A management architecture for client-defined cloud storage services

Cloud service providers offer virtual resources to users, who then pay for as much as they use. High-speed networks help to overcome the limitation of geographical distances between clients and cloud servers, which encourage users to adopt cloud storage services for data backup and sharing. However, users use only a few cloud storage services because of the complexity of managing multiple accounts and distributing data to store. In this paper, we propose the client-defined management architecture (CLIMA) that redefines a storage service by coordinating multiple cloud storage services from clients. We address practical issues of coordinating multiple cloud service providers using a client-based approach. We implement a prototype as a realization of CLIMA, which achieves both reliability and privacy protection using erasure code and higher performance by optimally scheduling data transmission. We use our prototype to evaluate the benefits of CLIMA on commercial cloud storage service providers. Finally, CLIMA empowers clients to increase the manageability and flexibility of cloud storage services. Copyright (c) 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.