Scalable distributed metadata file-system using key-value stores

摘要

A computer-implemented distributed file-system in a distributed data network in which metadata related to the files and directories of the file-system is distributed. A unique and non-reusable inode number is assigned to each file/directory of the file-system. A key-value store built up in rows is created for the distributed metadata. Each of the rows has a composite row key and a row value (key-value pair) where the composite row key for each file/directory includes the inode number of the parent directory, and a name of the file/directory. For files below the maximum file size, the entire file or portion thereof is encoded in the corresponding row value of the key-value pair. In this case, the corresponding composite row key holds the inode number of the file itself and an offset information of the data of the file in the row value. Files above maximum file size are stored in a large-scale storage.