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Metadata Controller
Metadata controller (or MDC) is a storage area network (SAN) technology for managing file locking File locking is a mechanism that restricts access to a computer file, or to a region of a file, by allowing only one user or process to modify or delete it at a specific time and to prevent reading of the file while it's being modified or deleted ..., space allocation and data access authorization. This is needed when several clients are given block level access to the same disk volume, data storage sharing. MDCs are only used on high-end servers. These are never found on user computers. In the absence of MDC over a SAN there is no possible way of ensuring privacy of the stored data. This controller can also play its role as a sharing device in case the administrators allow other servers to access certain blocks in a particular SAN. The access granted to the servers is of different levels. Some times it may happen that the server is not able to see a block or make changes in it in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Storage Area Network
A storage area network (SAN) or storage network is a computer network which provides access to consolidated, block-level data storage. SANs are primarily used to access data storage devices, such as disk arrays and tape libraries from servers so that the devices appear to the operating system as direct-attached storage. A SAN typically is a dedicated network of storage devices not accessible through the local area network (LAN). Although a SAN provides only block-level access, file systems built on top of SANs do provide file-level access and are known as shared-disk file systems. Newer SAN configurations enable hybrid SAN and allow traditional block storage that appears as local storage but also object storage for web services through APIs. Storage architectures Storage area networks (SANs) are sometimes referred to as ''network behind the servers'' and historically developed out of a centralized data storage model, but with its own data network. A SAN is, at its simp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
File Locking
File locking is a mechanism that restricts access to a computer file, or to a region of a file, by allowing only one user or process to modify or delete it at a specific time and to prevent reading of the file while it's being modified or deleted. Systems implement locking to prevent the classic ''interceding update'' scenario, which is a typical example of a race condition, by enforcing the serialization of update processes to any given file. The following example illustrates the interceding update problem: # Process A reads a customer record from a file containing account information, including the customer's account balance and phone number. # Process B now reads the same record from the same file, so it has its own copy. # Process A changes the account balance in its copy of the customer record and writes the record back to the file. # Process B, which still has the original ''stale'' value for the account balance in its copy of the customer record, updates the account balan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
