Cloud Computing Storage Methods and Design - ITECH 2201

This workbook for ITECH 2201 Cloud Computing covers storage methods and design. It includes information on memory virtualization, RAID, striping, mirroring, parity, ISS, SAN, NAS, FCoE, Virtual SAN, IP SAN protocols, FibreChannel over IP, and unified storage. The exercises cover designing a storage solution for a new application and understanding the advantages of FCoE over traditional connections.

ITECH 2201 Cloud Computing
School of Science, Information Technology & Engineering
Workbook for Week 7 (Storage)
Please note: All the efforts were taken to ensure the given web links are accessible.
However, if they are broken – please use any appropriate video/article and refer
them in your answer
Part A (3 Marks)
Exercise 1: Storage Methods (1 mark)
From your lecture and also based on the below given video link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sXkTSiAe-A
Write a paragraph about memory virtualization.
________________________________________________________________
Memory virtualization allows the system serves to share a memory space which takes up a
bit of computing resource to create a separate system for m execution (Earnshaw, 2014). The
memory space is often run at the application level and the memory is assigned to an
application which executes itself in the shared memory.
Watch the below mentioned YouTube link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTcxRObq738
Based on the video answer the following questions:
What is RAID 0?
In this method a file is broken up and the information is spread across all the physical
drives which are assigned in the RAID group. It is also known a disk striping is used to
increase the system performance. It enhances the reading and writing speed of the da as the
data is shared across multiple hard drives.
Describe Striping, Mirroring and Parity.
Disk striping involves the division of an information into separate blocks of data which is
spread over a number of storage devices such as solid state and hard disks (Umbehocker,
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2014). Through this technique, a single large disk can be created from multiple small hard
disks.
In data mirroring, the maintenance and creation of redundant data in a data base is done.
The main aim is to decrease data corruption by maintaining a continuous availability of data
and decreasing the downtime. It helps to prevent the system from getting partially
compromised.
Parity drive is also referred to a physical drive which is used for fault tolerance in an array
designed for RAID. Because of fast data striping, the parity drive enables the system to get
fault tolerant.
Exercise 2: Storage Design (2 marks)
Summarize storage repository design based on the following video link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVQH7C3nulY
________________________________________________________________ In the
provided video, a LUN system on a storage repository has been connected to a number of
servers due to the framework of OCFS2. Hence, a number of servers must stay within the
group and at least one server must be present in the environment is also included as
mentioned. In this criteria, the local server storage is also included as it is found in LUNs.
Below YouTube link describes the Intelligent Storage System
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=raTIRsMi7zk
Based on the watched video answer the following questions:
What is ISS?
Intelligent storage systems or ISS refers to the arrays that are RAID featured and has high
input and output capabilities due to their optimization (Wookey, Low & Parry-Barwick, 2013).
An operating systems control the arrays in several factors such as storage resource
utilization, allocation and management.
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What are the 4 main components of the ISS?
________________________________________________________________ ISS has four
main components. The first one is called as the front end. Itb isresent between the storage
and the host. The system has two sections- the front end controller and the front end ports.
The front end ports allows the system to enable proper synchronization of information.
The next section is cache. IT is a semiconductor memory whIch has high input and output
capabiites and s used for reducing the time between information exchange.
The thrd part is the backend which consists of back end controllers and ports. The daa is sent
to th back end where it is stored for reaching its destination.
The fourth component is physical circles.
How cache works in ISS?
In ISS, Cache works by streamlining the information, distributing and monitoring it forn
handling the information faster. To meet the input and output requests of the applcations, the
usually stores a lot of memory to keep running and uses lo of complex calcultaions.
Storage Area Network (SAN) and Network Attached Storage (NAS) are widely
used concepts in data storage arena. The following YouTube video links gives
detailed description of these concepts:
− http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csdJFazj3h0
− http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdf6CvGQZrk
− https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxdfGcynfJ0
− https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RsLUTJ_Qtk
Based on the watched videos answer the following questions:
Describe NAS and SAN briefly using diagrams?
