Industry Brief. Gen 5 16Gb Fibre Channel from HP Eases Data Center Traffic Jams. Featured Applications

Transcription

1 Where IT perceptions are reality Industry Brief Gen 5 16Gb Fibre Channel from HP Eases Data Center Traffic Jams Featured Applications All Flash Storage Systems Data Warehousing Real-Time 4K Video Editing Replication & Backup High Performance Computing Document # INDUSTRY v9 July, 2014 Copyright 2014 IT Brand Pulse. All rights reserved.

2 Gen 5 16Gb Storage Finally Arrives Joining Networking Infrastructure Which Has Been Available Since 2011 Storage networking vendors led by HP and Emulex announced 16Gb Fibre Channel adapters and switches as early as Since then, data center managers with I/O-intensive workloads have been future-proofing their SANs in anticipation of Gen 5 16Gb Fibre Channel HDD, SSD, and tape storage systems. Since 2011, data center managers with 16Gb networks have been anxiously waiting to add 16Gb storage to their 16Gb networks. That time has finally arrived. By mid 2014, 16Gb Fibre Channel storage systems became generally available from all leading storage vendors. Just Another Bump in the Fibre Channel Speed Road Map Fibre Channel storage networking is trusted in the data center for its reliability and performance. Storage architects should rest assured their investment in Gen 5 16Gb Fibre Channel has a safe future. The next generation of faster 32Gb technology is arriving soon in Product Naming Fibre Channel Speed Roadmap Source: FCIA (Version 1.8) Throughput (MBps) Line Rate (GBaud) T11 Spec Technically Completed Market Availability 1GFC GFC GFC GFC GFC GFC GFCp x GFC TBD 2016 Market Demand 128GFC TBD 2019 Market Demand 256GFC TBD 2022 Market Demand 512GFC TBD 2025 Market Demand 1TFC TBD 2028 Market Demand Gen 5 Gen 5 Fibre Channel is purpose-built, data center network infrastructure for storage that provides reliability, scalability and up to 16 Gbps performance. Document # INDUSTRY v9 July, 2014 Page 2 of 10

3 Gen 5 is Backward Compatible Expect Better Performance with Gen 5 16Gb Fibre Channel Adapters in 8Gb SANs Independent Test Lab Demartek ran a read-intensive data warehouse workload with the configuration on the right. For these tests, they ran the TPC Benchmark H (TPC-H), which was used to generate a real-world workload. This test was run with the Gen 5 HP StoreFabric SN1000E Fibre Channel HBA running at 16Gb. The test was repeated with the 8Gb HP StoreFabric 82E Fibre Channel HBA. The result of the database workload tests using the HP SN1000E 16Gb FC HBA were higher performance than with 8Gb FC HBAs with the same server configuration, storage configuration and workload. Workloads were completed up to 26% faster and with an average reduction in latency of more than 50%. Testing revealed that 8Gb FC HBAs throttle the performance and cause applications to run longer than necessary. HP StoreFabric SN1000E 16Gb HBAs enable the doubling of throughput when needed, alleviating bottlenecks under peak workload scenarios. 26% more bandwidth with 16Gb HBAs vs. 8Gb HBAs in an 8Gb SAN. 50% lower latency with 16Gb HBAs vs. 8Gb HBAs in an 8Gb SAN. TPC-H This TPC Benchmark is a decision support benchmark. The queries and the data populating the database have been chosen to have broad industry-wide relevance. Document # INDUSTRY v9 July, 2014 Page 3 of 10

4 Gen 5 Innovation HP, Brocade and Emulex Collaborate on Troubleshooting 16Gb Cables and Optics The faster the network, the more a network is prone to issues related to cables and optics. In response, HP, Brocade and Emulex worked together to integrate Brocade s ClearLink diagnostics technology into HP StoreFabric Gen 5 FC HBAs from Emulex. With ClearLink diagnostics, data centers can identify and isolate optics and cable problems much faster in a matter of minutes instead of days. For new SAN installations, ClearLink allows administrators to validate that their SANs can operate under full data loads prior to deploying production applications. ClearLink diagnostics deliver these capabilities by performing a series of tests on both HP Gen 5 FC switches and HP StoreFabric Gen 5 FC HBAs. This includes running a series of electrical and optical loopback tests that can detect problems with the physical cabling and optics that could result in increased error rates and intermittent problems. ClearLink enables best practices for deploying or changing the physical ports and cabling within the SAN infrastructure by allowing administrators to verify end-to-end connectivity and performance prior to moving to production. These capabilities help IT administrators and architects maximize application uptime and performance while reducing overall OPEX by allowing them to distinguish between faults due to marginal cable, optics modules, as well as connector or optics seating. The ClearLink D_Port test consists of four steps. Watch the video to find out more about how Brocade ClearLink works with StoreFabric Gen 5 FC HBAs from Emulex. OneCommand Manager Provides centralized management of Emulex fabric and network adapters in physical and virtual server environments. Document # INDUSTRY v9 July, 2014 Page 4 of 10

