Chapter 2

Information Storage and
Management
Storing, Managing, and Protecting Digital Information
Ali Broumandnia, Broumandnia@gmail.com 1

Section I Storage System
In This Section:
• Chapter 1: Introduction to Information Storage and Management
• Chapter 2: Storage System Environment
• Chapter 3: Data Protection: RAID
• Chapter 4: Intelligent Storage Systems

Chapter 2
Storage System Environment
• 2.1 Components of a Storage System Environment
• 2-2 Disk Drive Components
• 2.3 Disk Drive Performance
• 2.4 Fundamental Laws Governing Disk Performance
• 2.5 Logical Components of the Host
• Summary

Key Concepts:
• Host, Connectivity, and Storage
• Block-Level and File-Level Access
• File System and Volume Manager
• Storage Media and Devices
• Disk Components
• Zoned Bit Recording
• Logical Block Addressing
• Little’s Law and the Utilization Law

This chapter details the storage system environment and focuses
primarily on storage. It provides details on various hardware
components of a disk drive, disk geometry, and the fundamental
laws that govern disk performance. The connectivity between the
host and storage facilitated by bus technology and interface
protocols is also explained.
This chapter provides an understanding of various logical
components of hosts such as file systems, volume managers, and
operating systems, and their role in the storage system
environment.Ali Broumandnia, Broumandnia@gmail.com 5

2.1 Components of a Storage System
Environment
The three main components in a storage system environment
the host, connectivity, and storage are described in this
section.

2.1.1 Host
Users store and retrieve data through applications. The
computers on which these applications run are referred to
as hosts. Hosts can range from simple laptops to complex
clusters of servers. A host consists of physical components
(hardware devices) that communicate with one another
using logical components (software and protocols). Access
to data and the overall performance of the storage system
environment depend on both the physical and logical
components of a host .

Physical Components
• Central processing unit (CPU)
• Storage, such as internal memory and disk devices
• Input/output (I/O) devices
CPU
• Arithmetic Logic Unit (ALU)
• Control Unit
• Register
• Level 1 (L1) cache

Storage
• Random Access Memory (RAM)
• Read-Only Memory (ROM)
• Hard disk (magnetic)
• CD-ROM or DVD-ROM (optical)
• Floppy disk (magnetic)
• Tape drive (magnetic)
I/O Devices
• User to host communications
• Host to host communications
• Host to storage device communicationsAli Broumandnia, Broumandnia@gmail.com 9

2.1.2 Connectivity
The discussion here focuses on the connectivity between the
host and the storage device. The components of
connectivity in a storage system environment can be
classified as Physical and Logical. The physical
components are the hardware elements that connect the host
to storage and the logical components of connectivity are
the protocols used for communication between the host and
storage.

Physical Components of Connectivity

The bus is the collection of paths that facilitates data transmission
from one part of a computer to another, such as from the CPU to the
memory. The port is a specialized outlet that enables connectivity
between the host and external devices. Cables connect hosts to
internal or external devices using copper or fiber optic media.
Physical components communicate across a bus by sending bits
(control, data, and address) of data between devices. These bits are
transmitted through the bus in either of the following ways:
• Serially
• In parallel

Logical Components of Connectivity
The popular interface protocol used for the local bus to connect to a
peripheral device is peripheral component interconnect (PCI). The
interface protocols that connect to disk systems are Integrated
Device Electronics/Advanced Technology Attachment (IDE/ATA)
and Small Computer System Interface (SCSI).
• PCI
• IDE/ATA
• SCSI

2.1.3 Storage
A storage device uses magnetic or solid state media. Disks,
tapes, and diskettes use magnetic media. CD-ROM is an
example of a storage device that uses optical media, and
removable flash memory card is an example of solid state
media. Tapes are a popular storage media used for backup
because of their relatively low cost. In the past, data centers
hosted a large number of tape drives and processed several
thousand reels of tape. However, tape has the following
limitations:

• Data is stored on the tape linearly along the length of the
tape. Search and retrieval of data is done sequentially, invariably
taking several seconds to access the data. As a result, random
data access is slow and time consuming. This limits tapes as a
viable option for applications that require real-time, rapid access
to data.
• Data stored on tape cannot be accessed by multiple
applications simultaneously, restricting its use to one application
at a time.

• On a tape drive, the read/write head touches the tape
surface, so the tape degrades or wears out after repeated use.
• The storage and retrieval requirements of data from tape
and the overhead associated with managing tape media are
significant.

