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Storage Area Network: Lecturer Notes
Storage Area Network: Lecturer Notes
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Introduction
Designing storage area networks requires an understanding of the upper-layer
applications that depend on storage resources as well as the storage
architectures available to satisfy them.
The composition of that network and the type of storage data traversing it vary
from one architecture to another.
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Shared Storage Architectures
Storage Area Networks (SAN)
Fibre Channel
Gigabit Ethernet
Network-Attached Storage (NAS)
Ethernet (Fast Ethernet or Gigabit Ethernet)
Applications
Online Transaction
Mining Database
Web services
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Fig 1: The SNIA(Storage Networking Industry Association) Shared Storage Model
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overview
The storage domain subdivides into three main categories:
File/record subsystem :
The file/record subsystem is the interface between upper-layer applications
and the storage resources.
SQL Server and Oracle
Block subsystem :
Data Identified with specific records or files, the blocks themselves are
written to or read from physical storage.
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Fig 2: Direct-attached storage in the SNIA Shared Storage Model
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The Shared Storage Model is possible to insert server and storage components to
clearly differentiate between direct-attached, SAN, and NAS configurations.
In Direct attached storage a server with logical volume management (LVM) and
software RAID (redundant array of independent disks) running on the host system.
As the server receives information from the application that must be written to disk,
the software RAID stripes blocks of data across multiple disks in the block layer.
Software RAID executes the mechanics to striping blocks of data to multiple disks.
The logical volume manager (LVM) presents a coherent image of the database /
data to the upper-layer application in the form of volume (for example, E: drive),
directories, and subdirectories.
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Fig 3: Changing the relationship between servers and storage via a SAN
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SANs alter the relationship between servers and storage targets, Instead of
being bound by direct parallel SCSI cabling, servers and storage are now
joined through a peer-to-peer network.
The SAN infrastructure can be Fibre Channel, Gigabit Ethernet, or, with the
appropriate IP storage switches, both.
To accurately represent actual customer deployments, Fig 3 model could also
depict multiple SANs servicing various upper layer applications and
providing attachment to common or distinct storage resources.
NAS devices serve up files and so naturally include the block aggregation
functions required to put data to disk.
NAS device is essentially a file server with its own storage resources.
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Example: Carlson Companies
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Storage and Networking Concepts
Storage and networking have evolved as two distinct technologies.
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Networking in front of the Server
The front of the server faces outward toward the user community via a
network interface.
As user data is passed down by an application for transmission across the
network, it is wrapped in successive envelopes of information, roughly
corresponding to the layers represented in some specific manner.
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Layer Layer Description
Number Name
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The most prevalent LAN transport is Ethernet over twisted-pair copper wiring.
Ethernet transmission rates are :
10Mbps (megabits per second)
100Mbps (also known as Fast Ethernet)
1,000Mbps or 1Gbps (Gigabit Ethernet)
10Mbps and 100Mbps speeds are most commonly used for attachment of
individual PCs or workstations, with effective data rates of slightly more
than 1MBps (megabytes per second) and 12MBps, respectively.
If you restrict the network to a single speed, bottlenecks will occur as more
users attempt to access shared resources.
The core itself can be built with one or more 10Gb interswitch links to
provide a high-performance LAN backbone.
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SCSI bus Architecture
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The SCSI protocol was developed to provide efficient transport of data
between computers and peripheral devices such as disks, printers, scanners,
and other resources.
SCSI sits below the file/record layer in the SNIA Shared Storage Model and
receives requests to send or retrieve blocks of data from a peripheral device.
The responsibility of the SCSI protocol is simply to ensure that the write task is
completed and to report success to the operating system, no matter how the
physical storage is configured.
The SCSI-3 application client resides in the host and represents the upper-
layer application, file system, and operating system I/O requests.
The SCSI-3 device server sits in the target device, responding to requests.
The client/server, requests and responses are exchanged across some form of
underlying transport, which is governed by the appropriate SCSI-3 service
delivery protocol for that transport.
FCP protocol or iSCSI for gigabit serial links.
The SCSI-3 commands that serve I/O requests from the host application are
differentiated from the SCSI-3 transport protocols that actually move data via
the service delivery subsystem.
Reads and writes of data between SCSI initiators and targets are performed
with a series of SCSI commands, delivery requests, delivery actions, and
responses.
A traditional parallel SCSI adapter card may represent a single bus, with that
bus supporting multiple daisy chained disks.
Proper cabling and termination are critical for stable parallel SCSI operation,
and improper termination can cause data corruption or transaction failures.
Parallel SCSI cabling to multiple SCSI host bus adapters installed in the
server (as shown in Fig 8).
In redundant configurations, NAS can also provide highly available, non-
disruptive storage access.
NAS device can rely on parallel SCSI, IDE, or Fibre Channel for storage
connectivity.
NAS vendors is to make their products more appliance-like and to reduce the
overhead of NFS/CIFS protocols over TCP/IP.
The concept of “Appliance"—a device that is simply plugged in to the network and
requires little administration.
