[ale] datastorageunit.com

[Brian Pitts]

On 01/15/2010 04:05 PM, Greg Freemyer wrote:
> On Fri, Jan 15, 2010 at 2:19 PM, Jim Lynch
> <ale_nospam at fayettedigital.com> wrote:
>> Greg Freemyer wrote:
>>> On Fri, Jan 15, 2010 at 10:11 AM, Jim Popovitch <jimpop at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> We should, collectively, run an ALE distributed encrypted archive cluster.
>>>>
>>>
>>> That would be cool.
>>>
>>> I currently pay dreamhost a monthly fee to maintain a backup of 400GB or so.
>>>
>>> The cost is not bad, but I always worry that if I really need to
>>> restore it, it will take weeks to get my data back.  Having it local
>>> (metro Atlanta I assume) so I could somehow get physical access and
>>> download via USB (or better yet, eSata) would be comforting.
>>>
>> I sort of got the idea he meant shared storage on all our systems, not a
>> separate facility.  A la bittorrent, kinda.  I have a few spare Gb as do
>> others so I'll store some of my data on yours and you can store some of
>> your data on mine, etc.
>>
>> Jim.
> 
> Does a software solution for that exist?  Is it opensource?  Linux based?
> 

Yes.

Tahoe-LAFS.

Developemnt is funded by allmydata.org, which runs their own $10 a month
backup service using it.

http://allmydata.org/trac/tahoe

"""A "storage grid" is made up of a number of storage servers. A storage
server has direct attached storage (typically one or more hard disks). A
"gateway" uses the storage servers and provides access to the filesystem
over HTTP(S) or (S)FTP.

Users do not rely on storage servers to provide confidentiality nor
integrity for their data -- instead all of the data is encrypted and
integrity-checked by the gateway, so that the servers can neither read
nor modify the contents of the files.

Users do rely on storage servers for availability. The ciphertext is
erasure-coded and distributed across N storage servers (the default
value for N is 10) so that it can be recovered from any K of these
servers (the default value of K is 3). Therefore only the simultaneous
failure of N-K+1 (with the defaults, 8) servers can make the data
unavailable.

In the typical deployment mode each user runs her own gateway on her own
machine. This way she relies on her own machine for the confidentiality
and integrity of the data.

An alternate deployment mode is that the gateway runs on a remote
machine and the user connects to it over HTTPS or SFTP. This means that
the operator of the gateway can view and modify the user's data (the
user relies on the gateway for confidentiality and integrity), but the
advantage is that the user can access the filesystem with a client that
doesn't have the gateway software installed, such as an Internet kiosk
or cell phone."""


-- 
All the best,
Brian Pitts