Huawei H19-308_V4.0 HCSA-Presales-Storage V4.0 Exam Practice Test

Huawei’s data protection solutions, particularly the OceanProtect and BCManager suites, support a wide range of backup targets to accommodate various Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO).

Disk (Option C):This is the most common modern backup media (Disk-to-Disk or D2D), offering fast backup and recovery speeds. Huawei's OceanProtect is a dedicated high-speed disk-based backup storage.

Tape Library (Option D):Traditionally used for long-term archiving (D2D2T), tape remains a cost-effective and reliable "offline" storage medium for compliance and disaster recovery.

Disc (Option A):Optical discs (like Blu-ray) are used in specific archival scenarios where "Write Once" (WORM) physical media is required for regulatory purposes.

Cloud (Option B):Modern Huawei solutions supportBackup to Cloud, where data is deduplicated, compressed, and sent to an off-site object storage provider (like Huawei Cloud OBS) for cost-effective disaster recovery without the need for a physical secondary site.

Direct-Attached Storage (DAS) is a traditional storage architecture where storage devices are connected directly to a host server. Huawei documentation defines the following key characteristics:

Direct Connection (Option C):DAS connects to the server via internal or external interfaces such as SATA, SAS, or SCSI, rather than through a storage network.

No Network Devices (Option A):Because it is a 1-to-1 connection, it does not require Fibre Channel switches or Ethernet switches to facilitate the link between the host and the storage. This makes it simple and cost-effective for small-scale deployments.

Block Storage Services (Option B):Like a SAN, DAS provides block-level access. The server’s operating system manages the file system (NTFS, EXT4, etc.) directly on the provided blocks.

While a server attached to DAS can share its files over a network (becoming a file server), the DAS itself is not a "File Storage Service" (Option D). In Huawei’s hierarchy, file services are the domain ofNAS (Network Attached Storage), which provides shared access to files via protocols like CIFS/SMB or NFS.

This statement is false because Huawei's new-generation OceanStor hybrid flash storage features a converged (Unified) architecture that supports Native NAS capabilities directly within the storage controllers. In older storage generations or with competitors, an external "NAS Gateway" or "Filer" was often required to provide file services on top of block storage.

Huawei’sHyperMetro for NASis a gateway-free active-active solution. The file systems are managed natively by the storage OS (OceanStor OS), allowing both SAN and NAS services to benefit from the same high-availability features. By eliminating the need for an external gateway, Huawei simplifies the network topology, reduces hardware costs (TCO), and minimizes latency by removing an extra processing hop for file data. This native integration allows for seamless cross-site active-active deployments for file protocols like CIFS/SMB and NFS, just as it does for block protocols.

Huawei’s HyperLock feature provides WORM (Write Once, Read Many) functionality for NAS file systems. When a file is placed in the WORM state, the storage system strictly enforces a policy where the file's data can be accessed and read by authorized users, but any attempt to modify, overwrite, or delete the file is blocked by the storage controller.

In the Huawei OceanStor system, a file enters the WORM state after it is "locked." Once locked, the file remains in a read-only state for a defined retention period. During this time, not even an administrator can modify the file's content or reduce its protection duration. This is critical for meeting regulatory compliance (such as SEC Rule 17a-4) and for protecting sensitive data against ransomware, as it ensures that once data is archived, it remains immutable and verifiable. Only after the retention period has expired can the file be deleted, though it can still never be modified.

In the Huawei OceanStor RAID 2.0+ architecture, Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) levels are used to balance performance, capacity, and reliability. RAID 0, also known as "striping," distributes data blocks across multiple physical disks to maximize I/O performance. By allowing multiple disks to be read or written simultaneously, it provides the highest throughput and capacity utilization (100%).

However, the defining characteristic of RAID 0 is the complete lack of redundancy. Unlike RAID 1 (Mirroring), RAID 5 (Parity), or RAID 6 (Dual Parity), RAID 0 does not store redundant information or parity bits. Huawei documentation explicitly states that if any single physical disk in a RAID 0 group fails, the entire RAID group becomes inaccessible, and all data within that group is lost. Therefore, RAID 0 is strictly recommended only for temporary data or scenarios where data loss is acceptable and maximum performance is the sole priority. For enterprise production environments, Huawei recommends RAID 5, RAID 6, or RAID-TP.

