A Security and High-Availability Layer for Cloud Storage

Cloud Computing as a service on demand architecture has become a topic of interest in the last few years. The outsourcing of duties and infrastructure to external parties enables new services to be established quickly, scaled on demand, and with low financial risk. Cloud storage enables organizations to manage their data with low operational expenses. Nevertheless, several issues such as security and the risk to become dependent on a provider for its service should be considered before entering the cloud. In general, a switch of a storage provider is associated with high costs of adapting new APIs and additional charges for inbound and outbound bandwidth and requests. In this paper we use the principle of RAID-technology in cloud infrastructure to manage data distribution across cloud storage providers. The distribution is based on users expectations regarding providers geographic location, quality of service, providers reputation, and budget preferences. Our approach allows users to avoid vendor lock-in, reduce cost of switching providers and increase security and availability of their data. We also explain on how the proposed system removes the complexity of interacting with multiple storage providers while maintaining security.