QoS-Aware Distributed Cloud Storage Service based on Erasure Code in Multi-Cloud Environment

Although cloud storage service (CSS) is convenient to access data, the cost, security, and performance are the issues to users who consider to adopt CSS. For example, CSS could be unavailable due to technical issues or natural disaster. In order to avoid single point of failure, many users duplicate data into multiple CSS providers (CSPs). However, this will increase cost; decrease security; and is difficult to maintain data consistency. In this paper, we propose a QoS-aware Distributed Cloud Storage Service (QDCSS) which aims to provide users with the appropriate CSS according to their quality of service (QoS) requirements. In QDCSS, the data will be encoded into code words by applying erasure code and then the code words will be smartly distributed to multiple CSPs to meet users' QoS requirements. Compared with data duplication, the numerical analysis show that QDCSS can reduce cost by 73% and improve security by 63%. Moreover, the simulation results show that QDCSS can adapt to different users' QoS requirements.