Write and Read Request Processing

Module 13 Data ONTAP 7.3 Fundamentals

Module Objectives
By the end of this module, you should be able to: Describe how data is written from and read to a WAFL file system on a volume Describe the WAFL file system, including consistency points, RAID management, and storage levels Describe how RAID is used to protect disk data Describe how the WAFL file system processes write and read requests

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Data ONTAP Simplified

Client

Data ONTAP

Client

Network

Network

Protocols

WAFL

RAID

Storage

Client

Client

Physical Memory
Client

NVRAM

Disks

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Write Requests

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Write Requests
Write requests are received by Data ONTAP through multiple interface protocols:
CIFS NFS FCP iSCSI HTTP WebDAV

Write requests are buffered into:

System memory NVRAM
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Write Request Data Flow: Write Buffer

Network

Network Stack
RS-232

Protocols
Memory Buffer
SAN Service

NVLOG NVLOG NVLOG NVLOG NVLOG NVRAM Full

N V R A M

SAN Host HBA

NFS Service

WAFL

UNIX Client

NIC

CIFS Service

RAID

Windows Client

Storage

2008 NetApp. All rights reserved.

Consistency Point
A completely self-consistent image of the file system. Although dynamic, if the file system were frozen momentarily to capture its structurethat is a consistency point A consistency point occurs when designated data is written to a disk and a new root inode is determined A consistency point occurs for multiple reasons, including the following:
One bank of the NVRAM card is full 10 seconds have elapsed
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Consistency Point (Cont.)

During a consistency point, Data ONTAP flushes writes to disk
Always writes to new data blocks The volume is always consistent on disk

When Data ONTAP flushes memory to disk:

It updates the file system atomically, meaning that the entire write must be completed or the entire write is rolled back This includes all metadata After checking, the NVRAM is cleared

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Write Request Data Flow: WAFL to RAID

Network

Network Stack
RS-232

Protocols
Memory Buffer
SAN Service

NVLOG NVLOG NVLOG NVLOG NVLOG

N V R A M

NVRAM Full
SAN Host HBA NFS Service

WAFL

UNIX Client

NIC

CIFS Service

RAID

Windows Client

Storage

2008 NetApp. All rights reserved.

Consistency Point: WAFL to RAID

The RAID layer calculates the parity of the data:
To protect it from one or more disk failures To protect stripes of data

If a data disk fails, the missing information can be calculated from parity The storage system can be configured as either:
RAID 4Allows one disk failure in the RAID group RAID-DPAllows up to two disk failures in the RAID group
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Write Request Data Flow: RAID to Storage

Network

Network Stack
RS-232

Protocols
Memory Buffer
SAN Service

NVLOG NVLOG NVLOG NVLOG NVLOG

N V R A M

NVRAM Full
SAN Host HBA NFS Service

WAFL

UNIX Client

NIC

CIFS Service

RAID 4k Storage

Windows Client

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11

Consistency Point: RAID to Storage

Storage layer commits the data and parity to the physical disks Two atomic checksums are calculated to verify that the data is written consistently on the disks The root inode is updated to point to the new file inodes on the disk The NVRAM is flushed and made available The consistency point now is complete

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Write Request Data Flow: Storage Writes

Network

Network Stack
RS-232

Protocols
Memory Buffer
SAN Service

NVLOG NVLOG NVLOG NVLOG NVLOG

N V R A M

NVRAM Full
SAN Host HBA NFS Service

WAFL

UNIX Client

NIC

CIFS Service

RAID

Windows Client

Storage

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13

NVRAM
Data ONTAP writes from system memory
NVRAM is never used for normal write operations NVRAM is backed up with a battery

If a system failure occurs before the completion of a consistency point, the data is written from NVRAM when the system is brought back online (or by the partner machine in an active-active environment)

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Read Requests

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15

Read Requests
Every time a read request is received, WAFL does one of the following:
Reads the data from the system memory, also known as cache Reads the data from the disks

The cache is populated by:

Data recently written to disk Data recently read from disk

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16

Read Request Data Flow: Cache

Network

Network Stack
RS-232

Protocols
Memory Buffer
SAN Service

NVLOG NVLOG NVLOG NVLOG NVLOG

N V R A M

NVRAM Full
SAN Host HBA NFS Service

WAFL Cache RAID

UNIX Client

NIC

CIFS Service

Windows Client

Storage

2008 NetApp. All rights reserved.

17

Read Request Data Flow: Read from Disk

Network

Network Stack
RS-232

Protocols
Memory Buffer
SAN Service

NVLOG NVLOG NVLOG NVLOG NVLOG

N V R A M

NVRAM Full
SAN Host HBA NFS Service

WAFL Cache RAID

UNIX Client

NIC

CIFS Service

Windows Client

Storage

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18

Module Summary
In this module, you should have learned to: WAFL plans and manages storage RAID protects data The storage layer manages data transfer to and from disk

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Exercise
Module 13: Write and Read Request Processing Estimated Time: 10 minutes

Answers
Module 13: Write and Read Request Processing

Check Your Understanding

What is a consistency point?
A completely self-consistent image of the entire file system

What is the purpose of RAID?

To protect dataRAID striping is the method used to protect disk data by which a parity value is calculated across the disks in 4-Kb blocks

What is the storage layer?

Handles the I/Os to disk and checks for disk failures

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