IOStack is a software-defined storage architecture for object stores like OpenStack Swift that simplifies cloud storage management. At the control plane, tenants are provisioned storage services according to policies defined in a domain-specific language that can target storage automation or service-level agreements. At the data plane, policies enforce software-defined storage services like filters on tenant requests. IOStack also provides a framework for building various types of filters to manage tenant data and storage.

1. IOStack: Software-Defined Object Storage
Abstract:
As the complexity and scale of cloud storage systems grow, software-defined
storage (SDS) has become a prime candidate to simplify cloud storage
management. Here, the authors present IOStack, the first SDS architecture for
object stores (such as OpenStack Swift). At the control plane, the provisioning of
SDS services to tenants is made according to a set of policies managed via a high-
level domain-specific language (DSL). Policies can target storage automation or
specific service-level agreement (SLA) objectives. At the data plane, policies
define the enforcement of SDS services, namely filters, on a tenant's requests.
Moreover, IOStack is a framework to build a variety of filters, ranging from
general-purpose computations close to the data to specialized data management
mechanisms. Experiments illustrate that IOStack enables easy and effective
policy-based provisioning, which can significantly improve the operation of a
multitenant object store.