Chapter 11: Mass-Storage Structure

Disk attachment SSD (Solid state drive) vs. HDD (Hard disk drive) Disk I/O scheduling Disk management
Formatting/partitioning
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Disk Attachment
Host-attached storage
Storage accessed on host through local I/O port Uses hardware bus and host controller (e.g., IDE, ATA, SATA, FireWire, USB, SCSI, FC Fiber Channel)

Network-attached storage
Special purpose storage system attached remotely over a data network Clients access severs via RPC (e.g., NFS for Unix systems or CIFS for Windows systems)

Storage-area network
Private network (using storage protocols) connecting file servers and storage units
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SSD (Solid State Drive)

SSD provides random access to blocks of device
Uniform access time to different blocks

HDD does not provide random access

Different access times to data blocks depending on where head is presently and location of goal block

Erase and SSD

Erase: Writing to the SSD must be preceded by a block erase (sets all bits to 1) Lifetime: Measured in the number of erase cycles Wear leveling: Firmware or operating system drivers must balance the numbers of erase cycles done on each block so that device does not fail prematurely
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SSD Performance
Single chip has relatively high latencies (SLC NAND)
~25 s to fetch (read) a 4K page from the array to the IO buffer ~250 s to commit (write) a 4K page from the IO buffer to the array ~2 ms to erase a 256 kiB block

With parallel chip operation, 250 MB/s effective read/write speeds

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid-state_drive
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hdparm command
Measuring disk performance yourself on Linux
http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/how-fast-is-linux-sata-hard-disk.html

Old disk system: 57.9 MB/sec

Virtual Box Linux

sudo hdparm -tT /dev/sda /dev/sda: Timing cached reads: 15392 MB in 2.00 seconds = 7705.18 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 154 MB in 3.02 seconds = 50.96 MB/sec

Figure 11.1 Moving-head disk mechanism (HDD)

http://www.cprince.com/courses/cs5631spring09/news/item1.pdf (Presentation by Yizhao Zhuang)

HDD (Hard Disk Drive) Terms

Access (positioning) time
Time to start to transfer data Components: Seek time, rotational latency
Seek time: time for disk arm to move heads to the right cylinder Rotational latency: time for disk to rotate to the desired sector

Transfer rate
Sustained bandwidth: average data transfer rate during a large transfer that is the, number of bytes divided by transfer time
data rate without positioning time

Effective bandwidth: average transfer rate including positioning time

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HDD Scheduling
Modern disks are accessed as a large array of blocks:
a disk address is a block number

Block number is converted to a old style disk address (i.e., cylinder, head, sector) by the disk device firmware Generally, increasing block number implies physically adjacent sectors (see also http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6931), and movement to inner cylinders of disk
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Disk Requests
Typically a disk device has a queue with several pending requests
One issue: How can we schedule requests to (a) improve system performance and throughput, and (b) reduce request latency?

Some request ordering possibilities

Prioritize disk requests by type
E.g., page faults get priority over a processes file I/O

Process priority could play a role Reduce access time by changing order of requests
Just consider seek time
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Some Algorithms To Reduce Seek Time

Algorithm Name Description
FCFS
SSTF SCAN (aka Elevator) C-SCAN

First-come first-served
Shortest seek time first; process the request that reduces next seek time Move head from end to end (has a current direction) Only service requests in one direction (circular SCAN)

LOOK
C-LOOK

Move head from end to end; turn at last request in direction Only service requests in one direction and turn at last request in direction (circular LOOK)

Scheduling Examples
Assume
List (queue) of track requests:
98, 183, 37, 122, 14, 124, 65, 67 Left most is first request

R/W head starts at track 53 Tracks range from 0-199

Only a single platter

Question:
Given a specific scheduling algorithm what is the total head movement required for a list of track requests?
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FCFS
Assume
List (queue) of track requests:
98, 183, 37, 122, 14, 124, 65, 67 Left most is first request

R/W head starts at track 53 Tracks range from 0-199

Only a single platter

1) Show the head movement over the disk surface 2) What is the total head movement?
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FCFS
98-53=45
183-98=85 183-37=146 122-37=85 122-14=108 124-14=110 124-65=59 67-65=2

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Total head movement: 640 tracks

FCFS Performance Issues

It is possible for disk positions far from a current area of activity to be starved indefinitely? No. With FCFS, incoming (new) requests will eventually get processed.
We are not reordering requests here.

The algorithm is intrinsically fair, but it generally does not generally provide the fastest service.

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SSTF: Shortest Seek Time First

Assume
List (queue) of track requests:
98, 183, 37, 122, 14, 124, 65, 67 Left most is first request

R/W head starts at track 53 Tracks range from 0-199

Only a single platter

1) Show the head movement over the disk surface 2) What is the total head movement?
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SSTF example
Queue 98 183 37 122 14 124 65 67
Head pos Seek time Head pos Seek time Queue 53 45 98 65 33 183 65 118 53 130 37 65 28 53 16 122 65 57 53 69 14 65 51 53 39 124 65 59 53 71 67 65 2 53 12 53 14 SST= 2 SST= 12
Queue 98 183 37 122 14 124 Head pos Seek time 67 31 67 116 67 30 67 55 67 53 67 57 SST= 30

Queue 98 183 122 14 124

Head pos Seek time Head pos Seek time Queue 37 61 98 14 84 37 146 183 14 169 122 14 108 37 85 37 23 124 14 110 37 87 SST= 84 SST= 23
Queue Head pos Seek time 183 124 59 SST= 59

Queue Head pos Seek time 183 98 85 122 98 24 124 98 26 SST= 24

Queue Head pos Seek time 183 122 61 124 122 2 SST= 2

Total head movement: 236 tracks 19

SSTF

Total head movement: 236 tracks

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SSTF Performance Issues

It is possible for disk positions far from a current area of activity to be starved indefinitely?
YES: If new requests keep arriving for the current area

