Storage Networking Lecture

Flashcards covering key vocabulary and concepts related to storage networking as discussed in the lecture.

Storage Growth

The increase in the amount of data generated and stored over time.

Continuous Availability

The requirement for systems to be operational and accessible at all times without interruptions.

Scalability

The ability of a system to handle increasing amounts of work or to be enlarged to accommodate that growth.

RAID

A technology that combines multiple physical disk drives into a single unit to improve performance and fault tolerance.

Block-level Access

A method of accessing data where operations are performed on blocks of data rather than individual files.

File-level Access

A method of accessing data where operations are performed on files, using file names and making use of directory structures.

Hardware RAID

A RAID configuration that utilizes dedicated RAID controllers for volume management and parity computation.

Software RAID

A RAID configuration managed by the server’s operating system, where parity computations increase overhead on the CPU.

RAID 0

A RAID level that provides data striping but no redundancy.

RAID 1

A RAID level that creates mirrored volumes for redundancy.

RAID 5

A data storage virtualization technology that combines multiple disk drive components into a logical unit for redundancy and performance. It uses striping with parity, allowing for data recovery in the event of a single drive failure.

iSCSI

A protocol that allows SCSI commands to be sent over TCP/IP, enabling block-level storage access via existing IP networks.

NAS (Network Attached Storage)

A storage device that connects to a network allowing data access to clients through file-level protocols.

SAN (Storage Area Network)

A dedicated network that provides access to consolidated, block-level storage.

Distributed File Systems

File systems that manage and access files distributed across a network, such as NFS, SMB/CIFS, and AFP.