Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Qiao Lian

Zheng Zhang

Wei Chen

Yu Chen

Shiding Lin

Dan Teodosiu

Chao Jin

An improved system and method for flexible object placement and soft-state indexing of objects in a distributed object store is provided. A distributed object store may be provided by a large number of system nodes operably coupled to a network. A system node provided may include an access module for communicating with a client, an index module for building an index of a replicated data object, a data module for storing a data object on a computer readable medium, and a membership and routing module for detecting the configuration of operable nodes in the distributed system. Upon failure of an index node, the failure may be detected at other nodes, including those nodes that store the replicas of the object. These nodes may then send new index rebuilding requests to a different node that may rebuild the index for servicing any access request to the object.

System and method for a distributed object store

Routing in a peer-to-peer network is described. In an implementation, a method includes receiving at one of a plurality of nodes in a peer-to-peer network, an indication of a change in membership in the peer-to-peer network by another node in the peer-to-peer network. A report is broadcast that describes the change. The report is for receipt by each node referenced in a routing table included in the one node.

Routing in peer-to-peer networks

Described is the differentiation of replicas in a large distributed object store as either being smoothing replicas based on an amount of load on storage nodes (bricks), or as spreading replicas based on a substantially random distribution among the system's bricks. The smoothing replicas are placed among the lowest usage bricks, while the spreading replicas are placed randomly throughout other bricks in the system independent of load. As a result, fast, primarily parallel data repair is facilitated by selecting a spreading replica when repair is needed, while load balancing is facilitated by placing a smoothing replica on a low-usage brick when a new replica is checked in, and selecting a smoothing replica when load balancing is triggered by overloading of a brick and/or addition of a new brick. Check-in, data repair and load balancing policies specify how to use smoothing replicas and spreading replicas.

Hybrid object placement in a distributed storage system

Mutual exclusion techniques for use in a dynamic peer-to-peer environment are described. In an implementation, a method includes receiving, at each of a plurality of logical replicas, a request from a client. Each of the logical replicas includes a queue and is for exclusive association with one of the clients. The request is for accessing one of a plurality of resources. When a particular one of the logical replicas is exclusively associated with another one of the clients, the request is stored in the queue of the particular logical replica.

Mutual exclusion techniques in a dynamic peer-to-peer environment

Cluster storage collection-based data management is described. In one aspect, and in a distributed system for storing data across a network to multiple data storage nodes, a bounded bandwidth available for data repair in the distributed system is determined. A specific number of stripes are then created on each data storage node of the multiple data storage nodes. The stripes are for placement and replication of data objects across respective ones of the data storage nodes. The specific number of stripes created on each data storage node is a function of the determined bounded data repair bandwidth.

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Qiao Lian