IKAROS: An HTTP-Based Distributed File System, for Low Consumption & Low Specification Devices

We present the design of IKAROS: an HTTP-based distributed file system, which provides file access scalability and targets a large variety of operating systems and storage systems. IKAROS bypasses the server bottleneck enabling clients to access storage directly, while supporting the usage of multiple types of meta-data. It enables low-consumption, low-specification and low-cost devices to achieve a high throughput data transfer, responding to highly demanding applications. We present data transfer results comparing IKAROS, NFS, PVFS2 and HDFS on a Small Office/Home Office Network Attached Storage infrastructure. We show that IKAROS architecture satisfies and outperforms the data rate demands of high performance applications. We also present experimental results which compare IKAROS and GridFTP using the European Grid Infrastructure. IKAROS performs better in most cases while being competitive at the rest.