According to Huawei’s storage networking guides, Fibre Channel (FC) supports three primary physical topologies to facilitate communication between servers (initiators) and storage arrays (targets).

Point-to-point (Option C):This is the simplest topology where two nodes are directly connected. It provides dedicated bandwidth but lacks scalability.

Arbitrated loop (FC-AL) (Option D):In this setup, devices are connected in a loop shared by all nodes. While more scalable than point-to-point, only one pair of nodes can communicate at a time, leading to performance bottlenecks as more devices are added.

Fabric (FC-SW) (Option A):This is the most common enterprise topology, utilizing FC switches. It allows many-to-many communication, providing high scalability, redundancy, and independent bandwidth for each connection.

"Bus" (Option B) is a topology associated with older Ethernet or SCSI standards and is not a recognized topology in Fibre Channel networking. Huawei OceanStor Dorado and Hybrid systems primarily utilize theFabric topologyfor large-scale data center deployments to ensure maximum availability and performance through redundant switch fabrics.

In Huawei OceanStor storage systems utilizing RAID 2.0+ and the SmartMatrix architecture, the "write penalty" associated with traditional RAID is mitigated through Full-Stripe Writes. In a partial write (where only some data in a stripe is updated), a RAID 5 setup usually suffers a write penalty of 4 (Reading old data, reading old parity, writing new data, writing new parity).

However, Huawei's controllers utilize a large cache to aggregate incoming data. When enough data is collected to fill an entire stripe (e.g., 8 data chunks plus 1 parity chunk in an 8+1 RAID 5 setup), the system performs aFull-Stripe Write. In this scenario, the system calculates the parity in the CPU/cache and writes the entire stripe to the disks at once. Since no old data or old parity needs to be read from the physical disks before writing, the disk-levelwrite penalty is 0. This significantly enhances the write performance of hybrid arrays, especially those using mechanical HDDs which are highly sensitive to the latency of extra read/write operations.

Huawei OceanStor Dorado utilizes RAID 2.0+ block virtualization technology, which supports Dynamic RAID Reconstruction. In a traditional RAID environment, if a disk fails, the RAID group continues to operate in a "degraded" mode until the disk is replaced. However, in Dorado's RAID 2.0+, the system uses a distributed spare space policy where spare capacity is spread across all disks in the pool.

When one SSD fails in a storage pool originally configured with RAID 6 (7 data chunks + 2 parity chunks), the system identifies that it no longer has enough physical disks to maintain a 7+2 stripe width. To maintain the same level of protection (dual parity) while utilizing the remaining 8 disks, the system dynamically adjusts the RAID policy for new writes and reconstructed data toRAID 6 (6+2). This ensures that the data remains protected by two parity chunks even with a reduced disk count. This "shrinkage" of the stripe width allows the system to remain in a "healthy" protected state rather than staying in "degraded" mode indefinitely.

Storage Area Network (SAN) storage is designed to provide block-level data access to servers, appearing to the operating system as a locally attached hard drive. Huawei OceanStor SAN solutions (both FC-SAN and IP-SAN) are optimized for high-performance, low-latency applications.

Databases (Option C), such as Oracle, SQL Server, and DB2, are primary use cases for SAN storage because they require high IOPS and low latency for transactional processing. The block-level access allows the database management system to have granular control over data placement and caching.VMware virtualization (Option B)is another core scenario. SANs provide the shared storage necessary for advanced features like VMotion, High Availability (HA), and Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS). In these environments, multiple ESXi hosts connect to a centralized SAN to access VMFS (Virtual Machine File System) volumes. While Option A (Big Data) and Option D (File Sharing) often use Distributed Storage (OceanStor Pacific) or NAS, the high-concurrency, structured nature of Databases and Virtualization makes them the definitive scenarios for SAN.

