Storage Area Network

18CS822 Semester VIII

Module 1
Storage System
By,
MANJULA DEVI P
ISE, AMCEC

Syllabus:
Storage System: Introduction to Information Storage: Information Storage,
Evolution of Storage Architecture, Data Center Infrastructure, Virtualization and
Cloud Computing.
Data Center Environment: Application Database Management System (DBMS),
Host (Compute), Connectivity, Storage, Disk Drive Components, Disk Drive
Performance, Host Access to Data, Direct-Attached Storage, Storage Design Based
on Application
 Introduction to Information Storage
Information Storage:
Storage is a repository that enables users to persistently store and retrieve this digital data.
Why Information management?
 Information is increasingly important in our daily lives. We have become information

 Dependents.

 We live in on-command, on-demand world that means we need information when and
where it is required.
 We access the Internet every day to perform searches, participate in social networking,
send and receive e-mails, share pictures and videos, and scores of other applications.
Equipped with a growing number of content-generating devices, more information is
being created by individuals than by businesses.
 The importance, dependency, and volume of information for the business world also
continue to grow at astounding rates.
 Businesses depend on fast and reliable access to information critical to their success.
Some of the business applications that process information include airline reservations,
telephone billing systems, e-commerce, ATMs, product designs, inventory management,
e-mail archives, Web portals, patient records, credit cards, life sciences, and global
capital markets.
 The increasing criticality of information to the businesses has amplified the challenges in
protecting and managing the data.
 Organizations maintain one or more data centers to store and manage information. A data
center is a facility that contains information storage and other physical information
technology (IT) resources for computing, networking, and storing information.
Data:
Data is a collection of raw facts from which conclusions might be drawn.
Examples: Handwritten letters, a printed book, a family photograph, printed and duly signed
copies of mortgage papers, a bank’s ledgers, and an airline ticket.
Digital data: Data can be generated using a computer and stored as strings of binary numbers (0s
and 1s) are called digital data.

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Data center: Is a facility that contains information storage and other physical information
technology resources for computing, networking and storing information.

Figure 1. Digital data

Factors that have contributed to the growth of digital data:
1. Increase in data-processing capabilities: Modern computers provide a significant increase
in processing and storage capabilities. This enables the conversion of various types of
content and media from conventional forms to digital formats.
2. Lower cost of digital storage: Technological advances and the decrease in the cost of storage
devices have provided low-cost storage solutions. This cost benefit has increased the rate at
which digital data is generated and stored.
3. Affordable and faster communication technology: The rate of sharing digital data is now
much faster than traditional approaches.
4. Proliferation of applications and smart devices: Smartphones, tablets, and newer digital
devices, along with smart applications, have significantly contributed to the generation of
digital content.
Types of Data:
Data can be classified as structured or unstructured (see Fig 1.2) based on how it is stored and
managed.
Structured data:

 Structured data is organized in rows and columns in a rigidly defined format so

that applications can retrieve and process it efficiently.
 Structured data is typically stored using a database management system (DBMS).

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Unstructured data:

 Data is unstructured if its elements cannot be stored in rows and columns, and is
therefore difficult to query and retrieve by business applications.
 Example: e-mail messages, business cards, or even digital format files such as .doc, .txt,
and .pdf.

Figure 2: Types of data

Big Data:
 Big data refers to data sets whose sizes are beyond the capability of commonly used
software tools to capture, store, manage, and process within acceptable time limits.
 It includes both structured and unstructured data generated by a variety of sources,
including business application transactions, web pages, videos, images, e-mails, social
media, and so on.
The big data ecosystem consists of the following:
 Devices that collect data from multiple locations and also generate new data about this
data (metadata).
 Data collectors who gather data from devices and users.
 Data aggregators that compile the collected data to extract meaningful information.
 Data users and buyers who benefit from the information collected and aggregated by
others in the data value chain.

