Patent ID: 8458451

Claim:
A storage system comprising: a network; a server having a server memory, a server processing unit and a server network interface in communication with the network; and a plurality of clients, each client having a client memory in which data is stored, a client processing unit and a client network interface in communication with the server through the network, each of the clients having an encryption portion that enables each of the clients to securely communicate and understand data with all other clients, the server memory being shared by the clients through the network to store copies of encrypted data in the server memory from the clients, the server unable to decrypt the encrypted data stored in the server memory, the server having a timing mechanism to ensure data that is shared is a desired copy, the server cannot infer which data is accessed by the clients because clients perform read transactions only locally in the client's client memory and cannot infer whether two transactions from the clients access a same portion of the encrypted data in the client memory and the server provides single-copy serializable transaction semantics for distributed transactions, each client sends from the client network interface to the server an encrypted description of a transaction, as encrypted by the encryption portion of the client.