Wednesday, November 09, 2016

[ivdphoee] Cloud block device

Perhaps the best interface for a cloud data storage provider is a block device, randomly accessible by block.  It is up to the user to format this network block device to something useful, like a filesystem with whatever features a user desires.

I know of no cloud data provider which does this.  They all try to be more user friendly, which makes things complicated and difficult.

Simultaneous access remains a thorny problem, though it is squarely the user's (or users') problem now.  The network block device could provide some atomicity primitives.

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