You are on page 1of 21

WAFL Simplified

Module 16 Data ONTAP 8.0 7-Mode Administration

Module Objectives
By the end of this module, you should be able to: Describe how data is written to and read from a WAFL file system on a volume Describe the WAFL file system, including consistency points, RAID management, and storage levels Describe how RAID is used to protect disk data Describe how the WAFL file system processes write and read requests

2009 NetApp. All rights reserved.

Data ONTAP 8.0 7-Mode Architecture

Client Protocol Access

D-Blade

Network

Protocols

WAFL

RAID

Storage

M-Host

Clients

Physical Memory

NVRAM

FreeBSD

Disk Array

2009 NetApp. All rights reserved.

Write Requests

2009 NetApp. All rights reserved.

Write Requests
Write requests are received by Data ONTAP through multiple protocols:
CIFS NFS FCP iSCSI HTTP WebDAV

Write requests are buffered into:


System memory NVRAM
2009 NetApp. All rights reserved.

Write Request Data Flow: Write Buffer


Network

Network Stack
RS-232

Protocols
Memory Buffer
SAN Service

NVLOG NVLOG NVLOG NVLOG NVLOG NVRAM Full

N V R A M

SAN Host HBA

NFS Service

WAFL

UNIX Client

NIC

CIFS Service

RAID

Windows Client

Storage

2009 NetApp. All rights reserved.

Consistency Point
A consistency point (CP) is a completely selfconsistent image of the file system. Although dynamic, if the file system were frozen momentarily to capture its structurethat is a CP A CP occurs when designated data is written to a disk and a new root inode is determined A CP occurs for multiple reasons, including the following:
One bank of the NVRAM card is full 10 seconds have elapsed
2009 NetApp. All rights reserved.

Consistency Point (Cont.)


During a CP, Data ONTAP flushes writes to disk
Always writes to new data blocks The volume is always consistent on disk

When Data ONTAP flushes memory to disk:


It updates the file system atomically, meaning that the entire write must be completed or the entire write is rolled back This includes all metadata After checking, the NVRAM is cleared

2009 NetApp. All rights reserved.

Write Request Data Flow: WAFL to RAID


Network

Network Stack
RS-232

Protocols
Memory Buffer
SAN Service

NVLOG NVLOG NVLOG NVLOG NVLOG NVRAM Full

N V R A M

SAN Host HBA

NFS Service

WAFL

UNIX Client

NIC

CIFS Service

RAID

Windows Client

Storage

2009 NetApp. All rights reserved.

Consistency Point: WAFL to RAID


The RAID layer calculates the parity of the data:
To protect it from one or more disk failures To protect stripes of data Also calculates block or zone checksums

If a data disk fails, the missing information can be calculated from parity The storage system can be configured as either:
RAID 4Allows one disk failure in the RAID group RAID-DPAllows up to two disk failures in the RAID group
2009 NetApp. All rights reserved.

Write Request Data Flow: RAID to Storage


Network

Network Stack
RS-232

Protocols
Memory Buffer
SAN Service

NVLOG NVLOG NVLOG NVLOG NVLOG NVRAM Full

N V R A M

SAN Host HBA

NFS Service

WAFL

UNIX Client

NIC

CIFS Service

RAID

4k
Windows Client

Block or zone checksum computed

Storage

2009 NetApp. All rights reserved.

Consistency Point: RAID to Storage


Storage layer commits the data and parity to the physical disks The root inode is updated to point to the new file inodes on the disk The NVRAM is flushed and made available The CP now is complete

2009 NetApp. All rights reserved.

Write Request Data Flow: Storage Writes


Network

Network Stack
RS-232

Protocols
Memory Buffer
SAN Service

NVLOG NVLOG NVLOG NVLOG NVLOG NVRAM Full

N V R A M

SAN Host HBA

NFS Service

WAFL

UNIX Client

NIC

CIFS Service

RAID

Windows Client

Storage

2009 NetApp. All rights reserved.

NVRAM
Data ONTAP writes from system memory
NVRAM is never used for normal write operations NVRAM is backed up with a battery

If a system failure occurs before the completion of a consistency point, the data is read from NVRAM and added back to system memory buffer when the system is brought back online (or by the partner machine in a high-availability controller configuration)

2009 NetApp. All rights reserved.

Read Requests

2009 NetApp. All rights reserved.

Read Requests
Every time a read request is received, WAFL does one of the following:
Reads the data from the system memory, also known as cache Reads the data from the disks

The cache is populated by:


Data recently written to disk Data recently read from disk

2009 NetApp. All rights reserved.

Read Request Data Flow: Cache


Network

Network Stack
RS-232

Protocols
Memory Buffer
SAN Service

N V R A M

SAN Host HBA

NFS Service

WAFL Cache

UNIX Client

NIC

CIFS Service

RAID

Windows Client

Storage

2009 NetApp. All rights reserved.

Read Request Data Flow: Read from Disk


Network

Network Stack
RS-232

Protocols
Memory Buffer
SAN Service

N V R A M

SAN Host HBA

NFS Service

WAFL Cache

UNIX Client

NIC

CIFS Service

RAID

Windows Client

Storage

2009 NetApp. All rights reserved.

Module Summary
In this module, you should have learned to: Describe how data is written to and read from a WAFL file system on a volume Describe the WAFL file system, including consistency points, RAID management, and storage levels Describe how RAID is used to protect disk data Describe how the WAFL file system processes write and read requests

2009 NetApp. All rights reserved.

Exercise
Module 16: WAFL Simplified Estimated Time: 15 minutes

Check Your Understanding


What is a consistency point?
A completely self-consistent image of the entire file system

What is the purpose of RAID?


To protect dataRAID is the method used to protect disk data by which a parity value is calculated across the disks in 4-KB blocks

What is the storage layer?


Handles the I/Os to disk and checks for disk failures

2009 NetApp. All rights reserved.

You might also like