Chapter 16 Distributed-File Systems

Background Naming and Transparency Remote File Access Stateful versus Stateless Service File Replication Example Systems

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Background
Distributed file system (DFS) a distributed implementation of the classical time-sharing model of a file system, where multiple users share files and storage resources.
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A DFS manages set of dispersed storage devices Overall storage space managed by a DFS is composed of different, remotely located, smaller storage spaces.

There is usually a correspondence between constituent storage spaces and sets of files.

DFS Structure
Service software entity running on one or more machines and providing a particular type of function to a priori unknown clients. Server service software running on a single machine.
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Client process that can invoke a service using a set of operations that forms its client interface. A client interface for a file service is formed by a set of primitive file operations (create, delete, read, write). Client interface of a DFS should be transparent, i.e., not distinguish between local and remote files.

Naming and Transparency

Naming mapping between logical and physical objects. Multilevel mapping abstraction of a file that hides the details of how and where on the disk the file is actually stored. A transparent DFS hides the location where in the network the file is stored. For a file being replicated in several sites, the mapping returns a set of the locations of this files replicas; both the existence of multiple copies and their location are hidden.
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Naming Structures
Location transparency file name does not reveal the files physical storage location.
File name still denotes a specific, although hidden, set of physical disk blocks. Convenient way to share data. Can expose correspondence between component units and machines.

Location independence file name does not need to be changed when the files physical storage location changes.
Better file abstraction. Promotes sharing the storage space itself. Separates the naming hierarchy form the storage-devices hierarchy.

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Naming Schemes Three Main Approaches

Files named by combination of their host name and local name; guarantees a unique systemwide name. Attach remote directories to local directories, giving the appearance of a coherent directory tree; only previously mounted remote directories can be accessed transparently. Total integration of the component file systems.
A single global name structure spans all the files in the system. If a server is unavailable, some arbitrary set of directories on different machines also becomes unavailable.

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Remote File Access

Reduce network traffic by retaining recently accessed disk blocks in a cache, so that repeated accesses to the same information can be handled locally.
If needed data not already cached, a copy of data is brought from the server to the user. Accesses are performed on the cached copy. Files identified with one master copy residing at the server machine, but copies of (parts of) the file are scattered in different caches. Cache-consistency problem keeping the cached copies consistent with the master file.
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Cache Location Disk vs. Main Memory

Advantages of disk caches

More reliable. Cached data kept on disk are still there during recovery and dont need to be fetched again.

Advantages of main-memory caches:

Permit workstations to be diskless. Data can be accessed more quickly. Performance speedup in bigger memories. Server caches (used to speed up disk I/O) are in main memory regardless of where user caches are located; using main-memory caches on the user machine permits a single caching mechanism for servers and users.

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Cache Update Policy

Write-through write data through to disk as soon as they are placed on any cache. Reliable, but poor performance. Delayed-write modifications written to the cache and then written through to the server later. Write accesses complete quickly; some data may be overwritten before they are written back, and so need never be written at all.
Poor reliability; unwritten data will be lost whenever a user machine crashes. Variation scan cache at regular intervals and flush blocks that have been modified since the last scan. Variation write-on-close, writes data back to the server when the file is closed. Best for files that are open for long periods and frequently modified.

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Consistency
Is locally cached copy of the data consistent with the master copy? Client-initiated approach
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Client initiates a validity check. Server checks whether the local data are consistent with the master copy.

Server-initiated approach
Server records, for each client, the (parts of) files it caches. When server detects a potential inconsistency, it must react.

Comparing Caching and Remote Service

Reduces server load and network traffic. Enhances potential for scalability.

Remote server method handles every remote access across the network; penalty in network traffic, server load, and performance. Total network overhead in transmitting big chunks of data (caching) is lower than a series of responses to specific requests (remote-service).

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In caching, many remote accesses handled efficiently by the local cache; most remote accesses will be served as fast as local ones. Servers are contracted only occasionally in caching (rather than for each access).

Caching and Remote Service (Cont.)

Caching is superior in access patterns with infrequent writes. With frequent writes, substantial overhead incurred to overcome cache-consistency problem. Benefit from caching when execution carried out on machines with either local disks or large main memories. Remote access on diskless, small-memory-capacity machines should be done through remote-service method. In caching, the lower intermachine interface is different form the upper user interface. In remote-service, the intermachine interface mirrors the local user-file-system interface.

