Chapter 6.

2
DFS Design and Implementation

Brent R. Hafner

1
 File Concept

• OS abstracts from the physical storage devices to define a

logical storage unit: File
• Types:
– Data: numeric, alphabetic, alphanumeric, binary
– Program: source and object form

2
 Logical components of a file

• File name: symbolic name

– When accessing a file, its symbolic name is mapped to a unique file
id (ufid or file handle) that can locate the physical file
• Mapping is the primary function of the directory service
• File attributes – next slide
• Data units
– Flat structure of a stream of bytes of sequence of blocks
– Hierarchical structure of indexed records

3
 File Attributes

• File Handle – Unique ID of file

• Name – only information kept in human-readable form
• Type – needed for systems that support different types
• Location – pointer to file location on device
• Size – current file (and the maximum allowable) size
• Protection – controls who can read, write, execute
• Time, date, and user identification – data for protection,
security, and usage monitoring.
• Information about files are kept in the directory structure,
which is maintained on the physical storage device.

4
 Access Methods
• Sequential access: information is processed in order
– read next
– write next (append to the end of the file)
– reset to the beginning of file
– skip forward or backward n records
• Direct access: a file is made up of fixed length logical blocks
or records
– read n
– write n
– position to n
– read next
– write next
– rewrite n

5
 Access Methods (Cont.)

• Indexed sequential access

– Data units are addressed directly by using an index (key) associated
with each data block
– Requires the maintenance of an search index on the file, which must
be searched to locate a block address for each access
– Usually used only by large file systems in mainframe computers
– Indexed sequential access method (ISAM)
• A two-level scheme to reduce the size of the search index
• Combine the direct and sequential access methods

6
 Major Components in A File
System
A file system organizes and provides access and
protection services for a collection of files

Directory Service Name resolution, add and deletion of files

Authorization Service Capability and /or access control list

Transaction Concurrency and replication management

File Service
Basic Read/write files and get/set attributes

System Service Device, cache, and block management

7
 Directory Structure
• Access to a file must first use a
directory service to locate the Directory
file.
• A collection of nodes containing
information about all files.
• Both the directory structure and
the files reside on disk.

F1 F2 F4
F3
Fn

Files

8
 Information in a Directory

• Name
• Type: file, directory, symbolic link, special file…
• Address: device blocks to store a file
• Current length
• Maximum length
• Date last accessed (for archival)
• Date last updated (for dump)
• Owner ID
• Protection information

9
 Operations Performed on
Directory
• Search for a file
• Create a file
• Delete a file
• List a directory Some kind of name service

• Rename a file
• Traverse the file system

10
Tree-Structured Directories –
Hierarchical Structure of A File System

Subdirectory is just a
11 special type of file…
 Authorization Service

• File access must be regulated to ensure security

• File owner/creator should be able to control:
– what can be done
– by whom
• Types of access
– Read
– Write
– Execute
– Append
– Delete
– List

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 File Service – File Operations
• Create • Delete
– Allocate space – Search the directory
– Make an entry in the directory – Release all file space
• Write • Truncate
– Search the directory
– Reset the file to length zero
– Write is to take place at the
location of the write pointer • Open(Fi)
• Read – Search the directory structure
– Search the directory – Move the content of the directory
– Read is to take place at the entry to memory
location of the read pointer • Close(Fi)
• Reposition within file – file seek – move the content in memory to
– Set the current file pointer to a directory structure on disk
given value
• Get/set file attributes

13
 System Service

• Directory, authorization, and file services are user interfaces

to a file system (FS)
• System services are a FS’s interface to the hardware and
are transparent to users of FS
– Mapping of logical to physical block addresses
– Interfacing to services at the device level for file space allocation/de-
allocation
– Actual read/write file operations
– Caching for performance enhancement
– Replicating for reliability improvement

