COMH9004 - Cloud Storage

Infrastructures: Assignment1 2019

1) Give a brief outline (max 10 bullet point items) of the history of data storage, starting with direct attached
storage. Include Intelligence storage array types and converged infrastructures.

e.g. 1990 - Direct attached storage – Servers with internal rotating SCSI disks – capacity 120MB

The objective is that students do research to obtain a high-level appreciation of the progression of storage
technologies
(5)

2) Outline the difference between storage bandwidth, storage IOPS and storage latency and how each influences
the cost of data storage design. When outlining the cost effects explain causes/limitations and administrative
controls for each and give examples of how storage administrators design around these capabilities?

The objective of this question is that students show an understanding of the key data storage principles:
Bandwidth, IOPS, latency and how to consider these during storage design and how optimizing each influences
design cost.

(MAX 800 words) (15)

3) For RAID 5 and 6 – explain A) what the write penalty for each is B) why there is this particular write penalty and
C) why this important to consider when designing storage for particular application types. A) 5 marks B) 3
marks C) 3 marks
(11)

The objective of this question is to ensure students understand the principles of RAID and why they are
important in data storage design

4) Show how the parity drive can be used to rebuild the RAID5 data from a missing disk. If this is the data
on the three disks
| 111 | 010 | 011 |

a) Firstly, show what the data looks like on the 4 th parity disk (6)
b) If the middle drive fails | 111 | 010 | 011 | show how the parity & other disks are used to
rebuild the data (6)

The objective of this question is that students show an understanding of PARITY calculations
 (12) 5)
Write maximum 300 words explaining what object storage is and how this differs to file storage and traditional block
storage solutions.

3 marks for each file system type

The objective of this question is that students can articulate the differences between file, block and object
storage

(18)

6) Discuss the differences/similarities, capabilities, limitations and use cases of each of the following protocols
 SCSI,
 Fibre Channel (FCP),
 iSCSI,
 NAS and
 FCoE

2 marks for each difference / similarity (10)

The objective is that students show a basic understanding of the common SAN storage protocols and use
cases. (28)

7) Review the Dell EMC product solution page and create a table with the following headings (don’t include
marketing verbiage – facts only

Storage Family model Target customer use Capacity range Connectivity File systems Additional
family case supported Feature
capabilities

The objective is that students understand and review a storage vendor product suite to identify product to
application and use cases
(20)

8) A customer has purchased a Unity 450F all flash storage array. The director wants to understand the
benefits of this device, how it functions and at a high level how data is persisted to disk. Make assumptions
about the protocols and configurations and explain simply how this happens.

The objective is that students understand the concept of an intelligent storage array - the data paths i.e. the
movement of the I/Olike a write or read, the components of an intelligent storage array and how physical
disks are abstracted to logical volumes and how this is presented to a host file system.

(16)
 9) Give a brief outline on the principles of Disaster recovery and discuss in detail two technologies that can be
used to protect a customer from a single point of failure to ensure applications continue operation without
data loss, in the event of a major natural disaster like flooding or earthquake

The objective is that students do research on storage technologies that are used in disaster recovery and be
able to articulate clearly how the technology works

(20)

10) Describe these Amazon cloud storage technologies and suggest a use case showing how this
would be implemented by a customer. You also need to indicate the location of the
compute/storage.

e.g. Is the compute in “your data centre” and the storage is in the cloud? Or is the compute in the cloud
– i.e. you use this as an IaaS compute node and the Storage is also in the cloud.
Amazon Location of Location of Use case Mark
technology compute (Public storage
or private) (public/private)

Amazon S3 1,1,3 (5)

Amazon Backup 5

Amazon EBS 5

Amazon EFS 5

Amazon FSx 5

Amazone S3 5
Glacier

AWS Snowball 5

ASE Storage 5
gateway

(40)

The objective of this question is that students understand cloud storage solutions provided by
Amazon and that this can be related to other cloud storage services like google.
 11) You are asked to configure a 500GB LUN on an EMC CX4 intelligent storage array and connect it to a new
host. Use one of the storage arrays listed below to capture screen shots of every step necessary to present
a LUN to the host.

Ensure you list the following:

• Every step and assumption, in the correct order, starting with creating a RAID group AND storage pool, that is
required for the hosts/server to see the 500GB LUN

[18]

[Total 203]
Storage Unit1 CX4

172.20.31.230 172.20.31.231 user

Storage Unit2 CX4

Storage Unit3 CX4

Storage Unit4 CX4

Please

1. Use with respect as if it were your own!

NB – it is expected that you reference clearly. No referencing means your document will NOT be accepted.