Abstract

With the popularity of cloud computing, the demand for cloud infrastructure also increases. Because the requirement of cloud computing increases steeply, the infrastructure of cloud service expands too. Spending the least cost to achieve the best effect on the cloud is a big problem for every researcher, and virtualization is one of the answers to resolve this problem. Virtualization is a technology that divides the real resources into logically manageable resources, which are then provided to the users to control and manage them efficiently and legitimately. Software-Defined Storage (SDS) is a kind of virtualization which integrates the storage resources and different storage devices by software to increase the usability and activity. According to user requirements, SDS can be adjusted to achieve the optimal performance. In recent years, SDS becomes more and more popular, and several companies have announced their product. However, the generic standard still has not appeared; most products are only appropriate for their devices, and SDS can integrate a few storages. In this paper, the OpenStack is adopted to build and manage the cloud service, and software is used to integrate storage resources including Hadoop HDFS, Ceph, and Swift on OpenStack to achieve the concept of SDS. In such software platform, different storage devices are harmonized to provide an integrated storage array and build a virtual storage pool; so that users do not feel restrained by the storage devices. The software platform also provides a web interface for managers to arrange the storage space, administrate users, and configure security settings. For allocation of the storage resources, we make a policy and assign the specific storage array to the machine that acquires the resources according to that policy. Then, the performance tests for file systems are conducted to prove the system runs correctly. From the experimental results, it is shown the performance of Hadoop HDFS is better than the other two storages; i.e., except a few instances, Hadoop HDFS outperforms the other two storages in the same environment.