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Stateful File Service

Mechanism.
Client opens a file. Server fetches information about the file from its disk, stores it in its memory, and gives the client a connection identifier unique to the client and the open file. Identifier is used for subsequent accesses until the session ends. Server must reclaim the main-memory space used by clients who are no longer active.

Increased performance.
Fewer disk accesses. Stateful server knows if a file was opened for sequential access and can thus read ahead the next blocks.

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Stateless File Server

Avoids state information by making each request selfcontained. Each request identifies the file and position in the file.

No need to establish and terminate a connection by open and close operations.

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Distinctions Between Stateful & Stateless Service

Failure Recovery.
A stateful server loses all its volatile state in a crash.
Restore state by recovery protocol based on a dialog with clients, or abort operations that were underway when the crash occurred. Server needs to be aware of client failures in order to reclaim space allocated to record the state of crashed client processes (orphan detection and elimination).

With stateless server, the effects of server failure sand recovery are almost unnoticeable. A newly reincarnated server can respond to a self-contained request without any difficulty.

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Distinctions (Cont.)
Penalties for using the robust stateless service:
longer request messages slower request processing additional constraints imposed on DFS design

Some environments require stateful service.

A server employing server-initiated cache validation cannot provide stateless service, since it maintains a record of which files are cached by which clients. UNIX use of file descriptors and implicit offsets is inherently stateful; servers must maintain tables to map the file descriptors to inodes, and store the current offset within a file.

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File Replication
Replicas of the same file reside on failure-independent machines. Improves availability and can shorten service time. Naming scheme maps a replicated file name to a particular replica.
Existence of replicas should be invisible to higher levels. Replicas must be distinguished from one another by different lower-level names.

Updates replicas of a file denote the same logical entity, and thus an update to any replica must be reflected on all other replicas. Demand replication reading a nonlocal replica causes it to be cached locally, thereby generating a new nonprimary replica.

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Example System - ANDREW

A distributed computing environment under development since 1983 at Carnegie-Mellon University. Andrew is highly scalable; the system is targeted to span over 5000 workstations. Andrew distinguishes between client machines (workstations) and dedicated server machines. Servers and clients run the 4.2BSD UNIX OS and are interconnected by an internet of LANs.

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ANDREW (Cont.)
Clients are presented with a partitioned space of file names: a local name space and a shared name space. Dedicated servers, called Vice, present the shared name space to the clients as an homogeneous, identical, and location transparent file hierarchy. The local name space is the root file system of a workstation, from which the shared name space descends. Workstations run the Virtue protocol to communicate with Vice, and are required to have local disks where they store their local name space. Servers collectively are responsible for the storage and management of the shared name space.

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ANDREW (Cont.)
Clients and servers are structured in clusters interconnected by a backbone LAN. A cluster consists of a collection of workstations and a cluster server and is connected to the backbone by a router. A key mechanism selected for remote file operations is whole file caching. Opening a file causes it to be cached, in its entirety, on the local disk.

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ANDREW Shared Name Space

Andrews volumes are small component units associated with the files of a single client. A fid identifies a Vice file or directory. A fid is 96 bits long and has three equal-length components:
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volume number vnode number index into an array containing the inodes of files in a single volume. uniquifier allows reuse of vnode numbers, thereby keeping certain data structures, compact.

Fids are location transparent; therefore, file movements from server to server do not invalidate cached directory contents. Location information is kept on a volume basis, and the information is replicated on each server.

ANDREW File Operations

Andrew caches entire files form servers. A client workstation interacts with Vice servers only during opening and closing of files. Venus caches files from Vice when they are opened, and stores modified copies of files back when they are closed. Reading and writing bytes of a file are done by the kernel without Venus intervention on the cached copy. Venus caches contents of directories and symbolic links, for path-name translation. Exceptions to the caching policy are modifications to directories that are made directly on the server responsibility for that directory.

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ANDREW Implementation
Client processes are interfaced to a UNIX kernel with the usual set of system calls. Venus carries out path-name translation component by component. The UNIX file system is used as a low-level storage system for both servers and clients. The client cache is a local directory on the workstations disk. Both Venus and server processes access UNIX files directly by their inodes to avoid the expensive path name-to-inode translation routine.

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ANDREW Implementation (Cont.)

Venus manages two separate caches:
one for status one for data
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LRU algorithm used to keep each of them bounded in size. The status cache is kept in virtual memory to allow rapid servicing of stat (file status returning) system calls. The data cache is resident on the local disk, but the UNIX I/O buffering mechanism does some caching of the disk blocks in memory that are transparent to Venus.