PESIT Bangalore South Campus

Hosur road, 1km before Electronic City, Bengaluru -100

Department of Information Science & Engineering
SOLUTION MANUAL

INTERNAL ASSESSMENT TEST – 1

Subject & Code : Storage Area Networks / 15CS754
Name of faculty: Prof. Animesh Giri / Prof. Preeti Sangamesh
Class: 7th semester CSE/ISE (Common Elective)

1. Explain the core elements and key characteristics of Data Centre elements with a neat
diagram
(08Marks)
Answer:

Data Centre: It is a facility that contains storage, compute, network, and other IT
resources to provide centralized data-processing capabilities.

• Core elements of a data center

Application

Database management system (DBMS)

Host or Compute

Network

Storage
• These core elements work together to address data-processing requirements

Key Characteristics of a Data Center

• Key management activities include

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Monitoring
 Continuous process of gathering information on various elements and
services running in a data center

Reporting
 Details on resource performance, capacity, and utilization

Provisioning
 Configuration and allocation of resources to meet the capacity,
availability, performance, and security requirements

2. Discuss the functionalities of a Logical Volume Manager, with a neat diagram 08 Marks

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 LVMExample: Partitioning and Concatenation

Hosts

Logical Volume

Physical Volume

Partitioning Concatenation

EMC Proven Professional. Copyright © 2012 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Module 2: Data Center Environment 11

3. Define the two main goals of RAID; Explain the below mentioned RAID techniques with
suitable diagrams.
a. RAID 1+0
b. RAID 0+1
Explain why RAID 0 is not an option for data protection and high availability?
(08 Marks)
Answer: Performance limitation of disk drive
An individual drive has a certain life expectancy
o Measured in MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure)
o The more the number of HDDs in a storage array, the larger the probability for
disk failure. For example:
o If the MTBF of a drive is 750,000 hours, and there are 100 drives in the
array, then the MTBF of the array becomes 750,000 / 100, or 7,500 hours
o RAID was introduced to mitigate this problem
o RAID provides:
o Increase capacity
o Higher availability
Increased performance

RAID LEVELS

o 0 Striped array with no fault tolerance

o 1 Disk mirroring

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o Nested RAID (i.e., 1 + 0, 0 + 1, etc.)
o 3 Parallel access array with dedicated parity disk
o 4 Striped array with independent disks and a dedicated parity disk
o 5 Striped array with independent disks and distributed parity
o 6 Striped array with independent disks and dual distributed parity

NESTED RAID
o Combines the performance benefits of RAID 0 with the redundancy benefit of RAID 1.
o RAID 0+1 – Mirrored Stripe
o Data is striped across HDDs, then the entire stripe is mirrored.
o If one drive fails, the entire stripe is faulted.
o Rebuild operation requires data to be copied from each disk in the healthy stripe,
causing increased load on the surviving disks.
o RAID 1+0 – Striped Mirror
o Data is first mirrored, and then both copies are striped across multiple HDDs.
o When a drive fails, data is still accessible from its mirror.
o Rebuild operation only requires data to be copied from the surviving disk into the
replacement disk.

4. An application has 1,000 heavy users at the peak of 2 IOPS each and 2,000 Typical users
at the peak of 1 IOPS each, with read/ write ratio of 2:1. It is also estimated that the
application also experiences an overhead of 20 Percent for other workloads. Calculate the
IOPS requirements for RAID 1, RAID 3, RAID 5, and RAID 6.

5. Define Intelligent Storage Systems? Explain with a neat diagram the components of an
Intelligent Storage Systems. (08Marks)

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Answer: It is a feature-rich RAID array that provides highly optimized I/O processing
capabilities.

• Provides large amount of cache and multiple I/O paths that enhances the performance
• Has an operating environment that provides

Intelligent cache management

Array resource management

Connectivity to heterogeneous hosts
• Supports flash drive, virtual provisioning, and automated storage tiering

Key Components of an ISS

Key Components of an ISS

Intelligent Storage System

Host
Front End Back End Physical Disks
Cache
Connectivity
Storage
Network

EMC Proven Professional. Copyright © 2012 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Module 4: Intelligent Storage System 5

6. Explain the Cache functionalities in Intelligent Storage System (08 Marks)

Answer:
Cache is semiconductor memory where data is placed temporarily to reduce the time required
to service I/O requests from the host.

Structure of Cache

Cache consists of the data store and tag RAM. The data store holds the data while tag R.

Tag RAM includes a dirty bit flag, which indicates whether the data in cache has been
committed to the disk or not

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Read Operation with Cache

RAM to determine whether the required data is available in cache. If the requested data is
found in the cache, it is called a read cache hit or read hit and data is sent directly to the host,
without any disk operation If the requested data is not found in cache, it is called a cache
miss and the data must be read from the disk

A pre-fetch, or read-ahead, algorithm is used when read requests are sequential. In a

sequential read request, a contiguous set of associated blocks is retrieved.

