PEAK CONVERGED CORE. Converged Infrastructure Architecture

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Poppy Atkinson
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1 PEAK CONVERGED CORE Converged Infrastructure Architecture

VersaStack Converged Infrastructure A transformative approach to managing and deploying application Infrastructure Application Delivery and Controlling Costs are the primary goals of most IT

CI s are the foundation upon which high-level aspects of application performance and availability are built.

2 VersaStack Converged Infrastructure A transformative approach to managing and deploying application Infrastructure Application Delivery and Controlling Costs are the primary goals of most IT organizations. Converged Infrastructures (CI) are pre-engineered and validated architectures designed to providing a high availability core platform upon which to run applications. CI s are the foundation upon which high-level aspects of application performance and availability are built. Internal networking, compute and storage resources are assembled in order to provide predictive performance and reliability standards. If properly implemented, most CI deliveries are ready to be plugged into power and uplinked to the enterprise network ready for application installation. PEAK Resources has further developed a validated design called the PEAK Converged Core (PCC), which assists IT organizations to: Quickly deliver new services, Scale to add capacity or new applications modules, Secure application environments, Operationalize the environments, Guarantee performance and application SLA s. PEAK Resources, Inc. PEAK is a systems integrator of IT business solutions that encompass the entire enterprise from the datacenter to desktop. As an award-winning partner of the world s top technology companies, PEAK s portfolio of solutions are architected, implemented, and supported by our team of certified and accredited experts. PEAK has been recognized as a multiple-time member of the CRN Tech Elite 250 as one of the top 250 Solution Providers in the USA with the most technical certifications. Partnerships PEAK s team is very selective in the technology partnerships we choose to maintain. Our line-card is focused on delivering specific solutions based upon depth of skills and expertise. We are not a fulfillment VAR, but rather a services and consulting-led systems integrator focused on delivering successful business outcomes through technology solutions. Our focus is on combining the right products and practices in order to help businesses of all sizes efficiently deliver and manage strategic IT solutions. PEAK s Vision and Core Values PEAK is a customer-centric Solutions Provider that aspires to deliver tangible business value through consulting and professional services focused on the successful implementation of technology. Our core values are: Integrity Competency Guardianship Reliability Responsibility

3 PEAK Converged Core The PEAK Converged Core (PCC) builds on manufacturer validated designs in order to present the converged infrastructure architecture as a complete Multi-Application Delivery platform that delivers fully integrated operational capabilities. Growth: The PCC model is engineered to support long-term growth and scale. Expansion of hardware resources is operationalized and involves no downtime or reconfiguration. Additional application growth is pre-engineered and creates secure application environments in minutes with no downtime or changes to existing environments. The Application Environments created are based on the software manufactures best practices and include virtualized or bare metal compute resources, secure and performance based storage as well as secured and quality based network interfaces and VLANS. Security: The PCC is designed to provide security at the entry point of each application by firewalled interfaces. The PCC moves the application security policy point to the actual ingress of the application, not the network perimeter. This allows security to manage both internal and external policies for each application. Enhanced security is also available on an individual environment level though port level policies and encryption requirements. Storage resources are fully secured to each environment, reducing the need to manage data access policies within a multi-application system. PEAK Security Architecture (PSA): PSA incorporates PEAK s security philosophy to further enhance the PCC with a Zero Trust approach to security, bringing security as close to the data as possible. PSA leverages the virtual network components in the PCC, as well as Next Generation Firewall security to microsegment, protect, and monitor sensitive data. Data encryption technologies further reduces risk. The result is an agile, integrated security solution that enables orchestration and automation throughout the PCC. Operationalize: The PCC is standardized and documented to provide the operations team with everything needed to integrate into existing support policies and procedures. Standardization includes all aspects of the PCC, including VLAN numbering, IP Addressing, application protocol specifics, network ports, and cabling. System availability and accessibility are provided through an integrated management network, remote K sessions, and serial console access to all hardware. System monitoring can be integrated into existing enterprise monitoring systems as well as other integrated monitoring tools such as vrealize for complete application aware reporting. Automation and Orchestration can be added using Cisco s UCS Director for hardware and virtualized server provisioning, greatly reducing the time and risk of manual changes. Legacy Migration: The PCC offers many enterprise networks a fresh start for infrastructure, offering a completely standardized platform on which to migrate legacy systems. The PCC becomes the new standard as workloads are migrated, freeing many of

