Tru64 UNIX System Administrator's Guide
Whether you're a novice or seasoned programmer, this reference gives a detailed examination of admin tasks and provides advice to stabalize and keep systems available.
TABLE OF CONTENTS Tru64 UNIX System Administrator's Guide
Chapter 3: Storage
In this chapter, we explore Tru64 UNIX storage. The goal of this chapter will be to provide information to the reader in order to understand enough about devices to handle most system administration tasks. Naturally, a complete discussion of this topic could take many more pages than are available here. In this chapter, we will start with some theory and then move on to very practical concepts.
3.1 Storage Systems Concepts
To better understand how UNIX file systems are implemented in later discussions, it is important to know some of the terminology and concepts of storage. This section is an examination of generic concepts of storage and disk drive terminology so these ideas will make sense in the discussion of file systems.
3.1.1 Disk Drive Terminology
A single disk is based on a single individual spindle that comprises a storage subsystem. Sometimes a RAID device, which can comprise many individual disks, is referred to as a single disk since it presents itself to UNIX that way. For our purposes in this section, we are referring to concepts related to a single disk device; later sections will cover the RAID device concepts and terminology.
A disk drive is a mechanical device. It consists of moving parts such as servos and drive motors that can wear out after a certain period of time. Despite this, these devices have become very reliable over time with very high mean time between failures (MTBF) associated with them. A MTBF of over 500,000 hours is...
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