5 Killer App: All Flash Storage All Flash Arrays Move the Bottleneck Back to the Server or Network A single tray of 30 HDDs, with each drive rated at 150 IOPS, can muster only 6,000 IOPS. That s why entire racks of disk drives are needed to support enterprise applications. It also explains why 4Gb Fibre Channel is sufficient for most applications the aggregate throughput of dozens of HDDs won t use the capacity of a 4Gb Fibre Channel link. Flash memory and SSDs have changed that. A single tray with 2TB of flash memory can handle 1 million IOPS, over 150x the IOPS capacity of an HDD storage array in the same form-factor. End-to-end Gen 5 16Gb Fibre Channel links are essential components for storage architects who want their server farms to realize the full potential of their all flash arrays. IOPS Performance All Flash Array vs. All HDD Array 4Gb Fibre Channel SANs have the capacity to support I/O to storage systems handling a few thousand IOPS. Gen 5 16Gb Fibre Channel is needed to exploit the full potential of all flash storage arrays that can handle a million IOPS each. NAND Flash SLC for fastest throughput. MLC for Twice the density of SLC NAND at a lower cost-per-bit. TLC for higher density in the same space, at a lower cost than SLC or MLC NAND. Document # INDUSTRY v9 July, 2014 Page 5 of 10

6 Killer App: Data Warehouses Millions of People Accessing Hundred-Terabyte Databases is a Formula for Gen 5 SANs IT professionals in many sectors of the Healthcare, Banking, Retail, Travel, Entertainment, and Insurance industries share one thing in common: the need to provide fast response times to millions of users hitting massive databases (data warehouses) stored in SANs. The Need Today For the biggest companies in these sectors, these huge data warehouses range in size from hundreds of terabytes to petabytes, and the need for 16Gb bandwidth already exists (watch the video). The Need Tomorrow In the industries mentioned above, the need for Gen 5 Fibre Channel is exploding as a completely new class of data, such as user location, is being captured from mobile devices. Farther into the future, the Internet of Everything, including wearable devices, will create yet another explosion of new data. Businesses with millions of customers rely on large enterprise servers, loaded with Fibre Channel adapters, to provide the IOPS and bandwidth needed for simultaneous access to multi-terabyte databases. Gen 5 Fibre Channel is a Key Part of the Solution The architecture being deployed most to ensure fast response times to millions of users is centered on large enterprise servers loaded with Fibre Channel adapters. With double the I/O capacity of the previous generation of 8Gb high performance SANs, the availability of 16Gb storage now provides data warehousing storage specialists the head room they need in the future. Watch this video to learn about why this storage specialist in a Fortune 500 insurance company needs Gen 5 16Gb Fibre Channel for data warehousing. Data Mart A data warehouse focused on a specific area. The main source of the data is cleaned, transformed, catalogued and made available for data mining, online analytical processing, market research and decision support. Document # INDUSTRY v9 July, 2014 Page 6 of 10

7 Killer App: Backup & Replication Gen 5 Closes the Disk-to-Disk Replication and Disk-to-Tape Backup Window According to a recent IT Brand Pulse survey, 21% of installed Fibre Channel SAN ports are at 1Gb or 2Gb, 31% are at 4Gb and 31% are at 8Gb. With Gen 5 Fibre Channel, the connections between disk storage systems for replication, and between disk storage systems and tape libraries for backup, will be up to 16 times faster. For business, that means the replication and backup windows of vulnerability and disruption will be up to 16 times shorter. Typical Enterprise Replication and Backup Environment In a typical large enterprise, data is replicated to disk for fast recovery, and eventually backed-up to tape for cold storage. If either operation disrupts the performance of the network, or represents a window of vulnerability, Gen 5 16Gb Fibre Channel will close that window. De-dup & Compression De-duplication and compression are technologies that can, in some cases, drastically reduce the amount of data that needs to be replicated and backed-up. Document # INDUSTRY v9 July, 2014 Page 7 of 10

