A Global Data Management Strategy for Distributed Computing Systems

Due to the advancements in many facets of computing technologies and the immediate and changing needs of computer users and applications, distributed computing systems have enjoyed considerable attention in the past few years. Many distributed le systems and storage allocation techniques that have been developed for eeective and reliable storage and retrieval of data have not fully exploited the capabilities available through Local Area Networks (LANs) and distributed environments. We present a Global Data Management Strategy (GDMS) for management of storage devices attached to machines that may be locally or remotely interconnected via a LAN. A distributed system model is presented and the functional characteristics of the GDMS, in terms of its space morphology and data availability techniques, are described. The operations for creation and maintenance of the storage space de-ned by the GDMS are also discussed.