Download A CASE FOR REDUNDANT ARRAYS OF INEXPENSIVE DISKS

A COST-EFFECTIVE
HIGH-BANDWIDTH
STORAGE ARCHITECTURE
G.A. Gibson, D. F. Nagle, K. Amiri,
J. Butler, F.W. Chang, H. Gobioff,
C. Hardin, E. Riedel , D. Rochberg,
J. Zelenka
Carnegie-Mellon U.
ASPLOS ‘98
Paper highlights
• Introduces Network-Attached Secure Disk
architecture characterized by:
– Direct transfers to clients
– Secure interfaces via cryptographical support
– Asynchronous non-critical path oversight
(client can perform most operations us without
synchronous appeals to file manager)
– Variably-sized data objects
Motivation
• High demand for storage bandwidth caused by
– Multimedia applications
– Data intensive applications such as data
mining
• Want to achieve scalable bandwidth
– Bandwidth that grows linearly with number of
storage devices and client processors
Storage architecture overview (I)
1. Local file system :
• Sole solution for stand-alone computers
Computer
Disk
Storage architecture overview (II)
2. Distributed FS:
• Provides basic file services
• If server processes data for clients, we have
a Distributed Database System
• Server machine could become bottleneck
when the number of drives increases
Client
Server
Disk
Storage architecture overview (III)
3. Distributed FS with RAID Controller :
• Improves reliability but adds one more layer
Client
Server
K
Disk
Storage architecture overview (IV)
4. Distributed FS with DMA:
• Lets disks and clients exchange data w/o
server intervention
Client
Server
Bulk data transfers
K
Disk
Storage architecture overview (V)
5. Network-Attached Secure Disk:
• Disk takes over several of the functions of
the server
Client
Server
R/W
NASD
Storage architecture overview (VI)
6. Network-Attached Secure Disk with Cheops
(their own file striping system)
Client
Server
R/W
K
NASD
Related works
• Disk-like network attached storage (Cambridge’s
Universal File System, 1980)
• Virtual volumes and virtual disks (mid 90’s)
• Derived Virtual Devices (ISI’s Netstation, 1996)
• Capabilities (1966)
Enabling technology (I)
• I/O-bound applications:
multimedia, data mining of retail transactions
• New drive attachment technologies:
tendency to encapsulate drive communication
over a serial switched packet-based SAN
• Excess of on-drive transistors:
can now have more intelligent drives
Enabling technology (II)
• Convergence of peripheral and interprocessor
networks:
– Clusters of workstations use Internet protocols
• Not special-purpose interconnects
• Cost-ineffective storage servers:
– Server now much more expensive that the
disks it manages
Network-Attached Secure Disks
• Modify storage devices to transfer data
directly to clients
– Eliminate server bottleneck
• Present a flat-name space of variable length
objects
– Simple yet flexible
• Do not provide full file system functionality
– Other FS tasks left to file manager
One way to look at NASD
• Conventional architectures divide file system
tasks between
– A metadata service (directories and i-nodes)
– A block storage service
• The authors propose to
– Let storage units handle block allocation
– Let them communicate directly with clients
Network-Attached Secure Disks
• Architecture characterized by:
– Direct transfers to clients
– Secure interfaces via cryptographic support
– Asynchronous non-critical path oversight
• Client can perform most operations without
synchronous calls to file manager
– Variable length objects
A NASD System
NASD interface (I)
• Less than 20 requests including:
– Read and write object data
– Read and write object attributes
– Create and remove object
– Create, resize, and remove partition
– Construct a copy-on-write object version
– Set security key
NASD interface (II)
• Resizable partitions allow capacity quotas to be
managed by a drive administrator
• Objects with well-known names and structures
allow configuration and bootstrap of drives and
partitions.
– Also enable file systems to find a fixed starting
point for an object hierarchy and a complete
list of allocated object names
NASD interface (III)
• Object attributes
– Provide timestamps, size, …
– Allow capacity to be reserved and objects to
be linked for clustering
– Include an uninterpreted block of attribute
space
• Can be used by any application
NASD interface (IV)
•
NASD security is based on cryptographic
capabilities
– Drive checks that client has proivate apt of
capability authorizing operation
• Data integrity and privacy ensured through
encryption
– Costly but expected to be implemented on
special hardware
Prototype implementation (I)
• Working prototype of the NASD drive software
runs as a kernel module in Digital UNIX
• Each NASD prototype drive runs on a
DECAlpha3000/400 (133MHz, 64MB) with two
disks attached by two 5MB/s SCSI busses
• Performance of this old machine is similar to that
expected from future drive controllers
Prototype implementation (II)
• Two drives managed by a software striping
driver approximate the rates expected from more
modern drives
• NASD object system implements its own internal
object access, cache, and disk space
management
• Prototype uses DCE RPC over UDP/IP for
communication
– Severely limited prototype performance
File Systems for NASD (I)
• Implemented NFS and AFS on top of simulated
NASDs
• Files and directories stored as objects
• NFS implementation was straightforward
– Can store additional file attributes in
uninterpreted block of attribute space
– Can piggyback capabilities on file manager’s
response to lookup requests
File Systems for NASD (II)
• AFS implementation required more thought
– New RPC calls were added to obtain and
relinquish capabilities
– File manager does not know when an actual
write takes place
• Replaced callbacks by leases
• NASD-NFS and NFS had benchmark times
“within 5% of each other”
File Systems for NASD (III)
• Also implemented a simple parallel file system
not discussed in class
Conclusions
• NASD
– Supports direct device-to-client operation
– Provides secure interfaces
– Lets file managers provide clients with
capabilities that allow them to interact directly
with the devices (asynchronous oversight)
– Lets devices serve variable-length objects
with additional attribures