Snapshot service interface (ssi), a generic snapshot assisted backup framework for linux

This paper presents the design and implementation of "Snapshot Service Interface-SSI", a standardized backup framework for the Linux platform. Linux is a prominent candidate for using such a backup framework because of its ubiquitous nature on the high-end server market. Such a backup framework is introduced in Windows 2003 under the name of volume shadow copy service VSS [1]. SSI being a first of its kind backup solution for the Linux platform, the main contribution of this paper is to dicuss the pros and cons of different design alternatives available on Linux. The paper also provides a quantitative measure on performance hits incurred due to using such framework in lieu of using traditional backup methods.