NAS technology is the separation of storage from the NAS processor or head,
so that storage capacity can be more easily expanded using SAN techniques
or shared with SAN-attached servers (as shown in fig 10).
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Fig 10 : NAS head with shared SAN storage
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Networking behind the Storage
Storage Area Networks introduce network relationships behind the server.
SANs enable more efficient use of storage resources and lower administrative
costs through storage consolidation.
Replacing the dedicated parallel SCSI cabling bond between servers and
storage with peer-to-peer networking does two things:
Only provides more flexibility in the deployment of storage resources.
Frees storage from the exclusive ownership by a single server.
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Fibre Channel provides both 1Gbps and 2Gbps speeds and so offers an
advantage in raw bandwidth for device Attachment.
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Fibre channel internals
Fibre Channel standards define a multilayered architecture for moving data
across the network.
Fibre Channel layers fall within the lower levels of the OSI model and can be
considered a link layer network
FC-1 and FC-0—Focus on the actual transport of data across the network.
FC-1 :- Facilities for encoding & decoding data for shipment at gigabit speeds
and defines the command structure for accessing the media.
FC-0:- Establishes standards for various media types, allowable lengths, and
signaling.
Fibre Channel's layered architecture is implemented on three transport
topologies:
Point-to-point: -
A dedicated connection between two devices only, typically a server
and a disk.
Arbitrated loop: -
A shared medium, similar to Token Ring or Fiber Distributed Data
Interface (FDDI), and employs a special superset of commands to control
access to the medium by multiple devices.
Switched fabric: -
one or more switches providing higher-level services and switched
bandwidth of 100MBps or 200MBps (200MBps and 400MBps full duplex)
per port.
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Data Encoding
Proper transmission and reception of a digital bit stream would not be
possible if raw bytes of data were simply herded into a shift register and
shoved one bit at a time onto the transport.
Each of the two 10-bit products of this conversion should have no more than
six total 1's or 0's, and about half will have an equal number of 1's and 0's.
The 10-bit characters with more 1's than 0's have positive disparity.
With more 0's than 1's have negative disparity.
Balance of 1's and 0's results in neutral disparity.
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Fibre Channel uses one of these nondata characters as a special command
character. Known as the K28.5 command character.
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Ordered Sets
To move data across the network, Fibre Channel uses a concise command
syntax referred to as ordered sets.
Ordered sets fall into three general categories: start of frame, end of frame,
and primitive signals.
One subset is used to indicate the start and end of data frames and the class of
service used to ship the frame.
The start of frame (SOF) delimiter K28.5 D21.5 D22.2 D22.2, for example,
is used in a frame header to initiate a connectionless level of service.
An end of frame (EOF) ordered set—for example, K28.5 D21.4 D21.6
D21.6—would indicate that the transmission of this frame was complete.
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Fibre Channel defines 11 different types of SOF ordered sets, and 8 EOF
words.
The specific SOF or EOF used informs the recipient as to what further action
(such as an acknowledgment).
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Framing Protocol
To move data from one Fibre Channel-attached device to another, the data
blocks handed down by the upper-layer protocol of the sender must be
organized into discrete packets for shipment across the transport.
Frames are always prefaced with an ordered set start of frame (SOF)
delimiter.
single 4-byte word that defines the class of service used and specifies
whether the frame is the first in a series or simply one in a series of related
frames.
24-byte frame header contains destination and source addressing, as
well as control fields that indicate the frame's content (control
information or data type) and position within a series of sequential
frames.
Data integrity within the frame is verified with an 32-bit cyclic redundancy
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Classes of Service
To ensure proper data transport, applications may require different levels of
delivery guarantees, bandwidth, and connectivity between communicators.
Fibre Channel standards provide five classes of delivery service.
Class 1 service defines a dedicated connection between two devices.
a file server and a disk array with acknowledgment of frame delivery
Class 2 service does not require a dedicated connection between talking
pairs but it does provide acknowledgment of frame delivery.
Class 3 service is connectionless, but unlike Class 2, there is no notification
of delivery.
Similar to datagram services in LAN topologies (for example, User
Datagram Protocol/Internet Protocol, or UDP/IP).
Class 4 service introduces the concept of virtual circuits to Fibre Channel
architecture.
The switch must maintain and monitor potentially hundreds of virtual
circuits. Ex:- SNMP.
Class 6 service has been defined to provide multicast service with
acknowledged delivery.
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Flow Control
Fibre Channel provides several flow control mechanisms based on a system
of credits.
Credit scheme is based on the number of buffers that an end node maintains
for storing incoming data.
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Naming and Addressing Conventions
The unique identity of participants in a Fibre Channel environment is
maintained through a hierarchy of fixed names and assigned address
identifiers.
Each node has a fixed 8-byte node name assigned by the manufacturer.
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for a range of
addresses.
World-Wide Name (WWN).
The switch maintains a table of the device's WWN and the assigned 24-bit
address in the Simple Name Server (SNS).
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Thank U…~!~
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