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 Figure 3: Big data Ecosystem
Information:
 Data, whether structured or unstructured, does not fulfil any purpose for
individuals or businesses unless it is presented in a meaningful form.
 Information is the intelligence and knowledge derived from data.
 Businesses analyze raw data in order to identify meaningful trends. On the basis of
these trends, a company can plan or modify its strategy.
 For example, a retailer identifies customers’ preferred products and brand
names by analyzing their purchase patterns and maintaining an inventory of
thoseproducts.
 Because information is critical to the success of a business, there is an ever
present concern about its availability and protection.

Storage:
 Data created by individuals or businesses must be stored so that it is easily
accessible for further processing.
 In a computing environment, devices designed for storing data are termed storage
devices or simply storage.
 The type of storage used varies based on the type of data and the rate at which it is
created and used.
 Devices such as memory in a cell phone or digital camera, DVDs, CD-ROMs, and
hard disks in personal computers are examples of storage devices.

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 Businesses have several options available for storing data including internal hard
disks, external disk arrays and tapes.
Introduction to Evolution of Storage Architecture:
 Historically, organizations had centralized computers (mainframe) and information storage
devices (tape reels and disk packs) in their data center.
 The evolution of open systems and the affordability and ease of deployment that they offer
made it possible for business units/departments to have their own servers and storage.
 In earlier implementations of open systems, the storage was typically internal to the server.
This approach is referred to as server-centric storage architecture.
 In this server-centric storage architecture, each server has a limited number of storage
devices, and any administrative tasks, such as maintenance of the server or increasing
storage capacity, might result in unavailability of information.
 The rapid increase in the number of departmental servers in an enterprise resulted in
unprotected, unmanaged, fragmented islands of information and increased capital and
operating expenses.
 To overcome these challenges, storage evolved from server-centric to information-
centric architecture (figure (b)).
 In information-centric architecture, storage devices are managed centrally and
independent of servers.
 These centrally-managed storage devices are shared with multiple servers.
 When a new server is deployed in the environment, storage is assigned from the same
shared storage devices to that server.
 The capacity of shared storage can be increased dynamically by adding more storage
devices without impacting information availability.
 In this architecture, information management is easier and cost-effective. Storage
technology and architecture continues to evolve, which enables organizations to
consolidate, protect, optimize, and leverage their data to achieve the highest return on
information assets.

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 Figure 4: Evolution of storage architecture

Data Center Infrastructure:

 Organizations maintain data centers to provide centralized data processing
capabilities across the enterprise.
 The data center infrastructure includes computers, storage systems, network devices,
dedicated power backups, and environmental controls (such as air conditioning and fire
suppression).
Key Data Center Elements
Five core elements are essential for the basic functionality of a data center:
1. Application: An application is a computer program that provides the logic for
computing operations. Eg: order processing system.
2. Database: More commonly, a database management system (DBMS) provides a
structured way to store data in logically organized tables that are interrelated. A DBMS
optimizes the storage and retrieval of data.
3. Host or compute: A computing platform (hardware, firmware, and software) that runs
applications and databases.

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4. Network: A data path that facilitates communication among various networked
devices.
5. Storage array: A device that stores data persistently for subsequent use.

Figure 5: Example of an online order transaction system

1) A customer places an order through a client machine connected over a LAN/ WAN to a
host running an order-processing application.
2) The client accesses the DBMS on the host through the application to provide order-
related information, such as the customer name, address, payment method, products
ordered, and quantity ordered.
3) The DBMS uses the host operating system to write this data to the database located
on physical disks in the storage array.
4) The Storage Network provides the communication link between the host and the
storage array and transports the request to read or write commands between them.
5) The storage array, after receiving the read or write request from the host, performs the
necessary operations to store the data on physical disks.
Key characteristics for Data Center Elements

Key characteristics of data center elements are:

1) Availability: All data center elements should be designed to ensure accessibility. The
inability of users to access data can have a significant negative impact on a business.
2) Security: Polices, procedures, and proper integration of the data center core elements
that will prevent unauthorized access to information must be established. Specific
mechanisms must enable servers to access only their allocated resources on storage
arrays.

