Extending attributes page: a scheme for enhancing the reliability of storage system metadata

In an object-based storage system, a novel scheme named EAP (extending attributes page) is presented to enhance the metadata reliability of the system by adding the user object file information attributes page for each user object and storing the file-related attributes of each user object in object-based storage devices. The EAP scheme requires no additional hardware equipments compared to a general method which uses backup metadata servers to improve the metadata reliability. Leveraging a Markov chain, this paper compares the metadata reliability of the system using the EAP scheme with that using only metadata servers to offer the file metadata service. Our results demonstrate that the EAP scheme can dramatically enhance the reliability of storage system metadata.