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Basics of NAS protocols

Contributors kevin-hoke
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NAS protocols are ways for multiple clients on a network to access the same data on a storage system, such as Cloud Volumes Service on GCP. NFS and SMB are the defined NAS protocols and operate on a client/server basis where Cloud Volumes Service acts as the server. Clients send access, read, and write requests to the server, and the server is responsible for coordinating the locking mechanisms for files, storing permissions and handling identity and authentication requests.

For example, the following general process is followed if a NAS client wants to create a new file in a folder.

  1. The client asks the server for information about the directory (permissions, owner, group, file ID, available space, and so on); the server responds with the information if the requesting client and user have the necessary permissions on the parent folder.

  2. If the permissions on the directory allow access, the client then asks the server if the file name being created already exists in the file system. If the file name is already in use, creation fails. If the file name does not exist, the server lets the client know it can proceed.

  3. The client issues a call to the server to create the file with the directory handle and file name and sets the access and modified times. The server issues a unique file ID to the file to make sure that no other files are created with the same file ID.

  4. The client sends a call to check file attributes before the WRITE operation. If permissions allow it, the client then writes the new file. If locking is used by the protocol/application, the client asks the server for a lock to prevent other clients from accessing the file while locked to prevent data corruption.