Write Operation with Cache

Write operations with cache provide performance advantages over writing directly to disks.
When an I/O is written to cache and acknowledged, it is completed in far less time (from the
host’s perspective) than it would take to write directly to disk

Write-back cache: Data is placed in cache and an acknowledgment is sent to the host
immediately and committed later.

Cache Implementation

Cache can be implemented as either dedicated cache or global cache. With dedicated cache,
separate sets of memory locations are reserved for reads and writes. In global cache, both
reads and writes can use any of the available memory addresses.

Cache Management

Least Recently Used (LRU): An algorithm that continuously monitors data access in cache
and identifies the cache pages that have not been accessed for a long time.

Most Recently Used (MRU): An algorithm that is the converse of LRU. In MRU, the pages
that have been accessed most recently are freed up or marked for reuse.

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On the basis of the I/O access rate and pattern, high and low levels called watermarks are set
in cache to manage the flushing process.

Idle flushing: Occurs continuously, at a modest rate, when the cache utilization level is
between the high and low watermark.

High watermark flushing: Activated when cache utilization hits the high watermark. The
storage system dedicates some additional resources to flushing. This type of flushing has
minimal impact on host I/O processing.

Forced flushing: Occurs in the event of a large I/O burst when cache reaches 100 percent of
its capacity, which significantly affects the I/O response time. In forced flushing, dirty pages
are forcibly flushed to disk.

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 Cache Data Protection

Cache mirroring: Each write to cache is held in two different memory locations on two
independent memory cards.

Cache vaulting: Cache is exposed to the risk of uncommitted data loss due to power
failure. This problem can be addressed in various ways: powering the memory with a
battery until AC power is restored or using battery power to write the cache content to the
disk.

7. Explain the components of Storage Area Networks (SAN)? Illustrate transmission of data
in Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop (FC-AL) configuration with a neat diagram.
Answer:

o Dedicated high speed network of servers and shared storage devices

o Provide block level data access
o Resource Consolidation
o Centralized storage and management
o Scalability
o Theoretical limit: Appx. 15 million devices
o Secure Access

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Components of SAN: Node ports

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 FC- AL Transmission

o Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop (FC-AL)

o Devices must arbitrate to gain control
o Devices are connected via hubs
o Supports up to 127 devices

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8. Discuss the layers of Fibre Channel Protocol Stack; also explain different types of Fibre
Channel Ports with a neat diagram.
Answer:

o FC uses channel technology

o Provide high performance with low protocol overheads
o FCP is SCSI-3 over FC network
o Sustained transmission bandwidth over long distances
o Provides speeds up to 8 Gb/s (8 GFC)
o FCP has five layers:
o FC-4 – Upper Layer
o FC-2 - Transport Layer
o FC-1 – Transmission Protocol
o FC-0 – Physical Interface
*FC-3 is not yet implemented

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Fibre Channel Ports

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 9. Explain storage provisioning methods? Compare the virtual and traditional storage
provisioning methods with a neat diagram.

Shown is an example comparing Virtual Provisioning (on the right) with traditional storage
provisioning (on the left). The example demonstrates the benefit of better capacity utilization.
With traditional provisioning, three LUNs are created and presented to one or more hosts,
using traditional provisioning methods. The total usable storage capacity of the storage
system is 2 TB.
• The size of LUN 1 is 500 GB, of which 100 GB is actual data and 400 GB is
allocated unused capacity.
• The size of LUN 2 is 550 GB, of which 50 GB is actual data and 500 GB is allocated
unused capacity.
• The size of LUN 3 is 800 GB, of which 200 GB is actual data and 600 GB is
allocated unused capacity.
In total, the storage system stores 350 GB of actual data, 1.5 TB of allocated unused capacity,
and only 150 GB of available capacity for other applications.

If we consider the same 2 TB storage system with Virtual Provisioning, the differences are quite
dramatic. Although the system administrator creates the same size LUNs for LUNs 1, 2, and 3,
there is no allocated unused capacity. In total, the storage system with Virtual Provisioning stores
the same 350 GB of actual data as the other storage system, with 1.65 TB of capacity available
for other applications, versus only 150 GB in the traditional storage system.

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10. Discuss the feature of Midrange Storage Systems and High-end Storage Systems with a
neat diagram. (08Marks)

Answer:

Midrange Storage Systems

Referred as active-passive arrays, and generally aimed at small and medium-sized
enterprise applications

Performs I/Os to LUNs only through active paths

• These arrays typically have two controllers, each with cache, RAID controllers, and
disks drive interfaces
• Less front-end ports, storage capacity, and cache as compared to high-end arrays
• Support local and remote data replication

High-end Storage Systems

Referred as active-active arrays, and generally aimed at large enterprise applications.
Performs I/Os to LUNs through all the available paths
• These arrays provide the following capabilities:

Large storage capacity and cache

Fault tolerant architecture

Connectivity to mainframe and open systems

Multiple front-end ports and interface protocols

Ability to handle large amount of concurrent I/Os

Support local and remote data replication

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