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3) Scalability: Data center operations should be able to allocate additional processing
capabilities (eg: servers, new applications, and additional databases) or storage on
demand, without interrupting business operations. The storage solution should be able to
grow with the business.
4) Performance: All the core elements of the data center should be able to provide optimal
performance and service all processing requests at high speed. The infrastructure should
be able to support performance requirements.
5) Data integrity: Data integrity refers to mechanisms such as error correction codes or
parity bits which ensure that data is written to disk exactly as it was received. Any
variation in data during its retrieval implies corruption, which may affect the operations
of the organization.
6) Capacity: Data center operations require adequate resources to store and process large
amounts of data efficiently. When capacity requirements increase, the data center must
be able to provide additional capacity without interrupting availability, or, at the very
least, with minimal disruption. Capacity may be managed by reallocation of existing
resources, rather than by adding new resources.
7) Manageability: A data center should perform all operations and activities in the most
efficient manner. Manageability can be achieved through automation and the reduction
of human (manual) intervention in common tasks.

Figure 6: Key characteristics of data center elements

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Virtualization:
 Virtualization is a technique of abstracting physical resources, such as compute, storage,
and network, and making them appear as logical resources.
 Virtualization has existed in the IT industry for several years and in different forms.
 Common examples of virtualization are virtual memory used on compute systems and
partitioning of raw disks.
 Virtualization enables pooling of physical resources and providing an aggregated view of
the physical resource capabilities. For example, storage virtualization enables multiple
pooled storage devices to appear as a single large storage entity.
 Similarly, by using compute virtualization, the CPU capacity of the pooled physical
servers can be viewed as the aggregation of the power of all CPUs (in megahertz).
 Virtualization also enables centralized management of pooled resources.
 Virtual resources can be created and provisioned from the pooled physical resources. For
example, a virtual disk of a given capacity can be created from a storage pool or a virtual
server with specific CPU power and memory can be configured from a compute pool.
 These virtual resources share pooled physical resources, which improves the utilization of
physical IT resources.
 Based on business requirements, capacity can be added to or removed from the virtual
resources without any disruption to applications or users.
 With improved utilization of IT assets, organizations save the costs associated
management of new physical resources. Moreover, fewer physical resources means
less space and energy, which leads to better economics and green computing.

Cloud Computing:
 Cloud computing enables individuals or businesses to use IT resources as a service over
the network.
 It provides highly scalable and flexible computing that enables provisioning of resources
on demand.
 Users can scale up or scale down the demand of computing resources, including storage
capacity, with minimal management effort or service provider interaction.
 Cloud computing empowers self-service requesting through a fully automated request
fulfilment process.

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 Cloud computing enables consumption-based metering; therefore, consumers pay only for
the resources they use, such as CPU hours used, amount of data transferred, and gigabytes
of data stored.
 Cloud infrastructure is usually built upon virtualized data centers, which provide
resource pooling and rapid provisioning of resources.

Key Data center Elements:

Application:
 An application is a computer program that provides the logic for computing operations.
 The application sends requests to the underlying operating system to perform read/write
(R/W) operations on the storage devices.
 Applications deployed in a data center environment are commonly categorized as business
applications, infrastructure management applications, data protection applications, and
security applications.
 Some examples of these applications are e-mail, enterprise resource planning (ERP), decision
support system (DSS), resource management, backup, authentication and antivirus
applications, and so on
DBMS:
 A database is a structured way to store data in logically organized tables that are
interrelated.
 A DBMS controls the creation, maintenance, and use of a database.
Host(or) Compute:
 The computers on which applications run are referred to as hosts. Hosts can range from
simple laptops to complex clusters of servers.
 Hosts can be physical or virtual machines.
 Compute virtualization software enables creating virtual machines on top of a physical
compute infrastructure.
 A host consists of

 CPU: The CPU consists of four components-Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU),

control unit, registers, and L1 cache
 Memory: There are two types of memory on a host, Random Access Memory
(RAM) and Read-Only Memory (ROM)

