The L-Store archive plug-in provides a flexible framework for long-term storage of data.  This plug-in allows users to “tag” local files for archive.  There is a command to list the files that would be archived given a tag name similar to a dry-run.  Upon running an archive, the data is loaded into L-Store and then written to tape.  With the integration into L-Store, archival of data can be staged out to various locations with any number of distributed tape back-ends.

The tagged local data is copied into in a replicated path with an additional time stamp named directory in L-Store.  This allows for a form of version control.  This L-Store leaves a file “stub” behind that allows users to browse the archived data as a local read-only mount.  There is extended metadata that identifies the file(s) as being on tape.  That same metadata also has the necessary information for retrieving that data from tape.  Restoring files from tape is as simple as identifying the L-Store path and specifying a local destination for the retrieved data.

An additional policy based framework will be added in the future.  This will allow data to remain in L-Store as well as tape based on user defined policies.  This feature will give HSM like behavior to L-Store.