Prefer a method that we know will not starve requests Also, while better than FCFS (236 for SSTF vs. 640 for FCFS), less head movement can be obtained
E.g., service order: 53, 37, 14, 65, 67, 98, 122, 124, 183 has total head movement of 208 tracks
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SCAN
Algorithm: Move head from end to end (has a current direction), servicing requests as you come to them Assume
List (queue) of track requests:
98, 183, 37, 122, 14, 124, 65, 67 Left most is first request

R/W head starts at track 53 Tracks range from 0-199

Only a single platter

Start direction = down (to lower numbered tracks)

1) Show the head movement over the disk surface 2) What is the total head movement? From start position to servicing last request in list

SCAN

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Total head movement: 53 + 183 = 236

SCAN Performance Issues

It is possible for disk positions far from a current area of activity to be starved indefinitely?

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C-SCAN
Algorithm: Only service requests in one direction (circular SCAN) Assume
List (queue) of track requests:
98, 183, 37, 122, 14, 124, 65, 67 Left most is first request

R/W head starts at track 53 Tracks range from 0-199

Only a single platter

Start direction = up (to higher numbered tracks) Service requests (only) in up direction

1) Show the head movement over the disk surface 2) What is the total head movement?

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C-SCAN

Total head movement: 199-53+37=183 (+ wrap)

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C-LOOK
Algorithm: Only service requests in one direction and turn at last request in direction (circular LOOK) Assume
List (queue) of track requests:
98, 183, 37, 122, 14, 124, 65, 67 Left most is first request

R/W head starts at track 53 Tracks range from 0-199

Only a single platter

Start direction = up (to higher numbered tracks)

Service requests in up direction

1) Show the head movement over the disk surface 2) What is the total head movement?

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C-LOOK

Total head movement: (183-53)+(37-14)=153 (+ wrap)

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Algorithm Selection Issues

Starvation
FCFS, SCAN and LOOK algorithms will not starve requests SSTF can starve requests

Type of request activity

Some requests will be to similar tracks of disk
E.g., Requests by a single process for a file allocated using contiguous file allocation FCFS, SSTF: Should do well with these clustered requests

Some requests will be on widely different tracks of disk

E.g., Indexed, linked file allocation; requests by different processes May be best to have algorithm that distributes requests uniformly across surface of disk (e.g., SCAN, LOOK)

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Ch 11.5: Disk Management

Disk formatting Swap space Boot blocks & Booting

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Ch 11.5.1: Disk Formatting

Three steps
Low-level formatting, partitioning, logical formatting

Low-level formatting
Fills disk sectors with special data structure that is used by disk I/O controller Header, data area (usually 512 bytes), trailer
Header & trailer: information used by disk controller hardware-- e.g., sector number and ECC (error correcting code)

Creates map of bad blocks Reserves spare sectors for bad block repair

Partitioning
Grouping disk into one or more groups of cylinders to be treated as separate logical disks Each partition can have its own file system type
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Logical Formatting (Per Partition)

Creation of organization for different types of file systems, swap space, database application etc.
E.g., directory structures, free space lists

Boot partitions
Boot block; code to load kernel of O/S

It is also possible to leave the partition without logical formatting

With no file system disk data structures Partition accessed as an array of blocks raw disk, and raw I/O Raw I/O bypasses file system services such as buffer cache, file locking, prefetching, space allocation, file names, and directories

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Handling Bad Blocks

Can handle at free blocks level in O/S
Free list of blocks can be used to indicate these blocks cannot be used

Device controller
Can maintain list of bad blocks Initialized during low-level formatting at factory Low-level formatting also sets aside spare sectors, not visible to O/S Sector sparing or forwarding can be used to manage new bad blocks
Sparing or forwarding: Controller uses a spare sector when it gets a request for a sector that has a bad block When block is remapped, controller uses a spare sector from the same cylinder if possible

Sector slipping: Moving a sequence of blocks & remapping them

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 Virtual memory

Swap Space

Will use regular file system for at least reading code and data of program Swap space may be on separate device or multiple devices Partition formatted for swap space can give higher virtual memory performance: Why?

With a separate partition, swap space manager allocates/deallocates blocks

Doesnt use functions of normal file system Maintain map(s) of swap space usage

May handle text (code) & data differently

E.g., Solaris 1 dont write text to swap disk; if page replacement needs page, next time just re-read from normal file system; dirty data pages still written to swap disk as needed

Boot Process
Typically a three phase process
ROM bootstrap Boot block loader Running operating system kernel

ROM bootstrap program

Initial program code that starts loading operating system Typically a relatively simple loader program stored in ROM; reads the disk boot block(s) into RAM, and starts running this boot block code

Boot block code

Actually does loading of operating system kernel from boot partition

RAID: Redundant Array of Independent/Inexpensive Disks

Multiple disk techniques for
Improving throughput and/or response time Multiple disks, parallelize disk operations Improving data reliability
Decrease mean time to failure (MTBF) If one disk fails, can replace with another and go on quickly, with easy recovery

Ideas
Data striping: Methods of improving throughput
Putting part of data on disk A, part on disk B, part on Bit striping: e.g., 8 disks, one bit of each byte on each disk Block striping: n disks, block i goes on disk (i mod n) + 1

Methods of improving reliability

Mirroring (a.k.a. shadowing): duplicating all data Parity, ECC (error correcting codes)

Resources
Kernel Korner - I/O Schedulers
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6931 Describes soft deadline disk head scheduling and anticipatory scheduling in Linux 2.6 kernel

See also the CFQ scheduler (Complete Fair Queuing Scheduler)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CFQ
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END!

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