is protected against corruption and loss before distribution, allowing for efficient recovery operations later without requiring complex real-time error correction during data retrieval or processing operations.
3Object-affected harmful factors
If data is encrypted and segmented across multiple storage units, then security against unauthorized access is improved, but data retrieval complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines encryption with segmentation by encrypting data and then dividing it into encoded slices that are distributed across multiple storage units. Each storage unit holds only a portion of the encrypted data, making it impossible to access the complete information without retrieving and combining sufficient slices from multiple units. This approach enhances security while the systematic encoding structure facilitates organized retrieval operations.
Data Source
AI summary
A method for execution by one or more processing modules of one or more computing devices begins by encoding data using a dispersed storage error encoding function to produce a plurality of sets of encoded data slices arranged into a plurality of chunksets of encoded data slices. The method continues by selecting a set of storage units for storing the plurality of chunksets and assigning a distributed computing task to each storage unit of the set of storage units. The method then continues by generating a unique key set for each storage unit of the storage units, encrypting each chunkset of encoded data slices with a corresponding one of the unique key sets to produce a plurality of encrypted chunksets and sending an encrypted chunkset of the plurality of encrypted chunksets and an indication of a corresponding distributed computing task to each storage unit of the set of storage units for storage of the encrypted chunksets and execution of the distributed computing task.