VDFS
virtual distributed filesytem
What is a VDFS?
A VDFS (virtual distributed filesystem) is a filesystem designed to work across a variety of storage layers. With a uniform API to manipulate and access content across many devices, VSFS is not restricted to a single machine. It achieves this by maintaining a virtual index of all storage locations, synchronizing the database between clients in realtime. This implementation also uses CAS (Content-addressable storage) to uniquely identify files, while keeping record of logical file paths relative to the storage locations. The first implementation of a VDFS can be found in this UC Berkeley paper by Haoyuan Li. This paper describes its use for cloud computing, however the underlying concepts can be translated to open consumer software. ref