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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
D-Blade
Network
Protocols
WAFL
RAID
Storage
M-Host
Clients
Physical Memory
NVRAM
FreeBSD
Disk Array
Write Requests
Write Requests
Write requests are received by Data ONTAP through multiple protocols:
CIFS NFS FCP iSCSI HTTP WebDAV
Network Stack
RS-232
Protocols
Memory Buffer
SAN Service
N V R A M
NFS Service
WAFL
UNIX Client
NIC
CIFS Service
RAID
Windows Client
Storage
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.
Network Stack
RS-232
Protocols
Memory Buffer
SAN Service
N V R A M
NFS Service
WAFL
UNIX Client
NIC
CIFS Service
RAID
Windows Client
Storage
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.
Network Stack
RS-232
Protocols
Memory Buffer
SAN Service
N V R A M
NFS Service
WAFL
UNIX Client
NIC
CIFS Service
RAID
4k
Windows Client
Storage
Network Stack
RS-232
Protocols
Memory Buffer
SAN Service
N V R A M
NFS Service
WAFL
UNIX Client
NIC
CIFS Service
RAID
Windows Client
Storage
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)
Read Requests
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
Network Stack
RS-232
Protocols
Memory Buffer
SAN Service
N V R A M
NFS Service
WAFL Cache
UNIX Client
NIC
CIFS Service
RAID
Windows Client
Storage
Network Stack
RS-232
Protocols
Memory Buffer
SAN Service
N V R A M
NFS Service
WAFL Cache
UNIX Client
NIC
CIFS Service
RAID
Windows Client
Storage
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
Exercise
Module 16: WAFL Simplified Estimated Time: 15 minutes