File Migration in a Distributed Environment

Abstract

In this master thesis, we tackle the problem of the Hierarchical Storage Management (HSM) and we show how a proposed HSM solution can be integrated in the HSM-CL product. HSMS-CL is a software product running on Unix systems. It allows to backup and archive Unix files through another product called HSMS running on BS2000 system. HSM allows to migrate transparently an automatically less frequently used files from expensive and faster disks such as hard disks to less expensive slower with a huge amount of space such as optical disks, magnetic tapes, etc. After migration, files are still available online or nearline for applications or users. We present two HSM products which are DataMgr and EpochMigration about their migration mechanisms. After studying how a proposed HSM solution can be integrated in the HSMS-CL product, we present a prototype under a Sinix system (Sinix-L) which implements some migration operations and a way allowing to distinct migrated files, but also a way to intercept files access requests.

Date of Award	1996
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Namur
Supervisor	Jean RAMAEKERS (Supervisor)