Distributed Storage and Computer Forensic

joint lecture of Prof. Christian Schindelhauer and Amir Alsbih (Haufe-Lexware)

News

• 14.10. 2011 Webpage online
• 24.10. 2011 First lecture
• 16.12. 2011 Certificate in websystem changed
• 12.01. 2012 Computer Forensics part starts
• 16.02. 2012 Exercise will for once take place in  Building 052-02-017

Contents

These days even end consumers use storage area networks in their homes. This development was enabled by the massive price fall of mass storage and the transition of home video from tape recorders to home computers. Another trend is to outsource storage into the Internet where companies like Google, Amazon, and Apple are selling online storage at cheap prices. 

In this lecture we will give an introduction to the algorithms and methods used in modern distributed storage systems. We will start at the physical level of storing data, have a look at the networking issues, and will talk about management of storage systems. At the end will focus on data safety and distributed storage area networks.

• Organization, introduction, motivation 
• Hardware: hard disks, flash memory 
• File systems 
• Distributed file systems 
• Connections and interfaces 
• Storage organisation 
• Selected topics of distributed systems

• Conflict resolution 
• Caching strategies 

• Redundancy mechanisms

• Raid and replication 
• Coding theory 

• Distributed storage systems
• Internet storage systems 
• Forensic

Organisation

Schedule

• Lecture
  • Monday, 12:00 - 13:00 c.t., Building 101 - 010-014
  • Thursday, 10:00 - 12:00 c.t., Building 101 - 010-014
• Exercises
  • Monday, 13:00 - 14:00 c.t., Building 101 - 010-014
  • Thursday, 14:00 - 15:00 c.t., Building 051 - 00-034

Forum

Please use the forum for general questions about the lecture. Maybe your question and the answer is probably interesting to other students. Please feel free to start new threads and interesting discussion.

Material

Slides

• Lecture 1: Organization, Motivation, Overview pdf (24.10.2011)
• Lecture 2: Disks pdf (24.10.2011)
• Lecture 3: SSD pdf (31.10.2011)
• Lecture 4: Volumen manager, RAID pdf (3.11.2011)
• Lecture 5: RAID6 Codes pdf (3.11.2011)
• Lecture 6: File systems pdf (14.11.2011)
• Lecture 7: Storage Virtualization and DHT pdf (17.11.2011)
• Lecture 8: Analysis of DHT pdf (18.11.2011)
• Lecture 9: DHHT pdf (01.12.2011)
• Lecture 10: P2P Storage pdf (12.12.2011)
• Lecture 11: Forensics pdf (12.01.2012)
• Lecture 12: Forensics pdf (16.01.2012)
• Lecture 13: Forensics pdf (19.01.2012)
• Lecture 14: Forensics pdf (23.01.2012)
• Lecture 15: Forensics pdf (26.01.2012)
• Lecture 16: Forensics pdf (30.01.2012)
• Lecture 17: Networking pdf (09.02.2012)
• Lecture 18: Forensics pdf (13.02.2012)

Recordings

• Lecture 1: Organization, Motivation, Overview, no recording because of technical problems (24.10.2011)
• Lecture 2: Hard Discs mp4, (last 5 minutes missing) (27.10.2011)
• Lecture 3: Solid State Discs mp4, (31.10.2011)
• Lecture 4: RAID mp4, (03.11.2011)
• Lecture 5: RAID-6 mp4, (07.11.2011)
• Lecture 6: RAID-6 Encoding mp4, (10.11.2011)
• Lecture 7: File Systems mp4, (14.11.2011)
• Lecture 8: B*-Trees, Virtualization mp4 (17.11.2011)
• Lecture 9: DHT mp4 (21.11.2011)
• Lecture 10: Analysis of DHT mp4 (24.11.2011)
• Lecture 11: Balls into bins mp4 (28.11.2011)
• Lecture 12: DHHT: The linear method mp4 (01.12.2011)
• Lecture 13: DHHT: The logarithmic method mp4 (05.12.2011)
• Lecture 14: Assignment problem and linear programming mp4 (08.12.2011)
• Lecture 15: Assignment problem and linear programming mp4 (12.12.2011)
• Lecture 16: P2P Chord mp4 (15.12.2011)
• Lecture 17: Pastry mp4 (19.12.2011)
• Lecture 18: Tapestry, Past mp4 (22.12.2011)
• Lecture 19: Oceanstore mp4 (09.01.2012)
• Lecture 20: Computer Forensic 1 mp4 (12.01.2012)
• Lecture 21: Computer Forensic 2 mp4 (16.01.2012, no audio)
• Lecture 22: Computer Forensic 3 mp4 (19.01.2012)
• Lecture 23: Computer Forensic 4 mp4 (23.01.2012)
• Lecture 24: Computer Forensic 5 avi (26.01.2012)
• Lecture 25: Computer Forensic 6 avi (30.01.2012)
• Lecture 26: Computer Forensic 7 avi (02.02.2012)
• Lecture 27: Computer Forensic 8 avi (06.02.2012)
• Lecture 28: Networking mp4 (09.02.2012)
• Lecture 29: Computer Forensic 9 avi (13.02.2012)
• Lecture 30: Computer Forensic 10 avi (16.02.2012)

Exercises

Submit solutions over our websystem. Deadline for exercise submission is Sunday evening 11:59 pm.

• Exercise 1 pdf (25.10.2011)
• Exercise 2 pdf (1.11.2011)
• Exercise 3 pdf (8.11.2011)
• Exercise 4 pdf (15.11.2011)
• Exercise 5 pdf (22.11.2011)
• Exercise 6 pdf (29.11.2011)
• Exercise 7 pdf (6.12.2011)
• Exercise 8 pdf (13.12.2011)
• Exercise 9 pdf (20.12.2011)
• Exercise 10 pdf (11.01.2012)
• Exercise 11 pdf (17.01.2012)
• Exercise 12 zip (25.01.2012)
• Exercise 13 zip (02.02.2012)

Exam

There will be oral exams at the end of the lecture. Students are allowed to use a selection of their exercise solutions in the exam. To be selected the solution should be submitted to the tutor during the semester within the deadline, also a review has to be done on the solutions of five peers. Furthermore, non relevant or wrong solutions may not be selected.

Literature

• Real Digital Forensics: Computer Security and Incident Response
• File System Forensic Analysis
• Hacking Exposed Computer Forensics, Second Edition: Computer Forensics Secrets & Solutions
• Storage Networks Explained, Basics and Application of Fibre Channel SAN, SAN, iSCSI and InfiniBand, Ulf Troppens, Rainer Erkens, Wolfgang Müller
• Technological impact of magnetic hard disk drives on storage systems, Grochowski, R. D. Halem, IBM SYSTEMS JOURNAL, VOL 42, NO 2, 2003
• A Tutorial on Reed-Solomon Coding for Fault-Tolerance in RAID-like Systems
  James S. Plank , 1999 (pdf)