8 Killer App: Real Time 4K Editing Do the Math: 16Gb Mandatory for Real-Time Editing The state of the art for HDTV for many years has been 1080P which offers 2K resolution (1920 pixels x 1080 pixels = 2,073,600 pixels). Without factoring in frame rates and other considerations, real-time editing of 2 million pixels every second requires a 2Gb Fibre Channel SAN. With 4x the number of pixels, 4K real-time editing of 4K video requires over 8Gb per second for a single stream. Gen 5 Fibre Channel technology is required for any SAN expected to support real-time editing of 4K video. In fact, the storage system will require a dedicated link for each video editing, color correction or sound editing server working with 4K digital video in real-time. 4K video ix 4x the resolution because it is double the resolution of 2K video on the vertical and horizontal axis. Watch a post production engineer talk about why Gen5 Fibre Channel is needed for real-time editing of 4K video. Real-time editing with video in 2K resolution requires only 2Gb of Fibre Channel bandwidth. Multiple editors with 2K streams can be working simultaneously with a single 8Gb SAN link. Real-time editing with video in 4K resolution will saturate an 8Gb Fibre Channel. Multiple editors with 4K streams need multiple 16Gb links in order to work simultaneously. 4K Resolution The HDTV 1080P format delivers 2K resolution, with a horizontal resolution of 1920 pixels, and a vertical resolution of 1080 pixels. 4K doubles resolution on both axis for a 4x increase in pixels. Document # INDUSTRY v9 July, 2014 Page 8 of 10

9 Killer App: ecommerce Infrastructure Refresh Keeps Ticket Sales Flowing Despite continuing economic headwinds, attendance at America s top entertainment venues increased to 127 million, with daily average attendance of almost 350,000. This places heavy burdens on e-commerce and on-site ticketing systems as well as on a venue s entertainment management applications. A seamless visit experience and flawless order execution are essential to driving customer satisfaction and repeat visits. Before a recent data center refresh, problems grew from minor issues such as read errors with certain databases, to delays in transaction processing and other host operations. Eventually, the system experienced an outage, an unacceptable scenario for a high-volume ticketing and reservation system. The new HP Gen8 environment utilizes Virtual Connect FlexFabric technologies for converged, high bandwidth 10GbE FCoE connectivity to Gen 5 Fibre Channel storage. Compared to traditional Ethernet and Fibre Channel SAN switches, HP Virtual Connect reduces upstream switch cable connections (with Dual hop FCoE topology), and simplifies management with more flexible LAN and SAN bandwidth allocation for traffic segregation and performance optimization. A total of 40Gb/s of bandwidth from two dual port 10GbE adapters was provisioned for the right mix of performance and high availability. One port on each adapter and 20GbE of bandwidth was dedicated to Storage vmotion and VMware Site Recovery (replication) traffic, while the second port was shared by various ecommerce applications. The second adapter provided failover for high availability. One 10GbE port on each HP 554M mezzanine card is dedicated to Storage vmotion and Site Recovery Manager. The second 10GbE port on the adapter is used for ecommerce traffic. Each 10GbE data port is virtualized so it can be used as a virtual HBA (vhba) and a virtual NIC (vnic). Results Before upgrade Transaction latencies and user dissatisfaction. After upgrade Ticket sales flowing with unified 10GbE FCoE SAN, NAS & LAN, and a virtualized blade computing infrastructure. Document # INDUSTRY v9 July, 2014 Page 9 of 10

10 Resources Related Links FCIA Fibre Channel Speed Road Map HP StoreFabrics SN1100E 16Gb Fibre Channel Host Bust Adapters HP SN1000E 16GFC Data Sheet Demartek Evaluation Report - HP StoreFabric SN1000E 16Gb Fibre Channel HBA Emulex I/O for HP Server and Storage Connectivity HP LPe1605 Dual Channel Gen 5 (16GFC) Fibre Channel Mezzanine Adapter data sheet SQl Server Test report Gen 5 Fibre Channel HBA Performance Benefits VMware vsphere 5.1 over 16 Gigabit Fibre Channel White paper ESG Lab Validation Report Emulex LPe16000 Series 16GFC HBAs IT Brand Pulse About the Author Frank Berry is founder and senior analyst for IT Brand Pulse, a trusted source of data and analysis about data center infrastructure, including servers, storage, networking, operating platforms and applications. As former vice president of product marketing and corporate marketing for QLogic, and vice president of worldwide marketing for the automated tape library (ATL) division of Quantum, Mr. Berry has over 30 years experience in the development and marketing of IT infrastructure. If you have any questions or comments about this report, contact frank.berry@itbrandpulse.com. Document # INDUSTRY v9 July, 2014 Page 10 of 10