MODULE VII

DISTRIBUTED FILE
SYSTEMS
 Introduction
File systems were originally developed for centralized computer systems and
desktop computers as an operating system facility providing a
convenient programming interface to disk storage.

They subsequently acquired features such as access-control and file-locking

mechanisms that made them useful for the sharing of data and
programs.

Distributed file systems support the sharing of information in the form of files
and hardware resources in the form of persistent storage throughout an
intranet.

A well designed file service provides access to files stored at a server with
performance and reliability similar to, and in some cases better than,
files stored on local disks.
ARCHITECTURE

• Sharing data is fundamental to distributed systems

• Distributed file systems allow multiple processes to share data over long
periods of time in a secure and reliable way.

CLIENT-SERVER SRCHITECTURES

Network File System (NFS) is a distributed file system protocol originally

developed by Sun Microsystems (Sun) in 1984, allowing a user on a client
computer to access files over a computer network much like local storage
is accessed

Allowing a heterogeneous collection of processes, possibly running on different

operating systems and machines, to share a common file system
 Client-Server Architectures (1)

Figure (a) The remote access model. (b) The upload/download model.
 NFS Architecture

Figure The basic NFS architecture for UNIX systems.

File System Model (1)

Figure: An incomplete list of file system

operations supported by NFS.
File System Model (2)

Figure: An incomplete list of file system

operations supported by NFS.
Cluster-Based Distributed File Systems (1)

Figure: The difference between (a) distributing whole files

across several servers and
(b) striping files for parallel access.
Cluster-Based Distributed File Systems (2)

Figure: The organization of a Google cluster of servers.

 Process
File system processes can be stateless or stateful

NFS v2/v3 did not require that servers maintained any client state.

The primary advantage of the stateless approach is simplicity – no

recovery phase

NFS v4 is expected to also work across wide-area networks.

This requires that clients can make effective use of caches, in tum
requiring an efficient cache consistency protocol.
Such protocols often work best in collaboration with a server that
maintains some information on files as used by its clients
 Remote Procedure Calls in NFS

Figure: (a) Reading data from a file in NFS version 3. (b) Reading
data using a compound procedure in version 4.
The RPC2 Subsystem (1)

Figure: Side effects in Coda’s RPC2 system.

 The RPC2 Subsystem (2)

Figure. (a) Sending an invalidation message one at a time. (b)

Sending invalidation messages in parallel.
 REFERENCES

Andrew S Tanenbaum and Maarten Van Steen, “Distributed

Systems – Principles and Paradigms”, Second Edition,
Pearson Prentice Hall, 2006.