![]() ![]() You might have encountered file storage at your workplace. This form of cloud storage is handy for a wide variety of workloads, too. What’s file storage good for?įile storage is great when you have files you want to share among a lot of users or machines and you don’t need the highest possible performance. File storage uses locking to ensure that multiple users can work on the same collection of files, without getting into conflicts. The specifics of file locking vary between implementations, but that gives you the general idea. The file storage prevents two simultaneous writes to the same file, which could cause file corruption or other weirdnesses. The file is locked to Billie, and nobody else can write to it.Ĭorey can save his photo to a different file, or he can wait for Billie to finish working on his photo and the file to be unlocked. The file storage locks that file to him, and that’s OK, because we’re not working on the same file.īut now if Corey wants to upload a different photo of Billie, he can’t. If Billie wants to upload a new profile photo, he can save it to the “profile_photos” folder. Everyone can still read the file, but nobody else is allowed to modify it.īut because the file storage has only locked this single file, Billie the Platypus and Corey can still work on different files. I’m working on this article, so the file is locked for me - I’m the only one who’s allowed to make changes. Suppose I have some file storage I’m sharing with my Last Week in AWS colleagues. For example, it might lock files to individual users so that only one person at a time can write to a file. ![]() Typically, file storage coordinates multiple writes by using some form of locking. It’s fine if two people want to read the same file, but what if they both want to write to the same file? We need to coordinate writes between different users. ![]() You can share a file system over a network, but now we need to coordinate activity between different users. What if I want to work on files with other people? So far, this is like using a file system with a block storage volume on my local machine. The metadata scheme is fixed, and there’s not much you can do to change it. Individual files can have some file system-defined metadata, such as who the owner is, the last time the file was modified, and who’s allowed to read it. You use the path to read and file, and folders help you keep your files organized. This is a metaphor that comes from the world of paper files, manila folders, and filing cabinets.Įach file has a path, which tells you where to find the file. ![]() How does file storage work?įile storage is probably what you’re used to: You put files in folders, and folders in other folders, and so on, until everything is arranged into a hierarchy. Let’s dive into file storage and how it lets us share data at a distance. This post is the second in a three-part series to look at how each of these cloud storage technologies work, what they’re good for, and how to use them. It’s one of three major types of cloud storage, alongside block storage and object storage. You can share that hierarchy across a network, so multiple people can work on the same collection of files. In some ways, today’s file storage is very different - and in others, it hasn’t changed at all.įile storage is a system for keeping data in an organized hierarchy of files and folders. Once upon a time, file storage meant your filing cabinet. ![]()
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