GiSK: making secure, reliable and scalable VO repository virtualizing generic disks in the grid

The grid has been recognized in industry as an important means of addressing issues of virtualization and distributed system management. Storage virtualization is the logical abstraction of physical storage and has tremendous potential for simplifying storage administration and reducing costs for managing diverse storage assets. In this paper, we study ways to virtualize heterogeneous storage systems in grid and introduce a new secure, reliable, and scalable VO repository system, referred as GiSK, using storage virtualization for generic disks in the grid. Through the lessons from GiSK, we identify a few important issues required to realize a storage virtualization system in the grid and suggest the "lassoing a stake in order" strategy for data reliability and the fine-grained access control mechanism using the GSI certificate.