14
DFS Architecture –
NFS Example

15
 File Mounting
• A useful concept for constructing a large file system from
various file servers and storage devices
• Attach a remote named file system to the client’s file system
hierarchy at the position pointed to by a path name
(mounting point)
– A mounting point is usually a leaf of the directory tree that contains
only an empty subdirectory
– mount claven.lib.nctu.edu.tw:/OS /chow/book
• Once files are mounted, they are accessed by using the
concatenated logical path names without referencing either
the remote hosts or local devices
– Location transparency
– The linked information (mount table) is kept until they are unmounted
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 File Mounting Example
root root

chow Export OS

Mount
paper book DFS DSM
/OS/DSM

DFS DSM /chow/book/DSM

Local Client Remote Server

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 File Mounting (Cont.)
• Different clients may perceive a different FS view
– To achieve a global FS view – SA enforces mounting rules
• Export: a file server restricts/allows the mounting of all or
parts of its file system to a predefined set of hosts
– The information is kept in the server’s export file
• File system mounting:
– Explicit mounting: clients make explicit mounting system calls
whenever one is desired
– Boot mounting: a set of file servers is prescribed and all mountings
are performed the client’s boot time
– Auto-mounting: mounting of the servers is implicitly done on demand
when a file is first opened by a client

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Location Transparency

No global naming

19
A Simple Automounter for
NFS

20
 Server Registration

• The mounting protocol is not transparent – require

knowledge of the location of file servers
• When multiple file servers can provide the same file service,
the location information becomes irrelevant to the clients
• Server registration  name/address resolution
– File servers register their services with a registration service, and
clients consult with the registration server before mounting
– Clients broadcast mounting requests, and file servers respond to
client’s requests

21
 Stateful and Stateless File
Servers
• Stateless file server – when a client sends a request to a server, the
server carries out the request, sends the reply, and then remove from its
internal tables all information about the request
– Between requests, no client-specific information is kept on the server
– Each request must be self-contained: full file name and offset…
• Stateful file server – file servers maintain state information about clients
between requests
• State information – may be kept in servers or clients
– Opened files and their clients
– File descriptors and file handles
– Current file position pointers
– Mounting information Session: a connection for a sequence
– Lock status of requests and responses between a
– Session keys client and the file server
– Cache or buffer
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 A Comparison between
Stateless and Stateful Servers

Advantages of Stateless Server Advantages of Stateful Server

No OPEN/CLOSE calls needed Better performance
Fault tolerance Shorter request messages
No server space wasted on tables Read-ahead possible
No limits on number of open files Idempotency easier
No problems if a client crashes File locking possible
Easy to implement More flexible

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 Issues of A Stateless File
Server
• Idempotency requirement
– Is it practical to structure all file accesses as idempotent operations?
• File locking mechanism
– Should locking mechanism be integrated into the transaction service?
• Session key management
– Can one-time session key be used for each file access?
• Cache consistency
– Is the file server responsible for controlling cache consistency among
clients?
– What sharing semantics are to be supported?

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 File Sharing
• Overlapping access: multiple copies of the same file
– Space multiplexing of the file
– Cache or replication
– Coherency control: managing accesses to the replicas, to provide a
coherent view of the shared file
– Desirable to guarantee the atomicity of updates (to all copies)
• Interleaving access: multiple granularities of data access
operations
– Time multiplexing of the file
– Simple read/write, Transaction, Session
– Concurrency control: how to prevent one execution sequence from
interfering with the others when they are interleaved and how to
avoid inconsistent or erroneous results

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 Space Multiplexing

• Remote access: no file data is kept in the client machine.

