Network Structures and Distributed File Systems

1
Network Structures and Distributed File
Systems

• Background
• Topology
• Network Types
• Communication
• Communication Protocol
• Robustness
• Design Strategies

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CS 450 OPERATING SYSTEMS
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Network Structures

• Background
• Topology
• Network Types
• Communication
• Communication Protocol
• Robustness
• Design Strategies

4
Distributed-File Systems

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

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A Distributed System
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Motivation

• Resource sharing
• sharing and printing files at remote sites
• processing information in a distributed database
• using remote specialized hardware devices
• Computation speedup load sharing
• Reliability detect and recover from site
  failure, function transfer, reintegrate failed
  site
• Communication message passing

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Network-Operating Systems

• Users are aware of multiplicity of machines.
  Access to resources of various machines is done
  explicitly by
• Remote logging into the appropriate remote
  machine.
• Transferring data from remote machines to local
  machines, via the File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
  mechanism.

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Distributed-Operating Systems

• Users not aware of multiplicity of machines.
  Access to remote resources similar to access to
  local resources.
• Data Migration transfer data by transferring
  entire file, or transferring only those portions
  of the file necessary for the immediate task.
• Computation Migration transfer the computation,
  rather than the data, across the system.

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Distributed-Operating Systems (Cont.)

• Process Migration execute an entire process, or
  parts of it, at different sites.
• Load balancing distribute processes across
  network to even the workload.
• Computation speedup subprocesses can run
  concurrently on different sites.
• Hardware preference process execution may
  require specialized processor.
• Software preference required software may be
  available at only a particular site.
• Data access run process remotely, rather than
  transfer all data locally.

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Topology

• Sites in the system can be physically connected
  in a variety of ways they are compared with
  respect to the following criteria
• Basic cost. How expensive is it to link the
  various sites in the system?
• Communication cost. How long does it take to
  send a message from site A to site B?
• Reliability. If a link or a site in the system
  fails, can the remaining sites still communicate
  with each other?
• The various topologies are depicted as graphs
  whose nodes correspond to sites. An edge from
  node A to node B corresponds to a direct
  connection between the two sites.
• The following six items depict various network
  topologies.

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Network Topology
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Network Types

• Local-Area Network (LAN) designed to cover
  small geographical area.
• Multiaccess bus, ring, or star network.
• Speed ? 10 megabits/second, or higher.
• Broadcast is fast and cheap.
• Nodes
• usually workstations and/or personal computers
• a few (usually one or two) mainframes.

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Network Types (Cont.)

• Depiction of typical LAN

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Network Types (Cont.)

• Wide-Area Network (WAN) links geographically
  separated sites.
• Point-to-point connections over long-haul lines
  (often leased from a phone company).
• Speed ? 100 kilobits/second.
• Broadcast usually requires multiple messages.
• Nodes
• usually a high percentage of mainframes

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Communication Processors in a Wide-Area Network
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Communication
The design of a communication network must
address four basic issues

• Naming and name resolution How do two processes
  locate each other to communicate?
• Routing strategies. How are messages sent
  through the network?
• Connection strategies. How do two processes send
  a sequence of messages?
• Contention. The network is a shared resource, so
  how do we resolve conflicting demands for its use?

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Naming and Name Resolution

• Name systems in the network
• Address messages with the process-id.
• Identify processes on remote systems by
• lthost-name, identifiergt pair.
• Domain name service (DNS) specifies the naming
  structure of the hosts, as well as name to
  address resolution (Internet).

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Routing Strategies

• Fixed routing. A path from A to B is specified
  in advance path changes only if a hardware
  failure disables it.
• Since the shortest path is usually chosen,
  communication costs are minimized.
• Fixed routing cannot adapt to load changes.
• Ensures that messages will be delivered in the
  order in which they were sent.
• Virtual circuit. A path from A to B is fixed for
  the duration of one session. Different sessions
  involving messages from A to B may have different
  paths.
• Partial remedy to adapting to load changes.
• Ensures that messages will be delivered in the
  order in which they were sent.

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Routing Strategies (Cont.)

• Dynamic routing. The path used to send a message
  form site A to site B is chosen only when a
  message is sent.
• Usually a site sends a message to another site on
  the link least used at that particular time.
• Adapts to load changes by avoiding routing
  messages on heavily used path.
• Messages may arrive out of order. This problem
  can be remedied by appending a sequence number to
  each message.

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Connection Strategies

• Circuit switching. A permanent physical link is
  established for the duration of the communication
  (i.e., telephone system).
• Message switching. A temporary link is
  established for the duration of one message
  transfer (i.e., post-office mailing system).
• Packet switching. Messages of variable length
  are divided into fixed-length packets which are
  sent to the destination. Each packet may take a
  different path through the network. The packets
  must be reassembled into messages as they arrive.
• Circuit switching requires setup time, but incurs
  less overhead for shipping each message, and may
  waste network bandwidth. Message and packet
  switching require less setup time, but incur more
  overhead per message.