4 the fixed resources that are locked in exceptions and non-standard implementations. Application environments can be created as needed and resource growth can be adapted to meet any application requirement from migrating aging SAP environments, to the single server PowerBuilder system that is used once a month. External UNIX system such as IBM Power AIX and Sun Solaris can also be integrated into the Application Environment giving all the benefits of the secured application environment and the integrated power of the legacy UNIX systems. Reduced Costs: The initial investment in converged infrastructure can be high, as best of breed hardware, software and maintenance services are all required. The PEAK Converged Core allows clients to take full advantage of the upfront cost by allowing the system to grow across multiple application projects as well as any upgrade projects that are in progress. The full realization of ROI is accomplished through the reduced operational costs, high application availability, improved time to service and modular scalability. The PEAK Converged Core assembles core hardware for Networking, Compute, and Storage as directed in the Cisco Validated Design for VersaStack: Figure 1: PEAK Converged Core Hardware for VersaStack The structure offers full hardware redundancy and bandwidth scaling capabilities. Power distribution and cooling requirements will vary with the initial hardware sizing and will be documented within a specific BoM. The system will be assembled and tested in PEAK s Integration Lab, minimizing onsite datacenter work requirements.

5 Scale The PCC build principles can be applied to multiple form factors to best meet the initial hardware cost and scaling requirements. This allows consistent operational value while taking full advantage of the standards and features available. Figure 2 PCC Hardware Scale for VersaStack Multi-Application Environment The PCC is an integrated infrastructure, engineered and architected for multiple application workloads. The design accounts for the built over time nature of Enterprise environments and offers an architecture, which brings both security and application dependencies closer to the actual applications, thereby creating a known Performance Domain for each application environment. Implementation into complex datacenter network environments has been fully considered and simplified through Layer 3 connections to the Distribution or

service capabilities. The performance of all components within these layers is measurable and understood and can scale as needed.

6 Core networks. This allows the Layer 2 structures to be fully standardized as to not conflict with current enterprise usage. Figure 3: Performance Domains Global Services and the Performance Domain The performance domain is created though the connection of the hardware layers utilizing scalable bandwidth and quality of service capabilities. The performance of all components within these layers is measurable and understood and can scale as needed. Any application processing within this domain is understood and managed. Application dependencies outside of the structure such as Directory Authentication and DNS are more complex and variances in these systems can lead to application performance inconsistencies. The PCC eliminates these inconsistencies by creating a Global Services Tenant (GST) to store copies of these systems, bringing the performance and management of access inside the known performance domain, and providing a known reference for access and response times. The GST also provides for applications such as System Monitoring and Virus Protection to manage and protect all application environments. Figure 4: Global Services Tenant

Application Environments The PCC architecture supports application growth though a standardized and consistent model, allowing significantly higher than average utilization of hardware resources.

Figure 5: Application Environments Key Network Features vpc: Cisco Nexus switching provides a number of key features within the larger PCC solutions.

7 Application Environments The PCC architecture supports application growth though a standardized and consistent model, allowing significantly higher than average utilization of hardware resources. The secure Multi-Tenant structure allows creation of secure and independent environments, each based on application requirements and best practices. Figure 5: Application Environments Key Network Features vpc: Cisco Nexus switching provides a number of key features within the larger PCC solutions. Virtual Port Channels (vpc) provide complete network redundancy and nondisruptive bandwidth scaling by allowing active / active links to both switches that can grow to 16 x 10Gb/s active members (160Gb/s). In the event of a link or switch failure all traffic is directed to the active switch with no loss of connection. IBM Storwize V7000 File Module Figure 6: Cisco Nexus vpc