2.2 Disk Drive Components
A disk drive uses a rapidly moving arm to read and write data
across a flat platter coated with magnetic particles. Data is
transferred from the magnetic platter through the R/W head to
the computer. Several platters are assembled together with the
R/W head and controller, most commonly referred to as a hard
disk drive (HDD). Data can be recorded and erased on a
magnetic disk any number of times. This section details the
different components of the disk, the mechanism for
organizing and storing data on disks, and the factors that affect
disk performance.

Key components of a disk drive (Figure 2-2):
• Platter
• Spindle
• Read/Write Head
• Actuator Arm Assembly
• Controller
• Physical Disk Structure
• Zoned Bit Recording
• Logical Block Addressing

2.2.1 Platter
A typical HDD consists of one or more flat circular disks called
platters .The data is recorded on these platters in binary codes
(0s and1s). The set of rotating platters is sealed in a case, called
a Head Disk Assembly (HDA). A platter is a rigid, round disk
coated with magnetic material on both surfaces (top and
bottom). The data is encoded by polarizing the magnetic area,
or domains, of the disk surface.

2.2.2 Spindle
A spindle connects all the platters, as shown in Figure 2-3, and is
connected to a motor. The motor of the spindle rotates with a
constant speed. The disk platter spins at a speed of several
thousands of revolutions per minute (rpm). Disk drives have
spindle speeds of 7,200 rpm, 10,000 rpm, or 15,000 rpm. Disks
used on current storage systems have a platter diameter of 3.5”
(90 mm). When the platter spins at 15,000 rpm, the outer edge is
moving at around 25 percent of the speed of sound.

2.2.3 Read/Write Head
Read/Write (R/W) heads, shown in Figure 2-4, read and write data from
or to a platter. Drives have two R/W heads per platter, one for each
surface of the platter. The R/W head changes the magnetic polarization
on the surface of the platter when writing data. While reading data, this
head detects magnetic polarization on the surface of the platter. During
reads and writes, the R/W head senses the magnetic polarization and
never touches the surface of the platter. When the spindle is rotating,
there is a microscopic air gap between the R/W heads and the platters,
known as the head flying height. This air gap is removed when the
spindle stops rotating and the R/W head rests on a special area on the
platter near the spindle. This area is called the landing zone. The landing
zone is coated with a lubricant to reduce friction between the head and
the platter.

2.2.4 Actuator Arm Assembly
The R/W heads are mounted on the actuator arm assembly
(refer to Figure 2-2 [a]), which positions the R/W head at the
location on the platter where the data needs to be written or
read. The R/W heads for all platters on a drive are attached to
one actuator arm assembly and move across the platters
simultaneously. Note that there are two R/W heads per platter,
one for each surface, as shown in Figure 2-4.

2.2.5 Controller
The controller (see Figure 2-2 [b]) is a printed circuit board,
mounted at the bottom of a disk drive. It consists of a
microprocessor, internal memory, circuitry, and firmware. The
firmware controls power to the spindle motor and the speed of
the motor. It also manages communication between the drive and
the host. In addition, it controls the R/W operations by moving
the actuator arm and switching between different R/W heads, and
performs the optimization of data access.

2.2.6 Physical Disk Structure
Data on the disk is recorded on tracks, which are concentric rings
on the platter around the spindle, as shown in Figure 2-5. The
tracks are numbered, starting from zero, from the outer edge of
the platter. The number of tracks per inch (TPI) on the platter (or
the track density) measures how tightly the tracks are packed on
a platter.

2.2.7 Zoned Bit Recording
Because the platters are made of concentric tracks, the outer tracks
can hold more data than the inner tracks, because the outer tracks
are physically longer than the inner tracks, as shown in Figure 2-6
(a). On older disk drives, the outer tracks had the same number of
sectors as the inner tracks, so data density was low on the outer
tracks. This was an inefficient use of available space. Zone bit
recording utilizes the disk efficiently. As shown in Figure 2-6 (b),
this mechanism groups tracks into zones based on their distance
from the center of the disk. The zones are numbered, with the
outermost zone being zone 0.

2.2.8 Logical Block Addressing
Earlier drives used physical addresses consisting of the cylinder,
head, and sector (CHS) number to refer to specific locations on the
disk, as shown in Figure 2-7 (a), and the host operating system had
to be aware of the geometry of each disk being used. Logical block
addressing (LBA), shown in Figure 2-7 (b), simplifies addressing
by using a linear address to access physical blocks of data. The
disk controller translates LBA to a CHS address, and the host only
needs to know the size of the disk drive in terms of the number of
blocks. The logical blocks are mapped to physical sectors on a 1:1
basis.

2.3 Disk Drive Performance
A disk drive is an electromechanical device that governs the
overall performance of the storage system environment. The
various factors that affect the performance of disk drives are
discussed in this section.

