VAULT - A Shared Distributed And Redundant Storage Solution

Abstract

An ideal distributed storage solution must have the ability to provide redundant, reliable, shared and secure access to user data without compromising the ability to scale and descend while maintaining performance. VAULT is an attempt to avert the negatives of the cloud in a local environment using a decentralized methodology. VAULT makes use of individual idle storage space on a network of peer-to-peer nodes which is then provided to an end user to store files in the pooled space. VAULT implements redundancy by the use of Reed-Solomon codes and maps file fragment locations using a blockchain as a distributed ledger. Fragment distribution is optimized using a machine learning approach where node characteristics are used to determine the reliability of each node. The aggregation of above features makes VAULT an ideal solution for corporate environments where consumer hardware and infrastructure is already allocated.