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CT320 Storage

CT 320: Network and System Administration

Colorado State University

Computer Science Department

Original slides from Dr. James Walden at Northern Kentucky University.

Topics

1. Disk interfaces
2. Disk components
3. Performance
4. Reliability
5. RAID
6. Adding a disk
7. Logical volumes
8. Filesystems

Disk Interfaces

• SCSI
  • Standard interface for servers
• IDE, EIDE
  • Historical interface for PCs
• SATA
  • Serial ATA standard on PCs
• Fibre Channel
  • High bandwidth, SCSI or ATA
• USB
  • Fast enough for slow devices on PCs

SCSI

• Small Computer Systems Interface
  • Pronunskiation
  • Fast, reliable, expensive
• A bus, not a simple PC to device interface
  • Each device has a target # ranging 0–7 or 0–15.
  • Devices can communicate directly without CPU
• Many versions
  • Original: SCSI-1 (1979) — 5MB/s
  • Current: SCSI-3 (2003) — 640MB/s
• Serial Attached SCSI (SAS)
  • Up to 128 devices
  • Up to 750 MB/s full duplex

IDE

• Integrated Drive Electronics / AT attachment
  • Slower, less reliable, cheap
  • Only allows 2 devices per interface
  • ATAPI standard added removable devices
• Many versions
  • Original: IDE / ATA (1984) — 16.7 MB/s
  • Current: Ultra-ATA/167 (2010) — 167MB/s
• Serial ATA
  • Up to 128 devices
  • Original: SATA Revision 1.0 — 150 MB/s
  • Current: SATA Revision 3.0 — 600 MB/s

SATA vs. SCSI

• SCSI offers better performance/scale
  • Faster bus
  • Faster hard drives (up to 15,000rpm)
  • Lower CPU usage
  • Better handling of multiple requests
• SATA often best for workstations
• Convergence
  • SATA2 and SAS converging on a single standard

Hard Drive Components

• Actuator
  • Moves arm across disk to read/write data.
  • Arm has multiple read/write heads (often 2/platter.)
• Spindle Motor
  • Spins platters ~7200 rpm
  • Speed determines disk latency

Hard Drive Components

• Platters
  • Rigid substrate material
  • Thin magnetic material coating stores data
  • Coating type determines density: 1.34 Tbit/in² in 2015
• Cache
  • hard disk: 8–256MB cache, SSD: 4GB cache
  • Reliability: write-through vs. write-back
    • Write-through: write to both cache & disk
    • Write-back (alias write-behind): write to cache, posting to disk later, as needed

Disk Information: hdparm

    # hdparm -i /dev/sda1

    /dev/sda1:

     Model=Hitachi HTS543216L9A300, FwRev=FB2OC40C, SerialNo=081107FB2232LCHTGKLA
     Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec Fixed DTR>10Mbs }
     RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=4
     BuffType=DualPortCache, BuffSize=7114kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=16
     CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=312581808
     IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
     PIO modes:  pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
     DMA modes:  mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
     UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5 *udma6
     AdvancedPM=yes: mode=0x80 (128) WriteCache=enabled
     Drive conforms to: unknown:  ATA/ATAPI-2,3,4,5,6,7

     * signifies the current active mode

Disk Performance

• Seek Time
  • Time to move head to desired track (~9 ms)
• Rotational Delay
  • Time until head over desired block (8ms for 7200 rpm)
• Latency
  • Seek Time + Rotational Delay
• Throughput
  • Data transfer rate (~1Gb/s)
  • Affected by both rotational speed & data density

Latency vs. Throughput

• Which is more important?
  • Depends on the type of application
• Sequential access (Throughput)
  • Multimedia on a single workstation
• Random access (Latency)
  • Content on most web servers
• How to improve performance
  • Faster disks
  • Disk Caching
  • More spindles (disks)
  • More disk controllers

Disk Performance: hdparm

    # hdparm -tT /dev/sda1

    /dev/sda1:
     Timing cached reads:   1256 MB in  2.00 seconds = 627.87 MB/sec
     Timing buffered disk reads: 172 MB in  3.02 seconds =  57.00 MB/sec

Reliability

• MTBF
  • Mean Time Between Failure (>100,000 hours)
• Real failure curves
  • Early phase: high failure rate from defects
  • Constant failure rate phase: MTBF valid
  • Wearout phase: high failure rate from wear
• Failures more likely on traumatic events
  • Power on/off
• Systems often wear out before MTBF
  • However, disk drives still crash!

