Unit 2

SANDEEP KHANDEKAR,
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR,
SNIST
HYDERABAD
 Syllabus
• Hardware and software components of the host environment.
• Key protocols and concepts used by each component.
• Physical and logical components of a connectivity environment.
• Major physical components of a disk drive and their function.
• Logical constructs of a physical disk.
• Access characteristics and performance implications.
• Concept of RAID and its components.

• Different RAID levels and their suitability for different application environments : RAID
0, RAID1, RAID 2, RAID 3, RAID 4, RAID 5, RAID 0+1, RAID 1+0, RAID 6.
• Compare and contrast integrated and modular storage systems.
• High level architecture and working of an intelligent storage system.
 INTRODUCTION
• Data flows from an application to storage through
Host BUS Adapter

Host BUS Adapter

 Disk Drive Performance
• A disk drive is an electromechanical device that governs the overall
performance of the storage system environment.

• Various factors effect the disk drive performance.

• Disk service Time: Time taken by disk to complete an I/O request.

• Components that contribute to disk service time on a disk drive

are seek time, rotational latency, and data transfer rate.
 Seek Time
• Time taken to position the Read/Write heads across the platter with
a radial movement (Moving along the radius of the platter).

• Time taken to reposition and settle the arm and the head over the
correct track.

• The lower the seek time, the faster the I/O operation.
Disk vendors publish the following seek time specifications

• Full Stroke: The time taken by the R/W head to move across the
entire width of the disk. From the innermost track to the outermost
track.

• Average: The average time taken by the R/W head to move from
one random track to another, normally listed as the time for one third
of a full stroke.

• Track to Track : The time taken by the R/W head to move between
adjacent tracks.
• Each of these specifications is measured in milliseconds.

• The average seek time of the modern disk is typically in the range of 3 to 15
milliseconds.

• Seek time has more impact on the read operation of random tracks rather than
adjacent tracks.

• To minimize the seek time, data can be written to only a subset of the available
cylinders. This results in lower useable capacity than the actual capacity of the
drive.

• Example : A 500GB disk drive is set up to use only the 40% of the cylinders and
is effectively treated as a 200GB drive. This is known as short stroking the
drive.
 Rotational Latency
• To access data, the actuator arm moves the R/W head over the platter to a
particular track while the platter spins to position the requested sector under
the R/W head.

• The time taken by the platter to rotate and position the data under the R/W
head is called rotational latency.

• This latency depends on the rotation speed of the spindle and is measured in
milliseconds.

• The average rotational latency is one-half of the time taken for a full rotation.

• Rotational latency has more impact on the reading/writing of random sectors on

the disk than on the same operations on the adjacent sectors.

• Average rotational latency is around 5.5ms for a 5,400rpm drive, and around
2.0ms for a 15,00rpm drive.
 Data Transfer rate
• The data transfer rate refers to the average amount of data per unit time that
the drive can deliver to the HBA.

• Operations in order to calculate data transfer rates : Read, write operations

• Read Operation: Data first moves from disk platters to R/W heads, and then it
moves to the drives internal buffer. Finally data moves from the buffer to the
host HBA.

• Write Operation: Data moves from the HBA to the internal buffer of the disk
drive through the drives interface. The data then moves from the buffer to the
R/W heads. Finally it moves from the R/W heads to the platters.
External transfer rate Internal transfer rate
measured here measured here

Buffer Head Disk

HBA Interface Assembly

Controller

Disk

Figure : Data Transfer rate

• Internal Transfer rate: Speed at which data moves from a single track of a
platters surface to internal buffer (cache) of the disk.

• Internal transfer rate takes into account factors such as the seek time.

• External Transfer rate: Rate at which data can be moved through the
interface to the HBA.

• External transfer rate is generally the advertised speed of the interface,

such as 133MB/s for ATA.

• The sustained external transfer rate is lower than the interface speed.
Fundamental Laws Governing Disk
Performance
• Disk can be viewed as a black box consisting of two elements.

1. Queue : The location where an I/O request waits before it is

processed by the I/O Controller.

2. Disk I/O Controller: Processes I/Os that are waiting in the queue
one by one.
 I/O Queue
Arrival Processed
6 5 4 3 2 1 I/O Controller I/O
Request

Figure : I/O Processing

• Arrival Rate: The I/O request arriving at the controller at the rate
generated by the application.

• Response Time: I/O arrival rate, the queue length, and the time
taken by the I/O controller to process each request determines the
performance, measured in terms of response time
 Laws
• Little`s Law: Describes the relationship between the number of requests in a queue
and the response time.

N=a X R ---------- eq(1)

• N= Total Number of requests in the queuing system (request in the queue + request
in the I/O controller)

• a= arrival rate or the number of I/O requests that arrive to the system per unit of time.

• R= average response time or the turn around time for an I/O request – the total time
from the arrival to departure from the system.
• Utilization Law: Defines the I/O controller utilization

U=a X Rs ----------------------------------eq(2)

• U is the I/O controller utilization.

• Rs is the service time, average time spent by a request on the controller. (1/ R s is the
service rate)

• From the arrival rate “a”, the average inter-arrival time R a , can be computed as

Ra =1/a----------------------------------eq(3)
 U=Rs/Ra ----------------------------------eq(4)

• The value of this ratio varies between 0 and 1.

• Calculating : average response time, average queue length, time spent by

a request in a queue.

• Average Response rate (S).

• S=service rate(1/Rs) –arrival rate(1/Ra).

• Average response rate can be defined as the reciprocal of the average

response time (R).

• R=1/S
 R=Rs/(1-U) --------------eq(5)

• Number of requests in the queue (NQ) = Number of Requests in the

system (N) – Number of Requests on the controller or utilization (U)

NQ = N-U.

• Time spent by a request in the queue is equivalent to the time spent by a

request in the system, or the average response time minus the time spent
by a request on the controller for processing.

Time Spent = Avg. Response Time(R) – Time Spent by a request(Rs).

 Knee of curve: Disks at
about 70% utilization

Low Queue Size

Figure : Utilization Vs Response Time

Logical Components of the Host
• Operating System.
• Device drivers.
• Volume Manager.
• File System.
• Application.
 File System
• File system is a hierarchical structure of files.

• File system enables easy access to data files residing within a disk drive, a
disk partition or a logical volume.

• A file system needs host-based logical structures and software routines that
control access to files.

• A file system organizes data in a structured hierarchical manner via the use
of directories, which are containers for storing pointers to multiple files,

• All file systems maintain a pointer map to the directories, subdirectories, and
files that are part of the file system.