8 LAN/SAN Convergence: The Cisco Nexus switches offer full Layer 2 and Layer 3 Ethernet as well as full-featured FCoE and FC fabric capabilities. This allows fully integrated configuration and management of the network fabrics and offers connectivity to existing FC fabrics and multi-protocol storage. PSA Network Security: As mentioned earlier, the Peak Security Architecture (PSA) has been chosen to align with a Zero Trust network utilizing best of breed next generation firewalls and micro-segmentation. Next-generation firewall provides the reliable visibility and control of all traffic on the network (physical or virtual) irrespective of port or evasive tactics that may be employed. Micro-segmentation enables organizations to logically divide the data center into distinct security segments down to the individual workload level, and then define security controls and deliver services for each unique segment. This restricts an attacker s ability to move laterally in the data center, even after the perimeter has been breached. Key Compute Features True Stateless computing is available within the PCC solution with the Cisco Unified Compute System (UCS). UCS BSeries / CSeries Servers: The PCC incorporates designs & solutions from Cisco s rack and blade portfolio to address the varying application requirements and ultimately the need for flexibility. No two client s workloads and infrastructures are exactly the same and as a result PCC is designed to be flexible in its architecture to leverage both technologies and capabilities that each technology inherently has. The latest two socket blade technology (B200M4) is based on Intel s E5-2600V3 processor and as a supports up to a massive 36 cores, in addition the newly announced B420M4 leverages the E5-4600v3 processor sequence and supports up to 72 cores in a four socket blade architecture. The same flexibility exists in the rack optimized space with offerings designed to meet storage and/or compute density needs. Boot from SAN: Utilizing boot from SAN allows the UCS compute blades to be completely stateless and therefore true CPU and Memory resources within the UCS domain. Configured Service Profiles are attached to the blades applying Boot Policies, Bios Policies, HBA WWPN s, and NIC MAC Addresses. The blade is connected to its boot LUN through Ethernet (iscsi) or FC/FCoE fabric. Hardware changes and failovers are as easy as attaching Service Profiles to new blades. UCS Manager: Fully integrated management for all servers within the UCS domain, UCS manager gives a single pane of glass view into the entire UCS Domain. The UCS Manager is a single system that is responsible for the provisioning and management of multiple systems, including the fabric interconnects, blade chassis, fabric extenders, and different blade servers. The UCS management software itself is embedded in the fabric interconnects; all of these different components mentioned above are treated as a single entity. Management is able to be completed through a GUI, CLI or through an XML API. Once the physical installation is complete, a service profile is able to be created, the profile defines the

9 different server, network, and storage requirements of specific machines; physical or virtual. Figure 7: UCS Manager Window UCS Director: Full Automation and Orchestration of hardware configuration and changes. Offering UCS support as well as Nexus Switch and Storwize V7000 support, UCS Director allows complete automation of the PCC stack. PSA Compute Security: Peak Security Architecture (PSA) enhances the PCC s focus on manageability by using a unified tool for cross platform patching and configuration management. Addressing the security needs of endpoints starts with gaining visibility into endpoint to find vulnerabilities, manage configuration, and rapidly deploying (and confirming) the application of patches and updates. PSA delivers a range of capabilities through a single intelligent agent at the endpoint in a light but scalable platform, providing: Security configuration management, Vulnerability management, Cross platform and 3rd party patch management, Endpoint protection, threat prevention, and firewall management.

10 vswitch vswitch vswitch IP Network FC Network Fabric Interconnect A Fabric Interconnect B FEX A FEX B VIC VIC VIC VIC Service Profile ESX01 Service Profile ESX02 Service Profile ESX03 Service Profile WIN04 ESXi ESXi ESXi S e g m e n t a t i o n Windows 2012 Blade 1 Blade 2 Blade 3 Blade 4 Compute Figure 8: PCC with PSA for Network and Compute Security Key Storage Features Advanced Features of the IBM Storwize V7000: Built with IBM Spectrum Virtualize software, the Storwize V7000 provides the latest storage technologies for unlocking the business value of stored data, including virtualization and Real-time Compression. In addition, the systems include a powerful hardware platform that can support the massive volumes of data created by today s demanding cloud and analytics applications. Together, they are designed to deliver outstanding efficiency, ease of use and dependability for organizations of all sizes. Hardware Accelerated Real-time Compression: IBM Real-time Compression is designed to enable storing up to five times as much data in the same physical disk space by compressing data as much as 80 percent. Unlike other approaches to compression, Realtime Compression is designed to be used with active primary data such as production databases and systems, which dramatically expands the range of candidate data that can benefit from compression. Real-time Compression operates immediately as data is written to disk, meaning that no space is wasted storing uncompressed data awaiting postprocessing. Clustered Systems: Ability for block systems to both scale up and out for performance and capacity. Clustered systems provide the application with a fully resilient infrastructure for which to write and read data. Data Migration and Pooling: Ability to move volumes from one capacity pool to another while maintaining I/O access to the data. Write and read caching remain active. Pools can be shrunk or expanded by removing or adding hardware capacity, while maintaining I/O access to the data. Both Migration and Pooling features can be used for seamless hardware migration.

