Phil Windley: Distributed Back-up Systems

Phil Windley has an interesting post entitled "Distributed Back-up Systems" that intersects with my interests in a Distributed Virtual Personal Computer (DVPC).  He mentions two solutions that he is aware of:

PStore is a secure P2P storage solution from some researchers at MIT. Overall, the feature set seems quite nice, but the code is not available and it doesn’t incorporate erasure codes as far as I know.

DIBS is a similar idea written in python that does use erasure codes. The UI is something only a geek could love.

He says that he's "enamored with erasure codes for reliability."

 

My original DVPC proposal was not based on P2P file-sharing, but I'm now thinking that there must be a middle ground between true servers locked away in expensive data centers and amateurish file-sharing on local computers.  More thinking is required here.  The big issue is that I'm looking for 100.0% reliability, whereas most people would settle for a 90% solution.

 

-- Jack Krupansky