RAID

• Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks
  Redundant Array of Independent Disks
• Can be implemented in hardware or software.
• Hardware RAID controllers:
  • Supports caching
  • Higher capacity
  • Higher reliability
  • Better throughput

RAID Levels

• RAID 0: Striped evenly for performance
  • MTBF = (average MTBF)/# disks
• JBOD: Concatenated for capacity
  • Or does it mean no RAIDing at all?
  • Only data on bad disk is lost, no performance effect
• RAID 1: Mirrored for reliability
  • Every write goes to each disk of set
  • Seek time halved as reads split between disks
• RAID 0 + 1: Striped + mirrored
• RAID 5: Striped with parity
  • Block striping, not disk striping
  • Can lose one disk of set without losing data.

Redundancy

Adding a Disk

• Install new hardware
  • Verify disk recognized by BIOS.
• Find the device name:
  • cat /proc/partitions
  • df -h
• Partition: fdisk /dev/sdb or gparted /dev/sdb
• Create filesystem: mkfs -v -t ext4 /dev/sdb1
• Add to /etc/fstab: /dev/sdb1 /proj ext3 defaults 0 2
• Mount all disks: mount -a

When don’t you need a filesystem?

• Swap space

    mkswap -v /dev/sdb1

• Server applications (use their own)
  • Oracle (OCFS)
  • VMWare Server (VMFS)

Logical Volumes

• What are logical volumes?
  • Appear to user as a physical volume.
  • But can span multiple partitions and/or disks.
• Why logical volumes?
  • Aggregate disks for performance/reliability.
  • Grow and shrink logical volumes on the fly.
  • Move logical volumes between physical devices.
  • Replace volumes without interrupting service.

LVM

Logical Volume Manager

LVM Components

• Logical Volume Group (LVG)
  • Set of physical volumes (partitions or disks.)
  • May be divided into logical volumes (LVs.)
• LVs made up of fixed sized logical extents
  • Each LE is 4MB.
  • Physical extents are the same size.

Mapping Modes

• Linear Mapping
  • LVs assigned to continguous areas of PV space.
• Striped Mapping
  • LEs interleaved across PVs to improve performance.

Setting up an LVG and LV

• Initialize physical volumes

    # pvcreate /dev/hda1
    # pvcreate /dev/hdb1

• Initialize a volume group

    vgcreate nku_proj /dev/hda1 /dev/hdb1

Use vgextend to add more PVs later.

• Create logical volumes

    lvcreate -n nku1 --size 100G nku_proj1

• Create filesystem

    mkfs -v -t ext3 /dev/nku_proj/nku1

Extending a LV

• Set absolute size

    lvextend -L120G /dev/nku_proj/nku1

• Or set relative size

    lvextend -L+20G /dev/nku_proj/nku1

• Expand the filesystem without unmounting

    ext2online -v /dev/nku_proj/nku1

• Check size

    df -h

Swap

• Can use swapfile instead of swap partition

    dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=1024k count=512
    mkswap /swapfile

• Enable swap

    swapon /swapfile
    swapon /dev/sda2

• Disable swap

    swapoff /swapfile
    swapoff /dev/sda2

• Check swap resource usage

    cat /proc/swaps

Filesystems

• ext2
  • Old Linux non-fragmenting fast filesystem
  • Can be converted to ext3 by adding a journal:

    tune2fs -j /dev/sda1

• ext3
  • Journaling “eliminates” need for fsck
• ext4
  • Current common Linux filesystem
  • Big files (16TB)
  • Extents (range of contiguous physical blocks)
  • 34-bit seconds + nanosecond timestamps
    • 2038 ≫ y2k

2038

$ perl -wle 'print 0x7fffffff'
2147483647
$ date -d 'january 1, 1970 + 2147483647 seconds'
Tue Jan 19 03:14:07 MST 2038

You probably don’t remember January 1st, 2000, but you sure will remember January 19, 2038.

