(An) effects dynamic relocation scheme in loosely coupled distributed file systems

Abstract

One of major design issues in the distributed file system is transparency, that is, how to hide information on remote files as if the files belong to a local file system. We should consider two aspects in the distributed file system to support the transparency. One is the degree of transparency in which a user can access a remote file as local one. The other aspect is how efficiently the system shields change of file location due to dynamic migration. The dynamic magration results from coping with partial failure or reconfiguaration, or increasing availability. The file system that supports the dynamic file migration without causing any effect of user``s accessibility is said to have dynamic relocatability. In this thesis, we propose for loosely coupled distributed file systems a new naming scheme which covers each components``s file system as a whole with the virtual root and enables files shared by most of users in the system to be location transparent and dynamic relocatable by means of the function oriented naming tree(FONT). To support the FONT and dynamic file relocation efficiently, we design and implement the dynamic relocation scheme that consists of a resource connection server (RCS) and reliable communication primitives, a remote procedure call protocal and a transport service protocol.