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Contention
Several sites may want to transmit information
over a link simultaneously. Techniques to avoid
repeated collisions include

• CSMA/CD. Carrier sense with multiple access
  (CSMA) collision detection (CD)
• A site determines whether another message is
  currently being transmitted over that link. If
  two or more sites begin transmitting at exactly
  the same time, then they will register a CD and
  will stop transmitting.
• When the system is very busy, many collisions may
  occur, and thus performance may be degraded.
• SCMA/CD is used successfully in the Ethernet
  system, the most common network system.

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Contention (Cont.)

• Token passing. A unique message type, known as a
  token, continuously circulates in the system
  (usually a ring structure). A site that wants to
  transmit information must wait until the token
  arrives. When the site completes its round of
  message passing, it retransmits the token. A
  token-passing scheme is used by the IBM and
  Apollo systems.
• Message slots. A number of fixed-length message
  slots continuously circulate in the system
  (usually a ring structure). Since a slot can
  contain only fixed-sized messages, a single
  logical message may have to be broken down into a
  number of smaller packets, each of which is sent
  in a separate slot. This scheme has been adopted
  in the experimental Cambridge Digital
  Communication Ring

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Communication Protocol
The communication network is partitioned into the
following multiple layers

• Physical layer handles the mechanical and
  electrical details of the physical transmission
  of a bit stream.
• Data-link layer handles the frames, or
  fixed-length parts of packets, including any
  error detection and recovery that occurred in the
  physical layer.
• Network layer provides connections and routes
  packets in the communication network, including
  handling the address of outgoing packets,
  decoding the address of incoming packets, and
  maintaining routing information for proper
  response to changing load levels.

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Communication Protocol (Cont.)

• Transport layer responsible for low-level
  network access and for message transfer between
  clients, including partitioning messages into
  packets, maintaining packet order, controlling
  flow, and generating physical addresses.
• Session layer implements sessions, or
  process-to-process communications protocols.
• Presentation layer resolves the differences in
  formats among the various sites in the network,
  including character conversions, and half
  duplex/full duplex (echoing).
• Application layer interacts directly with the
  users deals with file transfer, remote-login
  protocols and electronic mail, as well as schemas
  for distributed databases.

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Communication Via ISO Network Model
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The ISO Protocol Layer
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The ISO Network Message
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The TCP/IP Protocol Layers
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Robustness

• Failure detection
• Reconfiguration

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Failure Detection

• Detecting hardware failure is difficult.
• To detect a link failure, a handshaking protocol
  can be used.
• Assume Site A and Site B have established a link.
  At fixed intervals, each site will exchange an
  I-am-up message indicating that they are up and
  running.
• If Site A does not receive a message within the
  fixed interval, it assumes either (a) the other
  site is not up or (b) the message was lost.
• Site A can now send an Are-you-up? message to
  Site B.
• If Site A does not receive a reply, it can repeat
  the message or try an alternate route to Site B.

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Failure Detection (cont)

• If Site A does not ultimately receive a reply
  from Site B, it concludes some type of failure
  has occurred.
• Types of failures- Site B is down
• - The direct link between A and B is down- The
  alternate link from A to B is down
• - The message has been lost
• However, Site A cannot determine exactly why the
  failure has occurred.

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Reconfiguration

• When Site A determines a failure has occurred, it
  must reconfigure the system
• 1. If the link from A to B has failed, this must
  be broadcast to every site in the system.
• 2. If a site has failed, every other site must
  also be notified indicating that the services
  offered by the failed site are no longer
  available.
• When the link or the site becomes available
  again, this information must again be broadcast
  to all other sites.

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Design Issues

• Transparency the distributed system should
  appear as a conventional, centralized system to
  the user.
• Fault tolerance the distributed system should
  continue to function in the face of failure.
• Scalability as demands increase, the system
  should easily accept the addition of new
  resources to accommodate the increased demand.
• Clusters a collection of semi-autonomous
  machines that acts as a single system.

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Networking Example

• The transmission of a network packet between
  hosts on an Ethernet network.
• Every host has a unique IP address and a
  corresponding Ethernet (MAC) address.
• Communication requires both addresses.
• Domain Name Service (DNS) can be used to acquire
  IP addresses.
• Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) is used to map
  MAC addresses to IP addresses.
• If the hosts are on the same network, ARP can be
  used. If the hosts are on different networks, the
  sending host will send the packet to a router
  which routes the packet to the destination
  network.

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An Ethernet Packet
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Distributed File Systems 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.
• 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.

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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.
• 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.

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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
• 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.

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Comparing Caching and Remote Service

• 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).
• 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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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
  self-contained.
• 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
• 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.

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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
• 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.