Sun Network File System

Presentation 3
Group A4
Sean Hudson, Syeda Taib, Manasi
Kapadia
Problem
How can physically distributed
computers share a file system?
Solution

Sun’s Network File System (NFS)

Background

Developed by Sun.
The NFS specification is platform
independent:
– Portable
– Operates in a heterogeneous environment.
Fundamentals

NFS was developed to allow a machine to

mount a disk partition on a remote
machine as if it were local.
This allows for fast, seamless sharing of
file across network.
There is no global naming hierarchy.
NFS allows any machine to be client or
server.
NFS Protocols

Mount Protocol
File Access Protocol
Their functionality is defined as a set of
Remote Procedure Calls (RPC).
Mount Protocol

Client Server
home usr
Request

Dir1 Dir2 Open Local

Mount
Mount Protocol (cont.)

After mount request, server returns a file

handle (a key for further access).
Mount operation changes only the user’s
view.
NFS Protocol

Client Server

RPCCalls
RPC Calls

• Search
• Read/Write
• Manipulate links/directories
Implementation

Three major layers of NFS architecture:

System Call layer:
– This handles calls like OPEN, READ, and
CLOSE.
Virtual File System (VFS) layer:
– distinguishes local files from remote ones.
NFS service layer:
– implements the RPC calls.
Schematic view of NFS

Client Server

System call layer

Virtual file system layer Virtual file system layer

Local OS NFS client NFS server Local OS

Message to Message
Local disk Local disk
server from client
Pathname Translation

This is done by breaking the path into

component names and performing a
separate NFS lookup for every pair of
component name and directory v-node.
Lookups are performed remotely by the
server.
Performance

Clients cache file attributes (i-nodes) and

file data.
Cached data blocks and directories are
discarded periodically.
When a cached file is open, the time it was
last modified is checked at the server. If
necessary, a new copy is brought from the
server.
Performance (cont.)

Servers keep a cache to reduce disk I/O.

Read-ahead caching
Write-behind caching
– Periodically, modified cache blocks are
written back to servers.
Issues

Synchronization of file accesses are not

well-defined.
Widely criticized for not implementing the
UNIX semantics.
Conclusion

NFS is a simple, popular and widely used file system!

 References

 Casvant, Thomas and Singhal, Mukesh. Distributed

Computing Systems. IEEE Press.
 Mullender, Sape. Distributed Systems. ACM Press.
 Pradeep, Sinha K. Distributed Operating Systems. IEEE
Computer Society Press.
 Stallings, William. Operating Systems.
 Tanenbaum, Andrew. Distributed Operating Systems.