An agent-based approach to full interoperability and allocation transparency in distributed file systems

Modern distributed file system realizations offer only partially resource location transparency, resource location independence, fault tolerance, load balancing, heterogeneity, self-configuration, and simplified user access. Traditional portability techniques developed in these systems become unsuited in highly dynamic environments. To solve these problems within a homogeneous framework we studied and experimented the use of static and mobile agents in a portable environment. In this paper we describe the philosophy, the structure, and the prototype realization of the Agent-based Distributed File System (ADFS). The main properties of this innovative distributed file system are resource location transparency, resource location independence, selfconfiguration, and heterogeneity of the underlying hardware and operating system architectures.