11 Easy Tier: Easy Tier automatically identifies more active data and moves that data to faster storage such as flash. This helps organizations use flash storage for the data that will benefit the most, helping deliver the maximum benefit even from small amounts of flash storage capacity. In fact, Easy Tier can deliver up to three times performance improvement with only five percent flash storage capacity. FlashCopy: Creates a near instant copy of active data that can be used for backup or for parallel processing activities; supports backup for recovering corrupted data. FlashCopy is a function that allows you to create a point-in-time copy of one of your disks. This is helpful when performing backups or application testing. These copies may be cascaded upon one another, read from, written to, and even reversed. These copies are able to conserve storage, if needed, by being space-efficient copies that only record items that have changed from the originals instead of full copies. Metro Mirror and Global Mirror: Allows synchronous or asynchronous data replication between Storwize V7000 systems for maximum flexibility. Additionally, Metro Mirror and Global Mirror optimize use of network bandwidth with integrated Bridgeworks SANrockIT technology to reduce network costs or speed replication cycles, improving the accuracy of remote data. IBM HyperSwap: Provide highly available, concurrent access to a single copy of data from data centers up to 300 km (186 miles) apart. This enables nondisruptive storage and virtual machine mobility between data centers. Encryption: Increase data security for block data with encryption on the Storwize V7000 and V7000 Unified. Encryption capability helps provide advanced protection of data at rest to ensure regulatory security and compliance standards are met. Storage Security: The PSA has been designed around the need to secure corporate information, customer data, and intellectual property throughout its lifecycle, as it is created, shared, stored, and accessed, wherever it resides. Data Access control and strong authentication Encryption: Block (data at rest), NFS, Tape, Disk, Backups, and FlashCopy Separation of duties FC Network IP Network Storage controller Storage controller ESX01 ESX02 ESX03 WIN01 S 1 S 2 NFS ESX DS NFS ESX DS Storage Figure 9: PCC with PSA Storage Security

12 PSA provides centralized Crypto Management for data encryption, obfuscation, and SSL everywhere. Growing privacy of data at rest and in motion requires central certification and key management for auditability performance and automation. PEAK Services Project Management: PEAK will provide a single point of contact through the entire project. The Project Manager will work with your project team to coordinate and schedule resources, validate work completion and provide status updates. Solution Architecture: PEAK has over 20 combined years of direct solutions experience with Converged Infrastructures ranging from SAP based solutions through International multi-pod private cloud implementations. Solution Architects will work with your team to provide a clear, concise implementation plan that will cover weeks, not months. Integration Services: PEAK will receive and assemble the entire structure in its custom integration lab in Denver. All components will be racked, cabled, upgraded to the required firmware levels, configured, and fully tested. This will verify all hardware is fully functional and minimal datacenter floor time will be required. We will also customize the implementation to meet your Datacenter specifications as well as asset tagging and inventory processes. Implementation Services: PEAK will provide engineers to complete onsite implementation within the Datacenter, working closely with your staff to integrate the Rack, Power and Network interfacing to meet project requirements and follow all established policies. Once complete the entire implementation is documented with all configurations, addressing and best practice information. Training Services: PEAK will train your operational team on the technical architecture and best practice operational processes. This training is customizable and can range from a single day system overview to a full week configuration and setup class.

High performance and functionality

High performance and functionality IBM Storwize V7000F High-performance, highly functional, cost-effective all-flash storage Highlights Deploys all-flash performance with market-leading functionality Helps lower storage costs with data