Storage Services
----------------

The storage discussion was very abbreviated because of time
constraints.  Nonetheless, there was general agreement on the types of
storage services that should be directly supported by the StratusLab
distribution. 

File-based storage: This should NOT be provided by the StratusLab
distribution.  Our main users are already involved with the grid
middleware, which provides file-based management solutions.  Those
users can still access those services simply by installing the grid
data management clients on their machine images.  StratusLab
developments should be concentrated elsewhere. 

Read-only disk images: StratusLab should provide services that allow
read only disk images to be mounted on virtual machine instances and
shared between sites.  This can take advantage of the mechanisms that
are being developed for referencing, sharing, and caching of machine
images. 

Persistent (read-write) disk images: The use case for this is storing
of service state persistently, for example, service log files or
databases.  This requires the ability to create and mount a disk image
and ensure that changes are persistent.  Initially, it was felt that
allowing this only within a single private cloud would be the easiest
way to start.  Eventually, StratusLab should look at ways to snapshot,
publish, and share these types of images.