Object-based storage: pushing more functionality into storage

Storage technology has enjoyed considerable growth since the first disk drive was introduced. The stability of these interfaces has allowed for continual advances within both the storage devices and applications, without frequent changes to the standards. Ultimately, however, the interface determines the functionality supported by the devices, and current interfaces are now holding system designers back. Storage technology has progressed to the point that a change in the device interface is needed. Object-based storage is designed to address this problem. A storage object is a logical collection of bytes on a storage device, with well-known methods for access, attributes describing characteristics of the data, and security policies that prevent unauthorized access. We refer to a device that stores objects as an object-based storage device (OSD). The benefits of object-based storage are cross-platform data sharing and application level security.