Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
in particular to the Data Object, including the legal framework, licensing terms,
privacy protection, and agreed Producer's instructions about access control. It con-
tains the access and distribution conditions stated within the Submission Agreement,
related to preservation (by the OAIS), dissemination (by the OAIS or the Consumer)
and final usage (Designated Community). It includes the specifications for the
application of technological measures for rights enforcement.
7.8.7 Digital Object Storage Virtualisation
Storage Virtualisation refers to the process of abstracting logical storage from phys-
ical storage. This will be addressed in more detail in Part II, but for completeness we
include a brief overview here. It aims to provide the ability to access data without
knowing the details of the storage hardware and access software or its location. This
isolation from the particular details facilitates preservation by allowing systems to
survive changing hardware and software technologies. Significant work on this has
been carried out in many areas, particularly the various Data Grid related projects.
The Warwick Workshop [
69
] foresaw the need to address the following:
•
development and standardisation of interfaces to allow “pluggable” storage
hardware systems.
•
standardisation of archive storage API i.e. standardised storage virtualisation
•
development of languages to describe data policy demands and processes,
together with associated support systems
•
development of collection oriented description and transfer techniques
•
development of workflow systems and process definition and control
In more detail, one can, following Moore, identify a number of areas requiring work
to support virtualisation, the most basic being:
•
creation of infrastructure-independent naming convention
•
mapping of administrative attributes onto the logical file name such as the phys-
ical location of the file and the name of the file on that particular storage
system.
•
Association of the location of copies (replicas) with the logical name.
•
mapping access controls onto the logical name, then when we move the file the
access controls do not change.
•
map descriptive attributes onto the logical name, and discover files without
knowing their name or location.
•
characterization of management policies independently of the implementation
needs to cover:
•
validation policies
•
lifetime policies
•
access policies