SAN helps the system to easily access storage by connecting it to a fabric and allowoingo
other servers to check the storage. NAS is used for serving remote files. Using remote
controls such as NFS and CIFS, the system can direct a file acces to another device.
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What are the advantages of SAN over NAS?
The advanatages of SAN over NAS is that SAN is a network of storage devices that work as
one whereas NAS consists of one system that shares its own resources over the system
(Monostori, 2014).
What are two common NAS file sharing protocols? How they are different from
each other?
Two comon protocols are AFP and NFS. NFS allow the system to alternaley refresh and
restore data on a remote computer. AFP is a protol for recording and shairng information for
Macs.
Part B (3 Marks)
Exercise 3: Storage Design (1 Mark)
Design Storage Solution for New Application
Scenario
An organization is deploying a new business application in their environment.
The new application requires 1TB of storage space for business and application
data. During peak workload, application is expected to generate 4900 IOPS (I/O
per second) with typical I/O data block size of 4KB.
The vendor available disk drive option is 15,000 rpm drive with 100 GB capacity.
Other specifications of the drives are:
Average Seek time = 5 millisecond and data transfer rate = 40 MB/sec.
You are required to calculate the required number of disk drives that can meet
both capacity and performance requirements of an application.
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Hint: In order to calculate the IOPS from average seek time, data transfer rate,
disk rpm and data block size refer slide 28 in week 6 lecture slide. Once you
have IOPS, refer slide 29 in week 6 to calculate the required number of disks.
Exercise 4: Storage Evolution (2 Marks)
Watch the following videos for Fiber Channel over Ethernet and answer the
questions that follow:
− http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSFyf-rmjA8
− http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCfJCzfNLrw
What is FCoE and why we need FCoE?
FCoE or fiber channel ver ibternet is aprotol that is used to faciltate fiber channel
comuncaition over a articularly designed ethernet It accomodates the solitary Links and
makes it easier for them to traverse over the ethernet medium (Larger, Penkovsky &
Maistrenko, 2013). It is needed as it allows companes tyto isolate the ethernet activity from
the fibre channel.
In your opinion how FCoE is cost effective than traditional connection – give brief
explanation.
The switches provide an idle state of 10 microsecond in connector to connector links than the
3 seconds in port to port links. Hence, FCoE is cost effective than conventional connections.
You have read and answered about SAN in part A – based on your
understanding and with some research effort answers the following questions:
What is a Virtual SAN?
Virtual SAN is a particular storage network that enable servers of various sources to access
different pools of data. FCIP helps to interface the switch based on fibre channels to IP
systems and acts a medium between the switch data and FC control (Arora,Parashar &
Transforming, 2013).
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What is IP SAN protocols and FibreChannel over IP (FCIP)?
An IP SAN is a dedicated storage area network (SAN) that allows multiple servers to access
pools of shared block storage devices using storage protocols that depend on the Internet
Engineering Taskforce standard Internet Protocol suite.
Watch the below video about Introduction to Object-based and Unified Storage
and:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kl9X6mzEWO4
Choose the correct answer from the following questions:
What is an advantage of a flat address space over a hierarchical address
space?
a. Highly scalable with minimal impact on performance
b. Provides access to data, based on retention policies
c. Provides access to block, file, and object with same interface
d. Consumes less bandwidth on network while accessing data
What is a role of metadata service in an OSD node?
a. Responsible for storing data in the form of objects
b. Stores unique IDs generated for objects
c. Stores both objects and objects IDs
d. Controls functioning of storage devices
What is used to generate an object ID in a CAS system?
a. File metadata
b. Source and destination address
c. Binary representation of data
d. File system type and ownership
What accurately describes block I/O access in a unified storage?
a. I/O traverse NAS head and storage controller to disk
b. I/O traverse OSD node and storage controller to disk
c. I/O traverse storage controller to disk
d. I/O is directly sent to the disk
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What accurately describes unified storage?
a. Provides block, file, and object-based access within one platform
b. Provides block and file storage access using objects
c. Supports block and file access using flat address space
d. Specialized storage device purposely built for archiving
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