InstantMirror Project: Google Summer of Code 2009

[Warren Togami]

https://fedorahosted.org/InstantMirror/

I have wrote down design notes of the new InstantMirror project.  This
project is meant to be fostered in Google Summer of Code 2009, with
multiple Red Hat engineers as mentors, and possibly multiple students
working together as a team. Students are to be judged by their ability
to work with others as a team, their ability to implement the plan, and
their ability to encourage participation from further volunteers
interested in solving these problems.

Major Implications of InstantMirror

    1. Instant changes on mirrors. From the perspective of users,
changed files on the master can appear for download "instantly" on mirrors.
    2. Read-only network filesystem that can replicates data in a
torrent-like swarming manner, with snapshots and tags to preserve access
to previous contents of the filesystem.  This has the potential to be
far more robust and efficient than rsync mirrors, while being more
flexible than reverse caching proxy mirrors.
    3. Local versioning backup filesystem. Simply turn off the
networking and client-side cache and you have a local versioning
filesystem with tags, useful for backups. Space efficiently preserves
old versions of your files, while making it easy to access those files.

http://socghop.appspot.com/document/show/program/google/gsoc2009/faqs#timeline
I am still adding and fixing up the text on this page over the next day.
   Assuming Fedora is accepted as a mentoring organization, it seems we
have until April 3rd to accept applications for Google SoC, then there
is a review period after that where we decide who to accept as the
official students.

We are not waiting for Google SoC to begin this project.  Student
participation in the project, shaping the prototyping phase and showing
community leadership prior to April 3rd will prove that an individual is
capable of being official SoC student(s).

How can you Help?

I believe this project is plenty interesting and useful to our future
that other volunteers would also be interested in getting involved.
Currently im-devel-list is being created to focus development
discussion.  We also could use more knowledgeable mentors to aid the
student(s) in this project.

Warren Togami
wtogami at redhat.com