VeilFS - A new face of Storage as a Service

Popularization of Storage as a Service (STaaS) model implies new, diverse requirements. STaaS is usually offered by particular organizations and is rarely suitable for computations so it is very difficult to provide STaaS for users of highly distributed computing infrastructures. In this paper we present VeilFS, a service that merges and extends the functionalities of a high performance file system, data hosting service and data management system to provide a new face of STaaS. VeilFS, as many other STaaSes, provides several interfaces for easy access to data regardless of the location. It also offers data access, using a standard file system interface, efficient enough for high-performance computations. Moreover, VeilFS allows for hiding of various storage and data management systems taking into account both the performance of computations on data and cost of data storing. The main innovation of VeilFS is that it provides these features while maintaining the autonomy of organizations.