Cryptology ePrint Archive: Report 2010/214

How to Tell if Your Cloud Files Are Vulnerable to Drive Crashes

Kevin D. Bowers and Marten van Dijk and Ari Juels and Alina Oprea and Ronald L. Rivest

Abstract: This paper presents a new challenge---verifying that a remote server is storing a file in a fault-tolerant manner, i.e., such that it can survive hard-drive failures. We describe an approach called the Remote Assessment of Fault Tolerance (RAFT). The key technique in a RAFT is to measure the time taken for a server to respond to a read request for a collection of file blocks. The larger the number of hard drives across which a file is distributed, the faster the read-request response. Erasure codes also play an important role in our solution. We describe a theoretical framework for RAFTs and show experimentally that RAFTs can work in practice.

Category / Keywords: cryptographic protocols / applications, erasure codes, storage

Date: received 17 Apr 2010, last revised 13 May 2011

Contact author: ajuels at rsa com

Available formats: PDF | BibTeX Citation

Note: Updated to include testing performed against the Mozy online backup service.

Version: 20110513:151100 (All versions of this report)

Discussion forum: Show discussion | Start new discussion