Assignment 1 (2012)

You are required to answer any 4 of the following 5 questions relating to advanced aspects of modern file-systems. The assignment should be at most 2 pages long and submitted in pdf format.

Each question is worth equal marks. Marking will be based on correctness, conciseness, and clarity.

Questions

1. Explain how "journaling" works and the advantages and disadvantages it brings to a filesystem.
2. What advantages do "extent-based" filesystems have over older systems? Compare some current extent-based filesystems.
3. Explain "snapshot"ing and how it is used in modern filesystems. What key technique is used to enable snapshotting?
4. Why is it considered important for some contemporary filesystems to perform checksumming of the data blocks. Which filesystems do this?
5. How is the "copy-on-write" technique used within some filesystems? Analysis the advantage/disadvantage of this approach.

Additional question for COMP6330 students

Students enrolled in the Masters-level COMP6330 course are required to answer the following additional question(your report may be atmost 2.5 pages long):

• What is block de-duplication and why might it be useful?

Use the the following command to submit your report:

submit comp3300 assign1 yourfile.pdf
or
submit comp6330 assign1 yourfile.pdf

This report must be your own work using your own words. Students found "cutting and pasting" text from other source will be given 0 for this assignment. Also it is important that all your sources are referenced.

Due Date

Both options are due Week 7 Friday 10pm (7/9/2012).

A late penalty of 10% per day applies (these are working days and apply from after the assignment is collected). The assignment will be collected some time after the deadline. Also note this penalty is caped so it does not take your assignment mark below 40%. Assignment work will not be accepted after the last day of semester. Extensions are possible in documented exceptional cases (e.g. medical certificate).