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02 NFS

The document discusses distributed file systems and the architecture of Sun's Network File System (NFS). NFS allows clients to access files stored on a remote server in a transparent way using remote procedure calls. It implements a file system model similar to UNIX with operations like read, write, and delete.

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Annapurna Rathod
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22 views9 pages

02 NFS

The document discusses distributed file systems and the architecture of Sun's Network File System (NFS). NFS allows clients to access files stored on a remote server in a transparent way using remote procedure calls. It implements a file system model similar to UNIX with operations like read, write, and delete.

Uploaded by

Annapurna Rathod
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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➢Distributed file systems form the basis for many distributed applications.

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

➢ Most systems are built following a traditional client-server


architecture.
➢ One or more machines (file servers) manage the file system.
➢ Files are stored on disks at the servers
➢ Requests for file operations are made from clients to the
servers.
➢ Client-server systems centralize storage and management; P2P
systems decentralize it.
Sun’s Network File System
• Sun’s NFS for many years was the most widely used distributed file system.
– NFSv3: version three, used for many years
– NFSv4: introduced in 2003
• Version 4 made significant changes.

• NFS comes with a communication protocol that allows clients to access the
files stored on a server.

• Originally UNIX based; now available for most operating systems


➢ In the model, underlying NFS and similar systems, is that of a remote file service
✓clients are offered transparent access to a file system that is
managed by a remote server.

✓clients are normally unaware of the actual location of files

✓they are offered an interface to a file system that is similar


to the interface offered by a conventional local file system

✓This model is therefore also referred to as the remote access model. It is shown in Fig.
➢ In the upload/download model a client accesses a file locally

➢ After having downloaded it from the server, as shown in Fig.

➢When the client is finished with the file, it is uploaded back to the
server again so that it can be used by another client.
➢ Example the Internet's FTP service
NFS - System Architecture
➢ Virtual File System (VFS) acts as an interface between the operating system’s system call
layer and all file systems on a node.

➢ The calls go to the VFS layer, which passes them either to a local file system or to the
NFS client.

➢ VFS is used today on virtually all operating systems as the interface to different local and
distributed file systems.
NFS, for UNIX system, is generally implemented following the layered architecture shown in
Fig.

The basic NFS arch. For Unix system


➢NFS Client/Server Communication

➢ Client process issues file system request via system call to VFS

➢ NFS client communicates with the server using RPCs


➢ File system operations are implemented as remote procedure calls.

➢ At the server: an RPC server stub receives the request, “un-marshalls” the
parameters & passes them to the NFS server, which creates a request to the
server’s VFS layer.

➢ The VFS layer performs the operation on the local file system and the results
are passed back to the client.
• NFS implements a file system model that is almost identical to a UNIX
system.
• Implements most file operations that UNIX supports
• Some differences between NFSv3 and NFSv4 are below.

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