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  I/O devices : keyboard, mouse, monitor

 a collection of software to perform computing operations- This software includes

the operating system, file system, logical volume manager, device drivers, and so
on.
The following section details various software components that are essential parts of a host
system.
Operating System:
 In a traditional computing environment, an operating system controls all aspects of
computing.
 It works between the application and the physical components of a compute system.
 In a virtualized compute environment, the virtualization layer works between the operating
system and the hardware resources.
Memory Virtualization:
 Memory has been, and continues to be, an expensive component of a host.
 It determines both the size and number of applications that can run on a host.
 Memory virtualization is an operating system feature that virtualizes the physical memory
(RAM) of a host.
 It creates virtual memory with an address space larger than the physical memory space
present in the compute system.
 The operating system utility that manages the virtual memory is known as the virtual
memory manager (VMM).
 The space used by the VMM on the disk is known as a swap space.
 A swap space (also known as page file or swap file) is a portion of the disk drive that
appears to be physical memory to the operating system.
 In a virtual memory implementation, the memory of a system is divided into contiguous
blocks of fixed-size pages.
 A process known as paging moves inactive physical memory pages onto the swap file and
brings them back to the physical memory when required.
Device Drivers:

A device driver is special software that permits the operating system to interact with a specific
device, such as a printer, a mouse, or a disk drive.

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Volume Manager:

In the early days, disk drives appeared to the operating system as a number of continuous disk
blocks. The entire disk drive would be allocated to the file system or other data entity used by
the operating system or application.
Disadvantages:

 lack of flexibility.

 When a disk drive ran out of space, there was no easy way to extend the file system’s
size.
 as the storage capacity of the disk drive increased, allocating the entire disk drive for the
file system often resulted in underutilization of storage capacity
Solution: evolution of Logical Volume Managers (LVMs)

 LVM enabled dynamic extension of file system capacity and efficient storage management
 The LVM is software that runs on the compute system and manages logical and physical
storage.
 LVM is an intermediate layer between the file system and the physical disk.
 LVM can partition a larger-capacity disk into virtual, smaller-capacity volumes(called
Partitioning) or aggregate several smaller disks to form a larger virtual volume. The process
is called concatenation.
 Disk partitioning was introduced to improve the flexibility and utilization of disk drives.
 In partitioning, a disk drive is divided into logical containers called logical volumes (LVs).
 Concatenation is the process of grouping several physical drives and presenting them to the
host as one big logical volume (As shown in figure 7).
 The basic LVM components are physical volumes, volume groups, and logical volumes.
 Each physical disk connected to the host system is a physical volume (PV).
 A volume group is created by grouping together one or more physical volumes. A unique
physical volume identifier (PVID) is assigned to each physical volume when it is initialized
for use by the LVM.
 Logical volumes are created within a given volume group. A logical volume can be
thought of as a disk partition, whereas the volume group itself can be thought of as a disk.

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 Figure 7: Disk Partitioning and concatenation

File System:
 A file is a collection of related records or data stored as a unit with a name.
 A file system is a hierarchical structure of files.
 A file system enables easy access to data files residing within a disk drive, a disk partition, or
a logical volume.
 It provides users with the functionality to create, modify, delete, and access files.
 Access to files on the disks is controlled by the permissions assigned to the file by the owner,
which are also maintained by the file system.
 A file system organizes data in a structured hierarchical manner via the use of directories,
which are containers for storing pointers to multiple files.
 All file systems maintain a pointer map to the directories, subdirectories, and files that are
part of the file system.
 Examples of common file systems are:
 FAT 32 (File Allocation Table) for Microsoft Windows
 NT File System (NTFS) for Microsoft Windows
 UNIX File System (UFS) for UNIX
 Extended File System (EXT2/3) for Linux
 The file system also includes a number of other related records, which are collectively
called the metadata.

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 For example, the metadata in a UNIX environment consists of the superblock, the
inodes, and the list of data blocks free and in use.

Figure 8: Process of mapping user files to disk storage

The following list shows the process of mapping user files to the disk storage subsystem with
an LVM
1. Files are created and managed by users and applications.
2. These files reside in the file systems.
3. The file systems are mapped to file system blocks.
4. The file system blocks are mapped to logical extents of a logical volume.
5. These logical extents in turn are mapped to the disk physical extents either by the
operating system or by the LVM.
6. These physical extents are mapped to the disk sectors in a storage subsystem. If there
is no LVM, then there are no logical extents. Without LVM, file system blocks are
directly mapped to disk sectors.
The file system tree starts with the root directory. The root directory has a number of
subdirectories.
A file system can be either
a) a journaling file system b) a nonjournaling file system.

