US Patent 7778972 Dynamic object replication within a distributed storage system

Dynamic object replication in distributed storage systems. A system may implement a web services interface, storage nodes, storage node selection logic and a coordinator. The web services interface may be configured to receive, according to a web services protocol, client requests to store data objects including a given client request to store a given one of the data objects. The storage nodes may be configured to store replicas of the data objects. The storage node selection logic may be configured to dynamically determine a write plan for storing replicas of the given data object to corresponding storage nodes, where the write plan is dynamically determined according to current state information of the storage nodes. The coordinator may be configured to receive the client requests from the web services interface, and for the given client request, to store the replicas of the given data object to the corresponding storage nodes according to the write plan.