Each access request is transmitted directly to the remote file
server through the underlying network.
• Cache access: a small part of the file data is maintained in a
local cache. A write operation or cache miss results a
remote access and update of the cache
• Download/upload access: the entire file is downloaded for
local accesses. A remote access or upload is performed
when updating the remote file

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 Remote Access VS
Download/Upload Access

Remote Access Download/Upload Access

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 Four Places to Caching

Client’s disk Server’s disk

Client’s (optional) Server’s
main memory main memory

Client Server

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 Coherency of Replicated
Data
• Four interpretations:
– All replicas are identical at all times
• Impossible in distributed systems
– Replicas are perceived as identical only at some points in time
• How to determine the good synchronization points?
– Users always read the “most recent” data in the replicas
• How to define “most recent”?
– Based on the “completion” times of write operations (the
effect of a write operation has been reflected in all copies)
– Write operations are always performed “immediately” and their
results are propagated in a best-effort fasion
• Coarse attempt to approximate the third definition

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 Time Multiplexing

• Simple RW: each read/write operation is an independent

request/response access to the file server
• Transaction RW: a sequence of read and write operations is
treated as a fundamental unit of file access (to the same file)
– ACID properties
• Session RW: a sequence of transaction and simple RW
operations

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 Space and Time
Concurrencies of File Access
Space Remote Access Cache Access Download/Upload
Time Access

Simple RW No true sharing Coherency Coherency

Control Control

Transaction Concurrency Coherency and Coherency and

Control Concurrency Concurrency
Control Control

Session Not applicable Not applicable Ignore sharing

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 Semantics of File Sharing
a) On a single processor, when a read follows a
write, the value returned by the read is the
value just written (Unix Semantics).
b) In a distributed system with caching, obsolete
values may be returned.

Solution to coherency and

concurrency control problems
depends on the semantics of
sharing required by
applications

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 Semantics of File Sharing
(Cont.)

Unix Semantics Every operation on a file is instantly visible to all

(Currency) processes. File accesses with a write-through
cache and write-invalidation
Transaction Semantics All changes have the all-or-nothing property.
(Consistency) Update the server at the end of a transaction.
Immutable Files No updates are possible;
simplify sharing and replication
Session Semantics No changes are visible to other processes until
(Efficiency) the file is closed. Update the server at the end of
a session.

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 Version Control

• Version control under immutable files

– Implemented as a function of the directory service
– Each file is attached with a version number
– An open to a file always returns the current version
– Subsequently read/write operations to the opened files are made
only to the local working copy
– When the file is closed, the local modified version (tentative version)
is presented to the version control service
– If the tentative version is based on the current version, the update is
committed and the tentative version becomes the current version
with a new version number
– What is the tentative version is based on an older version…?

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 Version Control (Cont.)

• Action to be taken if based on an older version…

– Ignore conflict: a new version is created regardless of what has
happened (equivalent to session semantics)
– Resolve version conflict: the modified data in the tentative version
are disjoint from those in the new current version
• Merge the updates in the tentative version with the current
version to yield to a new version that combines all updates
– Resolve serializability conflict: the modified data in the tentative
version were already modified by the new current version
• Abort the tentative version and roll back the execution of the
client with the new current version as its working version
• The concurrent updates are serialized in some arbitrary order

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 Windows 2003 Server R2

The purpose of distributed file system is to minimize network

traffic due to file replication and optimize the administration
of shared folder
 DFS Replication

• DFS Replication is a state-based, multimaster replication

engine that supports replication scheduling and bandwidth
throttling. DFS Replication uses a new compression protocol
called Remote Differential Compression (RDC), which can
be used to efficiently update files over a limited-bandwidth
network. RDC detects insertions, removals, and re-
arrangements of data in files, thereby enabling
DFS Replication to replicate only the changes when files are
updated. Additionally, a function of RDC called cross-file
RDC can help reduce the amount of bandwidth required to
replicate new files.
 Namespaces

• DFS Namespaces, formerly known as Distributed File

System, allows administrators to group shared folders
located on different servers and present them to users as a
virtual tree of folders known as a namespace. A namespace
provides numerous benefits, including increased availability
of data, load sharing, and simplified data migration.
DFS in Win2003 R2

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 References

1. Overview of the Distributed File System Solution in

Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2, August 22, 2005,
http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/en/librar
y/d3afe6ee-3083-4950-a093-
8ab748651b761033.mspx?mfr=true.
2. Randy Chow, Theodore Johnson, Distributed
Operating Systems and Algorithms, Addison-Wesley,
1997.

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