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Compute Virtualization:

 Compute virtualization is a technique for masking or abstracting the physical hardware

from the operating system. It enables multiple operating systems to run concurrently on
single or clustered physical machines.
 This technique enables creating portable virtual compute systems called virtual machines
(VMs) running its own operating system and application instance in an isolated manner.
 Compute virtualization is achieved by a virtualization layer that resides between the
hardware and virtual machines called the hypervisor. The hypervisor provides hardware
resources, such as CPU, memory, and network to all the virtual machines.
 A virtual machine is a logical entity but appears like a physical host to the operating system,
with its own CPU, memory, network controller, and disks. However, all VMs share the
same underlying physical hardware in an isolated manner.

Figure 9: Server Virtualization

Before Compute virtualization:
 A physical server often faces resource-conflict issues when two or more applications
running on the same server have conflicting requirements. As a result, only one
application can be run on a server at a time, as shown in Fig 1.9 (a).
 Due to this, organizations will need to purchase new physical machines for every
application they deploy, resulting in expensive and inflexible infrastructure.
 Many applications do not fully utilize complete hardware capabilities available to
them. Resources such as processors, memory and storage remain underutilized.
 Compute virtualization enables users to overcome these challenges

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After Compute virtualization:
 This technique significantly improves server utilization and provides server
consolidation.
 Server consolidation enables organizations to run their data center with fewer
physical servers.
 This, in turn
 reduces cost of new server acquisition,

 reduces operational cost,

 saves data center floor and rack space.

 Individual VMs can be restarted, upgraded, or even crashed, without affecting the
other VMs.

 VMs can be copied or moved from one physical machine to another) without causing
application downtime.

Connectivity:
 Connectivity refers to the interconnection between hosts or between a host and
peripheral devices, such as printers or storage devices.
 Connectivity and communication between host and storage are enabled using:
 physical components
 Interface protocols.
Physical Components of Connectivity:
 The physical components of connectivity are the hardware elements that connect the
host to storage.
 Three physical components of connectivity between the host and storage are
 The host interface device
 Port
 Cable
 A host interface device or host adapter connects a host to other hosts and storage devices.
 Eg: host bus adapter (HBA) and network interface card (NIC).
 HBA is an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) board that performs I/O
interface functions between the host and storage, relieving the CPU from additional
I/O processing workload.

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  A host typically contains multiple HBAs.

Figure 10: Physical components of connectivity

Interface Protocols:
A protocol enables communication between the host and storage.
Protocols are implemented using interface devices (or controllers) at both source and
destination.
The popular interface protocols used for host to storage communications are:
i. Integrated Device Electronics/Advanced Technology Attachment (IDE/ATA)
ii. Small Computer System Interface (SCSI),
iii. Fibre Channel (FC)
iv. Internet Protocol
(IP) IDE/ATA and Serial
ATA:

 IDE/ATA is a popular interface protocol standard used for connecting storage devices,
such as disk drives and CD-ROM drives.
 This protocol supports parallel transmission and therefore is also known as Parallel
ATA (PATA) or simply ATA.
 IDE/ATA has a variety of standards and names.
 The Ultra DMA/133 version of ATA supports a throughput of 133 MB per second.
 In a master-slave configuration, an ATA interface supports two storage devices per

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 connector.

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 If performance of the drive is important, sharing a port between two devices is not
recommended.
 The serial version of this protocol is known as Serial ATA (SATA) and supports single
bit serial transmission.
 High performance and low cost SATA has replaced PATA in newer systems.
 SATA revision 3.0 provides a data transfer rate up to 6 Gb/s.
Fibre Channel (FC):

 Fibre Channel is a widely used protocol for high-speed communication to the storage
device.
 Fibre Channel interface provides gigabit network speed.
 It provides a serial data transmission that operates over copper wire and optical fiber.
 The latest version of the FC interface (16FC) allows transmission of data up to 16 Gb/s.
Internet Protocol (IP):

 IP is a network protocol that has been traditionally used for host-to-host traffic.
 With the emergence of new technologies, an IP network has become a viable option for
host-to-storage communication.
 IP offers several advantages:

 cost

 maturity
 enables organizations to leverage their existing IP-based network.
 iSCSI and FCIP protocols are common examples that leverage IP for host-to-
storage communication.

