CDCP Storage Data Center 5 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: What is the purpose of multipathing software in a SAN environment?
- To compress I/O streams before sending them to storage
- To provide redundant I/O paths between a host and storage, enabling load balancing and failover (Correct answer)
- To manage RAID parity calculations across controllers
- To schedule deduplication jobs during off-peak hours
Correct answer: To provide redundant I/O paths between a host and storage, enabling load balancing and failover
Multipathing software manages multiple physical paths between a host and storage array, enabling failover if one path fails and optionally balancing I/O across paths.
Question 2: In data center storage design, what does 'geo-redundancy' refer to?
- Using drives with different physical geometries for read/write heads
- Maintaining copies of data across geographically separated facilities (Correct answer)
- Configuring separate RAID groups per floor of a data center
- Partitioning storage by country code for compliance
Correct answer: Maintaining copies of data across geographically separated facilities
Geo-redundancy distributes data across physically separate locations to protect against site-level disasters such as fires, floods, or power outages.
Question 3: Which storage protocol encapsulates Fibre Channel frames inside Ethernet frames to converge SAN and LAN traffic on a single network?
- iSCSI
- NFS
- FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet) (Correct answer)
- SMB3
Correct answer: FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet)
FCoE wraps native Fibre Channel frames in Ethernet, allowing organizations to carry SAN traffic over a Converged Enhanced Ethernet (CEE) network alongside LAN data.
Question 4: What is the purpose of storage-level encryption in a data center?
- To improve read/write performance by offloading encryption to a dedicated coprocessor
- To protect data at rest from unauthorized access if physical media is removed or stolen (Correct answer)
- To reduce storage capacity requirements through compressed ciphertext
- To enable faster replication by encrypting only changed blocks
Correct answer: To protect data at rest from unauthorized access if physical media is removed or stolen
Storage-level encryption ensures that data on physical media is unreadable without the correct keys, protecting sensitive information from physical theft or unauthorized media access.
Question 5: What distinguishes scale-out storage from scale-up storage architecture?
- Scale-out uses tape drives; scale-up uses SSDs exclusively
- Scale-out adds capacity by adding more nodes to a cluster; scale-up adds capacity by upgrading a single system's components (Correct answer)
- Scale-up storage requires object protocols; scale-out requires block protocols
- Scale-out storage eliminates the need for any RAID protection
Correct answer: Scale-out adds capacity by adding more nodes to a cluster; scale-up adds capacity by upgrading a single system's components
Scale-out storage grows horizontally by adding independent nodes to a distributed cluster, while scale-up grows vertically by adding drives or controllers to a single system.
Question 6: In CDCP storage planning, what is the recommended approach for handling write-intensive database workloads?
- Use RAID 5 arrays with high-capacity SATA drives to minimize cost
- Deploy all-flash or high-performance SAS drives in RAID 10 for low latency and write redundancy (Correct answer)
- Route database writes to tape for sequential performance
- Use NAS with NFS for maximum concurrent write access
Correct answer: Deploy all-flash or high-performance SAS drives in RAID 10 for low latency and write redundancy
Write-intensive databases require low-latency, high-IOPS storage, and RAID 10 on flash or high-speed SAS provides both performance and redundancy without parity overhead.
Question 7: What is the purpose of a backup target deduplication appliance (such as EMC Data Domain) in a data center?
- To accelerate Fibre Channel zoning configuration
- To reduce backup storage capacity requirements by deduplicating backup data streams inline or post-process (Correct answer)
- To provide a gateway between NAS and SAN protocols
- To replicate Fibre Channel LUNs to an off-site tape library
Correct answer: To reduce backup storage capacity requirements by deduplicating backup data streams inline or post-process
Backup deduplication appliances identify and store only unique data blocks from backup jobs, dramatically reducing the storage footprint and enabling faster replication of backups off-site.
CDCP Storage Data Center 5
What is the purpose of multipathing software in a SAN environment?