Nonblocking Distributed Replication of Versioned Files

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a distributed data storage framework that supports unrestricted offline access. The system does not explicitly distinguish between connected and disconnected states. Its design is based on a lock-free distributed framework that avoids update conflicts through file versioning. We propose an algorithm for replica synchronization. The feasibility of this framework is confirmed by a proof-of-concept implementation. We also demonstrate that the proposed lock-free replica synchronization algorithm scales well. A future work will include also direct support for non- versioned files.