Topology Map Reordering in Dispersed Storage
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Enterprise-level applications using cloud object storage face inefficiencies in storage access patterns, leading to increased costs and storage requirements due to the immutability of objects, which prevents arbitrary reordering of data blocks, necessitating costly read, modify, and write cycles to maintain data consistency.
Innovation Solution
A method for reordering transformation operations in a dispersed storage network that allows for logical management of multi-region objects by updating the topology map and metadata, eliminating the need for read, modify, and write operations, thereby optimizing storage access patterns and reducing costs.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If objects are made immutable in cloud storage, then data consistency and reliability are improved, but storage access efficiency and operational flexibility deteriorate due to inability to reorder data blocks
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the object management into two independent parts: immutable data blocks and mutable topology map. The topology map stores metadata including region-order mappings that can be updated without modifying the actual data blocks. This allows the system to maintain object immutability for reliability while enabling flexible reordering operations through topology map updates alone.
2Productivity
If arbitrary reordering of data blocks is enabled, then storage access patterns are optimized, but data consistency and reliability deteriorate due to complex read-modify-write cycles
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the ordering information from the immutable data blocks and places it in a separate mutable topology map. The topology map contains region-order mappings that track the logical order of data regions. Reordering operations are performed by updating only the topology map entries, completely avoiding read-modify-write cycles on the data blocks themselves, thus maintaining both efficiency and consistency.
3Adaptability or versatility
If read-modify-write cycles are used to reorder data, then operational flexibility is improved, but bandwidth consumption and processing costs increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent performs preliminary organization of data into named regions with associated order mappings stored in the topology map during the initial object creation or upload phase. This preliminary action establishes the ordering structure in advance, allowing subsequent reordering operations to simply update the pre-existing topology map entries rather than performing expensive read-modify-write cycles on the actual data blocks.
Data Source
AI summary
Systems and methods are provided for reorder transformation operations over a stateless protocol of one or more regions stored in a dispersed storage network. The operation comprises receiving a transformation request to apply to one or more data regions of a data object with a topology map from an authorized application. The existing data topology map corresponding to the object metadata is fetched from the data storage processing unit in the dispersed storage network. The transformation reorder is applied to the one or more data regions of the data object. The updated topology map is returned to the authorized application.