application , compliances , security , visio-stencils

Sample Visio – NFS Protocol Stack / VFS drawing

July 16, 2012

Free Visio Document download file

NFS Protocol Stack / VFS

NFS/DFS:  An Overview

  • Unix distributed filesystems are used to
    • centralize administration of disks
    • provide transparent file sharing across a network
  • Three main systems:
    • NFS: Network File Systems developed by Sun Microsystems 1984
    • AFS: Andrew Filesystem developed by Carnegie-Mellon University
  • Unix NFS packages usually include client and server components
    • A DFS server shares local files on the network
    • A DFS client mounts shared files locally
    • a Unix system can be a client, server or both depending on which commands are executed
  • Can be fast in comparasion to many other DFS
    • Very little overhead
    • Simple and stable protocols
    • Based on RPC (The R family and S family)

Overview of NFS

  • Developed by Sun Microsystems 1984
  • Independent of operating system, network, and transport protocols.
  • Available on many platforms including:
    • Linux, Windows, OS/2, MVS, VMS, AIX, HP-UX….
  • Restrictions of NFS
    • stateless open architecture
    • Unix filesystem semantics not guaranteed
    • No access to remote special files (devices, etc.)
  • Restricted locking
    • file locking is implemented through a separate lock daemon
  • Industry standard is currently nfsV3 as default in
    • RedHat, SuSE, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Slackware, Solaris, HP-UX, Gentoo
  • Kernel NFS or UserSpace NFS

Versions of NFS

  • Version 2:
    • Supports files up to 4GB long (most common 2GByte)
    • Requires an NFS server to successfully write data to its disks before the write request is considered successful
    • Has a limit of 8KB per read or write request. (1 TCP Window)
  • Version 3 is the industry standard:
    • Supports extremely large file sizes of up to 264 – 1 bytes
    • Supports files up to 8 Exabyte
    • Supports the NFS server data updates as being successful when the data is written to the server’s cache
    • Negotiates the data limit per read or write request between the client and server to a mutually decided optimal value.
  • Version 4 is coming:
    • File locking and mounting are integrated in the NFS daemon and operate on a single, well known TCP port, making network security easier
    • Support for the bundling of requests from each client provides more efficient processing by the NFS server.
    • File locking is mandatory, whereas before it was optional

NFS Daemons

  • Portmap The primary daemon upon which all the RPC rely
    • Manages connections for applications that use the RPC specification
    • Listens to TCP port 111 for initial connection
    • negotiate a range of TCP ports, usually above port 1024, for further comms.
    • You need to run portmap on both the NFS server and client.
  • Nfs (rpc.nfsd)

–        Starts the RPC processes needed to serve shared NFS file systems

–        Listens to TCP or UDP port 2049 (port can vary)

–        The nfs daemon needs to be run on the NFS server only.

  • Nfslock (rpc.mountd)
    • Used to allow NFS clients to lock files on the server via RPC processes.
    • Neogated port UDP/TCP port
    • The nfslock daemon needs to be run on both the NFS server and client
  • netfs
    • Allows RPC processes run on NFS clients to mount NFS filesystems on the server.
    • The nfslock daemon needs to be run on the NFS client only.

www.bestitdocuments.com