Huawei’s OceanProtect backup storage solution is designed for the F2F2X (Flash-to-Flash-to-Anything) era. This concept represents a shift from the traditional Disk-to-Disk-to-Tape (D2D2T) backup model to a faster, more flexible architecture.

In the F2F2X model, data is backed up from the primary Flash storage (Dorado) to the dedicated backup Flash storage (OceanProtect) to ensure rapid backup and recovery. The "X" in F2F2X officially stands for "Anything," representing the final destination for long-term data retention or off-site disaster recovery. In the context of Huawei’s pre-sales training and hybrid cloud strategy,Cloud (Option A)is the primary "X" promoted to customers. By replicating backup copies to a public or private cloud (such as Huawei Cloud OBS), organizations can achieve cost-effective, long-term archiving and off-site protection without managing physical tape libraries. While "X" can technically be tape or another disk, the strategic emphasis for the new-gen solutions is the seamless integration with cloud ecosystems.

This statement is false because it confuses RTO (Recovery Time Objective) with RPO (Recovery Point Objective). In Huawei’s Disaster Recovery (DR) documentation, these two metrics are defined as follows:

RPO (Recovery Point Objective):Refers to the maximum amount of data loss an organization can tolerate, measured in time. It indicates the "point in time" to which data must be recovered (e.g., "we can only lose 1 hour of data").

RTO (Recovery Time Objective):Refers to the duration of time within which a business process must be restored after a disaster. It measures how long the system can be down before the business is significantly impacted (e.g., "the system must be back online within 4 hours").

The question describes the "point in time" (RPO) but labels it as RTO. In a high-availability solution likeHyperMetro, the RTO and RPO are both theoretically zero, meaning no data loss and no downtime.

Huawei OceanStor Dorado supports Non-disruptive Upgrade (NDU), which allows the storage system’s software (firmware) to be upgraded while services are running. In a traditional storage environment, an upgrade might require a system reboot or cause a failover that interrupts I/O for several seconds or minutes. However, Dorado's NDU leverages the multi-controller architecture and advanced caching mechanisms.

During an NDU, the system upgrades controllers one by one or in batches. While one controller is being upgraded and rebooted, its workloads are transparently taken over by other active controllers in the same cluster. Because the host-side multipathing software handles the path failover and the storage system maintains cache mirroring, the application servers experience zero downtime and negligible performance impact. This feature is essential for mission-critical environments that require 24/7 availability and cannot afford scheduled maintenance windows for routine software updates.

Huawei’s SmartThin technology is a thin provisioning feature that allows storage administrators to allocate more logical capacity to servers than is physically available in the storage pool. Traditionally, "thick provisioning" reserves the entire capacity of a LUN the moment it is created, leading to significant "stranded" or wasted space if the application does not immediately use it.

With SmartThin, the storage system only consumes physical blocks when data is actually written to the disk. This "on-demand" allocation ensures that physical resources are shared across multiple LUNs more efficiently. For example, a 10 TB LUN might be presented to a database, but if the database only contains 2 TB of data, only 2 TB of physical space is consumed. This significantly improves theStorage Resource Utilization Rateand reduces the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) by delaying the need to purchase additional physical disks until the actual consumed capacity approaches the physical limits of the array.

Huawei OceanProtect provides a multi-layered defense to ensure that backup data remains immutable and protected from ransomware attacks. To specifically prevent data tampering and deletion, the following technologies are employed:

WORM (Write Once, Read Many) (Option C):This technology ensures that once data is written to the backup storage, it cannot be modified or deleted by any user (including administrators) until the specified retention period has expired.

Secure Snapshot (Option A):These snapshots are protected by a "read-only" attribute and a retention lock. Unlike standard snapshots, secure snapshots cannot be deleted manually before they expire, providing a reliable point-in-time recovery source even if the primary backup is targeted.

Air Gap (Option B):By physically or logically isolating a copy of the data in an "Air Gap" zone that is disconnected from the network most of the time, Huawei ensures that the data is unreachable for tampering or deletion by attackers who have gained access to the production network.

Detection and analysis (Option D)is part of the solution, but its purpose is toidentifyan ongoing attack or infected files, rather than physically preventing the tampering or deletion of the data itself.