Other Filesystems

• tmpfs, ramfs: all in memory
• vfat, ntfs: Windows
• exFAT: flash drive (spreads out the work)
• hfs: Mac OS
• procfs: /proc
• cramfs, squashfs: Read-only compressed file systems
• ISO9660: CD-ROM & DVD-ROM disks
• UDF: CD-RW & DVD-RW

Mounting

• To use a filesystem

    # mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
    # df -h /mnt

• Automatic mounting
  • Add entry to /etc/fstab
• Unmount
  • umount /dev/sda1
  • Cannot unmount a volume in use.

fstab

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>

UUID=77f85028-b4c1-4439-be1c-5a3ba7f59dd1  /       ext3  defaults 0 1
LABEL=windows                              /win    vfat  user,rw  0 0
/dev/hdc8                                  /home   ext3  defaults 0 2
/dev/hdc7                                  none    swap  sw       0 0
proc                                       /proc   proc  defaults 0 0

/etc/fstab first field

The first field of an /etc/fstab can be:

• An actual device, e.g., /dev/sda1
  Fails if you add another disk and the order changes.
• UUID=whatever
  Robust, but cryptic. Obtain via blkid.
• LABEL=whatever
  Robust and self-documenting. Obtain via blkid; set via mkfs.type, e2label, fatlabel, etc.
• Ignored for pseudo-filesystems such as proc or tmpfs.

fsck: check + repair fs

• Filesystem corruption sources
  • Power failure
  • System crash
• Types of corruption
  • Unreferenced inodes.
  • Bad superblocks.
  • Unused data blocks not recorded in block maps.
  • Data blocks listed as free that are used in files.
• fsck can fix these and more
  • Asks user to make more complex decisions.
  • Stores unfixable files in lost+found
    • And where is this lost+found, precisely?

Lots of filesystem flavors

$ cd /sbin

$ ls -F mkfs.*
mkfs.cramfs*  mkfs.ext3*  mkfs.fat*    mkfs.msdos@  mkfs.vfat@
mkfs.ext2*    mkfs.ext4*  mkfs.minix*  mkfs.ntfs@   mkfs.xfs*

$ ls -F fsck.*
fsck.cramfs*  fsck.ext3*  fsck.fat*    fsck.msdos@  fsck.vfat@
fsck.ext2*    fsck.ext4*  fsck.minix*  fsck.ntfs@   fsck.xfs*

$ ls -F mount.*
mount.cifs*   mount.glusterfs*	 mount.nfs4@	 mount.ntfs-fuse@
mount.fuse*   mount.lowntfs-3g@  mount.ntfs@	 mount.smb3@
mount.fuse3*  mount.nfs*	 mount.ntfs-3g@

References

• Aeleen Frisch, Essential System Administration, 3rd edition, O’Reilly, 2002.
• Charles M. Kozierok, “Reference Guide—Hard Disk Drives,” http://www.pcguide.com/ref/hdd/, 2005.
• A.J. Lewis, LVM HOWTO, https://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/LVM-HOWTO/index.html, 2005.
• H. Mauelson and M. O’Keefe, “The Linux Logical Volume Manager,” Red Hat Magazine, https://www.redhat.com/magazine/009jul05/features/lvm2/, July 2005.
• Octane, “SCSI Technology Primer,” http://arstechnica.com/paedia/s/scsi-1.html, 2002.
• RedHat, RHEL4 System Administration Guide, https://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-4-Manual/sysadmin-guide/, 2005.