peaCS-Performance and Efficiency Analysis for Cloud Storage

Those who need to store larger amounts of data either for burst periods or for convenient synchronisation between devices are currently looking at new ways of how to integrate cloud storage services into the data processing applications. The benefits (on-demand access and pricing, elasticity) and the drawbacks (reduced control, increased dependencies on providers) need to be well balanced. Recently, a new class of applications called cloud storage controllers or integrators appeared with a high potential to become a standard feature of operating systems and network gateways. They seamlessly integrate single and bundled storage services into the users’ digital environment. However, it is not clear which controllers are better than others. Some are open source, some commercial, some perform better than others, but some of the others provide more data pre-processing and routing features. We solve this problem by introducing peaCS as a test framework to analyse, compare and optimise the functional and non-functional properties of such client-side storage service integration solutions.