2.3.1 Disk Service Time
Disk service time is the time taken by a disk to complete an
I/O request. Components that contribute to service time on a
disk drive are seek time, rotational latency, and data transfer
rate.
• Seek Time
1) Full Stroke
2) Average
3) Track-to-Track
• Rotational Latency
• Data Transfer Rate

2.4 Fundamental Laws Governing Disk
Performance
To understand the laws of disk performance, a disk can be
viewed as a black box consisting of two elements:
• Queue: The location where an I/O request waits before it
is processed by the I/O controller.
• Disk I/O Controller: Processes I/O s that are waiting in
the queue one by one.

As a result, it can be concluded that by reducing the service time
(the sum of seek time, latency, and internal transfer rate) or
utilization by half, the response time can be reduced drastically
(almost six times in the preceding example). The relationship
between utilization and response time is shown in Figure 2-10.
Response time changes are nonlinear as utilization increases.
When the average queue sizes are low, response time remains low.
Response time increases slowly with added load on the queue, and
increases exponentially when utilization exceeds 70 percent.

2.5 Logical Components of the Host
The logical components of a host consist of the software
applications and protocols that enable data communication with
the user as well as the physical components. Following are the
logical components of a host:
• Operating system
• Device drivers
• Volume manager
• File system
• Application

Operating System
An operating system controls all aspects of the computing environment.
It works between the application and physical components of the
computer system. One of the services it provides to the application is
data access.
Device Driver
A device driver is special software that permits the operating system to
interact with a specific device, such as a printer, a mouse, or a hard
drive. A device driver enables the operating system to recognize the
device and to use a standard interface (provided as an application
programming interface, or API) to access and control devices. Device
drivers are hardware dependent and operating system specific.

Volume Manager
Disk partitioning was introduced to improve the flexibility and utilization
of HDDs. In partitioning, an HDD is divided into logical containers
called logical volumes (LVs) (see Figure 2-11). For example, a large
physical drive can be partitioned into multiple LVs to maintain data
according to the file system’s and applications’ requirements. The
partitions are created from groups of contiguous cylinders when the hard
disk is initially set up on the host. The host’s file system accesses the
partitions without any knowledge of partitioning and the physical
structure of the disk. Concatenation is the process of grouping several
smaller physical drives and presenting them to the host as one logical
drive (see Figure 2-11).

File System
A file is a collection of related records or data stored as a unit with a name. A
file system is a hierarchical structure of files. File systems enable 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. It provides users with the functionality to create,
modify, delete, and access files. Access to the files on the disks is controlled
by the permissions given to the file by the owner, which are also maintained
by the file system.
• FAT 32 (File Allocation Table) for Microsoft Windows
• NT File System (NTFS) for Microsoft Windows
• UNIX File System (UFS) for UNIX
• Extended File System (EXT2/3) for LinuxAli Broumandnia, Broumandnia@gmail.com 42

A file system block is the smallest “container” of physical disk
space allocated for data. Each file system block is a contiguous
area on the physical disk. The block size of a file system is fixed at
the time of its creation. File system size depends on block size and
the total number of blocks of data stored. A file can span multiple
file system blocks because most files are larger than the predefined
block size of the file system. File system blocks cease to be
contiguous (i.e., become fragmented) when new blocks are added
or deleted. Over time, as files grow larger, the file system becomes
increasingly fragmented. Figure 2-12 shows the following process
of mapping user files to the disk storage subsystem with an LVM:

1) Files are created and managed by users and applications.
2) These files reside in the file systems.
3) The file systems are then mapped to units of data, or file
system blocks.
4) The file system blocks are mapped to logical extents.
5) These in turn are mapped to disk physical extents either by
the operating system or by the LVM.
6) These physical extents are mapped to the disk storage
subsystem.Ali Broumandnia, Broumandnia@gmail.com 45

Summary
This chapter detailed the storage system environment the host, connectivity,
and storage. The data flows from an application to storage through these
components. Physical and logical components of these entities affect the
overall performance of the storage system environment. Storage is the most
important component in the storage system environment. The hard disk drive
(HDD) is the most popular storage device that uses magnetic media for
accessing and storing data for performance-intensive applications. Logically,
the HDD can be viewed in sectors, tracks, and cylinders, which form the
basis of disk addressing. This chapter detailed the fundamental laws that
govern HDD performance. Overall performance depends on disk response
time, which consists of seek time, rotational latency, and disk service time.
Modern disk storage systems use multiple disks and techniques such as RAID
to meet the capacity and performance requirements of applications, as
described in the next chapter.Ali Broumandnia, Broumandnia@gmail.com 46

Chapter 2

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