Amazon has just made available the documentation for Dynamo, the somewhat new key-storage system it's using internally for the support of its online e-commerce solution. It's been using Dynamo since early on this year, and will be presenting a paper on its technology at SOSP, the biannual Operating Systems conference. So why is this important? It indicates Amazon's continued dedication to R&D, and new technologies. It also speaks to the developments going on for the creation of a web operating system, towards which Dynamo could signify a substantial step in the right direction. Dynamo will not be used for public access, but is an internal product only. According to Amazon's paper:
Dynamo uses a synthesis of well known techniques to achieve scalability and availability: Data is partitioned and replicated using consistent hashing [10], and consistency is facilitated by object versioning [12]. The consistency among replicas during updates is maintained by a quorum-like technique and a decentralized replica synchronization protocol. Dynamo employs a gossip based distributed failure detection and membership protocol. Dynamo is a completely decentralized system with minimal need for manual administration. Storage nodes can be added and removed from Dynamo without requiring any manual partitioning or redistribution.