FClusterfs
We have observed that Map/Reduce implements a new file system, HDFS, as a base for its processing. This has been implementedas amiddleware ontopof the nativefile-system used by the operating system.We followthe same approach.The use of FUSE to build custom file systems has been proposed within the digital forensics domain (Richardet al., 2007). FClusterfs advances the notion and uses the technique to provide a solution that addresses the key issues of Assurance in a distributed processing environment.It merges together several existing FUSE file systems to form a new file system. FClusterfs is based on MySQLfs (Filesystem using MyS, 2013). MySQLfs employs an SQL database consisting of 3 tables to completely replace the native file system. The ‘inodes’ table provides storage for file metadata like names, dates/times, size, access rights etc usually seen as a ‘directory’. The ‘tree’ table stores the hierarchical structure of folders and filenames found in the file-system. The 3rd table ‘data_blocks’ stores the actual data as a series of binarylarge objects (BLOBs) replacing the clusters of the disk format.In FClusterfs we use the tree and inodes tables found in MySQLfs. FClusterfs provides read-only access and so we never need to manipulate directories. We have a table called ‘meta-data’ to store the meta-data from the original location of the data. This is a variable length, large text field and so is better in a table of its own. A single FClusterfs database can store many filesystems. We have a table, VolumeInformation, which contains a record of each file-system stored within the inodes table. We have added a field ‘VolumeID’ to inodes to identify which file-system the entry relates to.
FClusterfs