[pitherpather]

I am aware of some research into operating systems with a database rather than filesystem as a base layer. If SeaweedFS serves a middle-ground between databases and filesystems, could it also suggest a middle-ground in conceiving of research operating systems??

[vlovich123]

SeaweedFS is a non hierarchical distributed key value store. It makes different tradeoffs to a filesystem which provides a hierarchical view of local only data. There’s some evidence to suggest that a hierarchical structuring of the data itself isn’t actually beneficial for modern systems. And you could design a system that used similar techniques to SeaweedFS to do a semi-distributed local store (ie locally stored data for fast access with offloading to cheap remote storage for durability / infinite extensibility). And the plain KV store will likely be faster for most operations although in practice you’ll probably only see it in micro benchmarks.