Storage:
 Storage is a core component in a data center.
 A storage device uses magnetic, optic, or solid state media.
 Disks, tapes, and diskettes use magnetic media,
 CD/DVD uses optical media.
 Removable Flash memory or Flash drives uses solid state media.
 In the past, tapes were the most popular storage option for backups because of their low cost.
 Tapes have various limitations in terms of performance and management, as listed below:

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 i. Data is stored on the tape linearly along the length of the tape. Search and retrieval of
data are done sequentially, and it invariably takes several seconds to access the data.
As a result, random data access is slow and time-consuming.
ii. In a shared computing environment, data stored on tape cannot be accessed by
multiple applications simultaneously, restricting its use to one application at a time.
iii. On a tape drive, the read/write head touches the tape surface, so the tape degrades
or wears out after repeated use.
iv. The storage and retrieval requirements of data from the tape and the overhead
associated with managing the tape media are significant.
Disk Drives: Disk drives are the most popular storage medium used in modern computers for
storing and accessing data for performance-intensive, online applications. Disks support rapid
access to random data locations. Disks have large capacity. Disk storage arrays are configured
with multiple disks to provide increased capacity and enhanced performance. Disk drives are
accessed through predefined protocols, such as ATA, SATA, SAS, and FC.
Disk Drive Components:
 The key components of a hard disk drive are platter, spindle, read-write head, actuator arm
assembly, and controller board.
 I/O operations in a HDD are performed by rapidly moving the arm across the rotating flat
platters coated with magnetic particles.
 Data is transferred between the disk controller and magnetic platters through the read-write
(R/W) head which is attached to the arm.
 Data can be recorded and erased on magnetic platters any number of times.

Figure 11: Disk drive components

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Platter:
 A typical HDD consists of one or more flat circular disks called platters. The data is
recorded on these platters in binary codes (0s and 1s).
 The set of rotating platters is sealed in a case, called the Head Disk Assembly (HDA).
 A platter is a rigid, round disk coated with magnetic material on both surfaces.
 The data is encoded by polarizing the magnetic area, or domains, of the disk surface.
 Data can be written to or read from both surfaces of the platter.

Figure 12: spindle and platter

Spindle
 A spindle connects all the platters and is connected to a motor.
 The motor of the spindle rotates with a constant speed.
 The disk platter spins at a speed of several thousands of revolutions per minute (rpm).
Read/Write Head
 Read/Write (R/W) heads, read and write data from or to a platter.
 Drives have two R/W heads per platter, one for each surface of the platter.
 The R/W head changes the magnetic polarization on the surface of the platter when writing
data.
 While reading data, the head detects the magnetic polarization on the surface of the platter.
 If the drive malfunctions and the R/W head accidentally touches the surface of the platter
outside the landing zone, a head crash occurs.
 In a head crash, the magnetic coating on the platter is scratched and may cause damage to the
R/W head.

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Actuator Arm Assembly
 R/W heads are mounted on the actuator arm assembly, which positions the R/W head at the
location on the platter where the data needs to be written or read.
 The R/W heads for all platters on a drive are attached to one actuator arm assembly and
move across the platters simultaneously.

Figure 13: Actuator arm assembly

Drive Controller Board
 The controller is a printed circuit board, mounted at the bottom of a disk drive.
 It consists of a microprocessor, internal memory, circuitry, and firmware.
 The firmware controls the power to the spindle motor and the speed of the motor.
Physical Disk Structure
 Data on the disk is recorded on tracks, which are concentric rings on the platter around the
spindle.
 The tracks are numbered, starting from zero, from the outer edge of the platter.
 The number of tracks per inch (TPI) on the platter (or the track density) measures how
tightly the tracks are packed on a platter.
 Each track is divided into smaller units called sectors.
 A sector is the smallest, individually addressable unit of storage.
 The track and sector structure is written on the platter by the drive manufacturer using a low-
level formatting operation.
 The number of sectors per track varies according to the drive type.

