An Efficient Versioning File System for Self-Securing Storage

Self-securing storage prevents intruders from undetectably tampering with or permanently deleting stored data. By keeping all versions of all data for a window of time and separating the storage system from the host operating system, self securing storage can protect its data from corruption. This paper describes a versioning file system that combines log-structuring with novel metadata journaling and data replication techniques to minimize the performance costs of comprehensive versioning. Experiments show that self-securing storage devices can deliver performance that is comparable with conventional storage. Further~ analyses indicate that several weeks worth of all versions can reasonably be kept on state-of-the-art disks, especially when differencing and compression technologies are employed.