Huawei OceanStor Dorado high-end models (such as the 18000 series) utilize the SmartMatrix 4.0 architecture to provide industry-leading resilience. Option A is correct because these models can tolerate the failure of an entire controller enclosure (containing 4 controllers) without interrupting services, as the other enclosure in the cluster continues to handle all I/O. Option B is correct because Dorado features a Symmetric Active-Active design where any LUN is not owned by a specific controller; instead, any controller in the cluster can directly access any LUN, eliminating the performance bottleneck caused by traditional ALUA (Asymmetric Logical Unit Access) and ensuring load balancing.

Option C is correctas Huawei employsSmart Disk Enclosuresequipped with their own CPU and memory. These enclosures can offload tasks like data reconstruction (RAID rebuilds) from the main controllers, significantly speeding up recovery times and reducing the performance impact on host I/O during a disk failure.Option D is incorrectbecause OceanStor Dorado is anAll-Flasharray; it does not support HDDs and therefore does not perform tiering between flash and mechanical media (which is a function of the OceanStor Hybrid Flash series).

Huawei provides tailored solutions for Medical PACS based on the specific performance and scale requirements of healthcare providers. OceanStor Dorado NAS (Option D) is recommended for the "Hot Data" or active tier of a PACS system. Because medical images between 100 KB and 1 MB require high-concurrency access and extremely low latency for immediate clinical review, the FlashLink® technology and all-flash architecture of the Dorado series provide the necessary IOPS to prevent bottlenecks during peak hours.

OceanStor Pacific (Option C)is the primary recommendation for the massive, long-term unstructured data storage required by PACS. A single hospital can generate petabytes of data over several years. OceanStor Pacific’s scale-out architecture allows it to handle billions of small files efficiently using a global namespace, and its high-ratio Erasure Coding (EC) ensures maximum capacity utilization and lower TCO for archives. While Hybrid Flash (Option A) can be used, it is often superseded by the superior performance of Dorado or the superior scalability of Pacific in modern medical environments. FusionCube (Option B) is an HCI solution more suited for edge computing or virtualization rather than specialized, large-scale medical imaging repositories.

HyperCDP (Continuous Data Protection) is a feature specifically designed for high-density, high-frequency data protection in Huawei OceanStor Dorado systems. While standard snapshots (HyperSnap) have limits on the total number of point-in-time copies and the frequency at which they can be taken, HyperCDP allows for the creation of snapshots at intervals as short as several seconds.

HyperCDP achieves this by utilizing a specialized metadata management system that minimizes the impact on system performance during the snapshot creation process. It can support up to 60,000 recovery points per LUN, providing a much finer granularity for data recovery than traditional backup or snapshot technologies. This is particularly useful for protecting against ransomware or logical data corruption, as it allows an administrator to roll back a database or volume to a state just seconds before the incident occurred.HyperReplication (Option B)is for remote DR,HyperLock (Option C)is for WORM/compliance, andHyperVault (Option D)is an integrated backup tool for older hybrid systems.

According to Huawei’s BCManager and HyperReplication guides, "incorrect" statements must be identified to understand the distinction between disaster recovery (DR) and active-active solutions. Option B is incorrect because while HyperMetro supports automatic transparent failover (zero RTO) using a Quorum Server, standard synchronous remote replication typically requires manual intervention or third-party management software to trigger a switchover when the primary site fails. In synchronous replication, the secondary LUN is usually in a read-only state and cannot take over automatically without administrative action.

Option D is incorrectbecause it describes an "Active-Active" state. In a standard Remote Replication pair, only the primary LUN is accessible for host I/O (Read/Write), while the secondary LUN is locked to maintain data consistency. Only theHyperMetrofeature allows both LUNs in the pair to provide simultaneous read and write services to application servers across different sites. Regarding distance, while asynchronous replication is physically less constrained, synchronous and HyperMetro technologies are strictly limited by latency (typically requiring round-trip time <10ms and distance within 100km to 300km depending on the specific product line) to avoid severe application performance degradation.