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 Figure 14: Disk structure: sectors, tracks, and cylinders
Zoned Bit Recording
 Because the platters are made of concentric tracks, the outer tracks can hold more data than
the inner tracks, because the outer tracks are physically longer than the inner tracks.
 Zone bit recording utilizes the disk efficiently. This mechanism groups tracks into zones
based on their distance from the center of the disk. The zones are numbered, with the
outermost zone being zone 0.
 An appropriate number of sectors per track are assigned to each zone, so a zone near the
center of the platter has fewer sectors per track than a zone on the outer edge.

Figure 15: Zoned bit recording

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Logical Block Addressing
 Earlier drives used physical addresses consisting of the cylinder, head, and sector (CHS)
number to refer to specific locations on the disk.
 Logical block addressing (LBA), simplifies addressing by using a linear address to access
physical blocks of data.
 The disk controller translates LBA to a CHS address, and the host needs to know only the
size of the disk drive in terms of the number of blocks.

Figure 16: Logical Block Addressing

Disk Drive Performance:

A disk drive is an electromechanical device that governs the overall performance of the storage
system environment.
The various factors that affect the performance of disk drives are
Disk Service Time: Disk service time is the time taken by a disk to complete an I/O request.
Components that contribute to the service time on a disk drive are seek time, rotational latency,
and data transfer rate.
1) Seek Time: The seek time (also called access time) describes the time taken to position the
R/W heads across the platter with a radial movement (moving along the radius of the platter).
 The lower the seek time, the faster the I/O operation.
 Disk vendors publish the following seek time specifications:
 Full Stroke: The time taken by the R/W head to move across the entire width of the disk,
from the innermost track to the outermost track.

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  Average: The average time taken by the R/W head to move from one random track to
another, normally listed as the time for one-third of a full stroke.
 Track-to-Track: The time taken by the R/W head to move between adjacent tracks.
2) Rotational latency:

 To access data, the actuator arm moves the R/W head over the platter to a particular track
while the platter spins to position the requested sector under the R/W head.
 The time taken by the platter to rotate and position the data under the R/W head is called
rotational latency.
 This latency depends on the rotation speed of the spindle and is measured in milliseconds.
 Average rotational latency = One-half of the time taken for a full rotation.
o Appx. 5.5 ms for 5400-rpm drive
o Appx. 2.0 ms for 15000-rpm (250rps)
drive Average rotational latency=0.5/250=2ms
3. Data Transfer Rate:
 The data transfer rate (also called transfer rate) refers to the average amount of data per unit
time that the drive can deliver to the HBA.
 In a read operation, the data first moves from disk platters to R/W heads, and then it moves
to the drive’s internal buffer. Finally, data moves from the buffer through the interface to the
host HBA.
 In a write operation, the data moves from the HBA to the internal buffer of the disk drive
through the drive’s interface.
 The data then moves from the buffer to the R/W heads. Finally, it moves from the R/W heads
to the platters.

Figure 17: Data Transfer Rate

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Internal Transfer Rate: speed at which data moves from a platter’s surface to the internal
buffer (cache) of the disk.
External Transfer Rate: Is the rate at which data can move through the interface to the HBA.
Disk I/O Controller Utilization:
 Utilization of a disk I/O controller has a significant impact on the I/O response time.
 To understand this impact, consider that a disk can be viewed as a black box consisting of
two elements:
1. Queue: The location where an I/O request waits before it is processed by the I/O controller
2. Disk I/O Controller: Processes I/Os waiting in the queue one by one

Figure 18: I/O Processing

Based on the fundamental laws of disk drive performance, the relationship between controller
utilization and average response time is given as
Average response time (TR) = Service time (TS) / (1 – Utilization)
Where TS is the time taken by the controller to serve an I/O.
As the utilization reaches 100 percent — that is, as the I/O controller saturates — the response
time is closer to infi nity.
In essence, the saturate component, or the bottleneck, forces the serialization of I/O requests,
meaning that each I/O request must wait for the completion of the I/O requests that preceded it.

