A multi-cloud storage solution

• Main Author: Setiadi, Aswin
• Other Authors: Anwitaman Datta
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2015
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Computer science and engineering::Software::Software engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/64855
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

In recent years, there is a large increase in the number of people who use online cloud service from major third party provider (Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, etc.). Many of these companies offer some limited quota of storage space for free, ranging from 2 GB to 15 GB. Most new customers will probably choose to store their files across these services instead of spending money to upgrade a storage quota to accommodate their usage. The downside to this however is user will often find it tedious to track and locate files that are stored in different cloud services. They also need to remember usernames and passwords for each one of the cloud services used. Storing files in these cloud providers also does not guarantee file confidentiality as these files are stored without any concealing feature such as encryption. Users are then unable to keep their private files on the cloud. Although there are existing cloud storage providers (e.g. SpiderOak) that offers file encryption, the users will then have to maintain additional cloud storage together with their existing cloud storage accounts. The Transparent Cloud Storage Aggregator (TCSA) solution provides a convenient one stop storage manager platform that aggregates supported cloud storage services into one single virtual storage structure. The system can automate the storage selection process by choosing largest remaining storage among the 3rd party cloud providers the users have registered to TCSA. TCSA also introduces extra securities by incorporating encryption and hashing technology to user files, ensuring the privacy of these files when they go outside user’s computer. During any file processing, information in the user file content does not get exposed to the TCSA system, as all the encryptions are done locally in the user’s client (web browser) and the files metadata leave the user computer only after they are encrypted. These processes are transparent to the user, providing convenient and ease of use. This report is written to explain how file operation request from a user computer (Through Phyu’s Plugin) are executed in the TCSA server. It also provides information on the development process of the back-end programs that connects these file operation requests with the actual file operation in the 3rd party cloud storage APIs.