DEA-1TT5 Storage Systems Fundamentals 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: What is the function of a Host Bus Adapter (HBA) in a storage network?
- It provides additional RAM to the server
- It connects a server to a storage network such as Fibre Channel or iSCSI (Correct answer)
- It manages the RAID configuration on the server
- It acts as a network switch for storage traffic
Correct answer: It connects a server to a storage network such as Fibre Channel or iSCSI
An HBA is a hardware card installed in a server that provides connectivity to a storage network, handling protocol conversion and I/O offloading from the CPU.
Question 2: Which storage connectivity protocol uses TCP/IP to carry SCSI commands over an Ethernet network?
- Fibre Channel (FC)
- iSCSI (Correct answer)
- FCoE
- NVMe-oF
Correct answer: iSCSI
iSCSI (Internet Small Computer Systems Interface) encapsulates SCSI commands within TCP/IP packets, enabling block storage access over standard Ethernet infrastructure.
Question 3: What is 'thin provisioning' in storage management?
- Allocating the exact amount of physical storage as requested upfront
- Allocating storage space on demand rather than pre-allocating the full requested capacity (Correct answer)
- Reducing the thickness of disk platters for higher density
- Provisioning storage only during off-peak hours
Correct answer: Allocating storage space on demand rather than pre-allocating the full requested capacity
Thin provisioning allocates storage space dynamically as data is actually written, rather than reserving all requested capacity upfront, improving storage utilization.
Question 4: In storage, what does 'deduplication' accomplish?
- It creates duplicate copies of critical data for redundancy
- It eliminates redundant copies of data to reduce storage consumption (Correct answer)
- It duplicates storage controllers for high availability
- It replicates data across multiple storage tiers
Correct answer: It eliminates redundant copies of data to reduce storage consumption
Deduplication identifies and removes duplicate data blocks, storing only unique data and replacing duplicates with pointers, significantly reducing storage capacity usage.
Question 5: What is the role of cache in a storage array?
- To permanently store frequently accessed data
- To temporarily hold data in fast memory to accelerate read and write operations (Correct answer)
- To compress data before writing to disk
- To encrypt data in transit
Correct answer: To temporarily hold data in fast memory to accelerate read and write operations
Cache (typically DRAM or flash) acts as a high-speed buffer between hosts and spinning disks, absorbing write bursts and serving frequently read data without disk access.
Question 6: Which term describes the practice of moving data between storage tiers automatically based on access patterns?
- Manual tiering
- Automated Storage Tiering (AST) (Correct answer)
- Static partitioning
- Volume mirroring
Correct answer: Automated Storage Tiering (AST)
Automated Storage Tiering (AST) monitors data access frequency and automatically moves hot data to faster tiers and cold data to slower, cheaper tiers.