Figure 19: Utilization versus response time

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Host Access to Data:
 Data is accessed and stored by applications using the underlying infrastructure.
 The key components of this infrastructure are the operating system, connectivity, and
storage.
 The storage device can be internal or external to the host.
 External storage devices can be connected to the host directly or through the storage network.
When the storage is connected directly to the host, it is referred as direct-attached storage
(DAS).
 Data can be accessed over a network in one of the following ways: block level, file level, or
object level.
 In general, the application requests data from the file system (or operating system) by
specifying the filename and location. The file system maps the file attributes to the logical
block address of the data and sends the request to the storage device.
 The storage device converts the logical block address (LBA) to a cylinder-head-sector (CHS)
address and fetches the data.
 Block-level access: In a block-level access, the fi le system is created on a host, and data is
accessed on a network at the block level.
 File-level access: In a file-level access, the fi le system is created on a separate fi le server or
at the storage side, and the fi le-level request is sent over a network.

Figure 19: Host access to storage

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Direct-Attached Storage (DAS):
DAS is an architecture in which storage is connected directly to the hosts.
The internal disk drive of a host and the directly-connected external storage array are some
examples of DAS.
Based on the location of the storage device with respect to the host DAS is classified into 2 types
Internal DAS: In internal DAS architectures, the storage device is internally connected to the
host by a serial or parallel bus.
Imitation:
 The physical bus has distance limitations and can be sustained only over a shorter distance
for high speed connectivity.
 Most internal buses can support only a limited number of devices.
 They occupy a large amount of space inside the host, making maintenance of other
components difficult.
External DAS:
The host connects directly to the external storage device, and data is accessed at the block level.
Advantage: Compared to internal DAS, an external DAS overcomes the distance and device
count limitations and provides centralized management of storage devices.

Figure 20: Internal and external DAS architecture

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DAS Benefits and Limitations:
Advantages:
1. DAS requires a relatively lower initial investment than storage networking architectures.
2. The DAS configuration is simple and can be deployed easily and rapidly.
3. The setup is managed using host-based tools, such as the host OS, which makes storage
management tasks easy for small environments. DAS has a simple architecture.
4. It requires fewer management tasks and less hardware and software elements to set up and
operate.
Disadvantages:
1. DAS does not scale well.
2. A storage array has a limited number of ports, which restricts the number of hosts that can
directly connect to the storage.
3. When capacities are reached, the service availability may be compromised.
4. DAS does not make optimal use of resources due to its limited capability to share front-end
ports.
5. In DAS environments, unused resources cannot be easily reallocated.

Storage Design Based on Application:

The I/O size, I/O characteristics, and the number of I/Os generated by the application at peak
workload are other factors that affect disk performance, I/O response time, and design of storage
systems. The I/O block size depends on the fi le system and the database on which the
application is built.
The disk service time (TS) for an I/O is a key measure of disk performance;
TS, along with disk utilization rate (U), determines the I/O response time for an application. As
discussed earlier in this chapter, the total disk service time (TS) is the sum of the seek time (T),
rotational latency (L), and internal transfer time (X):
TS = T + L + X

Consider an example with the following specifications provided for a disk:

 The average seek time is 5 ms in a random I/O environment; therefore, T = 5 ms.
 Disk rotation speed of 15,000 revolutions per minute or 250 revolutions per second — from
which rotational latency (L) can be determined, which is one-half of the time taken for a full
rotation or L = (0.5/250 rps expressed in ms).

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 40 MB/s internal data transfer rate, from which the internal transfer time (X) is derived based
on the block size of the I/O — for example, an I/O with a block size of 32 KB; therefore X =
32 KB/40 MB.
Consequently, the time taken by the I/O controller to serve an I/O of block size 32 KB is
(TS) = 5 ms + (0.5/250) + 32 KB/40 MB = 7.8 ms.
Therefore, the maximum number of I/Os serviced per second or IOPS is
(1/TS) = 1/(7.8 × 10-3) = 128 IOPS.
Following tables shows the maximum IOPS that can be serviced for different block sizes using
the previous disk specifications.

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