VMware vsphere 5.0 STORAGE-CENTRIC FEATURES AND INTEGRATION WITH EMC VNX PLATFORMS

Transcription

1 VMware vsphere 5.0 STORAGE-CENTRIC FEATURES AND INTEGRATION WITH EMC VNX PLATFORMS A detailed overview of integration points and new storage features of vsphere 5.0 with EMC VNX platforms EMC Solutions Group February 2012

2 Copyright 2012 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. EMC believes the information in this publication is accurate as of its publication date. The information is subject to change without notice. The information in this publication is provided as is. EMC Corporation makes no representations or warranties of any kind with respect to the information in this publication, and specifically disclaims implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Use, copying, and distribution of any EMC software described in this publication requires an applicable software license. For the most up-to-date listing of EMC product names, see EMC Corporation Trademarks on EMC.com. VMware, ESXi, vcenter, vmotion, and vsphere are registered trademarks or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners. Part Number , A02 2

3 Table of contents Executive summary... 6 Introduction... 7 Audience... 7 Terminology... 7 VMFS-5 performance improvements... 9 Design considerations... 9 Validation... 9 Test results Key findings Conclusion VAAI for Block Full Copy Block Zero Hardware Assisted Locking Thin Provisioning Dead Space Reclamation Out-of-space conditions Design considerations Validation Full Copy Block Zero Hardware Accelerated Locking Thin Provisioning Dead Space Reclamation Test results Full Copy Block Zero Hardware Accelerated Locking Thin Provisioning Dead Space Reclamation Conclusion VAAI for NAS Full File Clone Extended Statistics Space Reservation Design considerations Test results Full File Clone

4 Reserve Space Extended Statistics Conclusion Storage DRS Datastore clusters Placement recommendations Affinity rules and maintenance mode Design considerations Validation Test results Key findings Conclusion Solid State Drive features Design considerations Validation Test results Site Recovery Manager EMC Storage Replication Adapter Conclusion TB + LUN Support Design considerations Validation Test results iscsi UI support Overview Benefit Storage vmotion Snapshot Support Overview Benefit Virtual Storage Integrator Overview Benefit

5 Conclusion References Product documentation VMware documentation

6 Executive summary VMware vsphere 5.0 introduced multiple new storage-centric features. Understanding the impact of these features on a vsphere environment is important to obtain maximum benefits from the new features, which includes advanced integration between vsphere 5.0 and the EMC VNX platform. The storage-centric features introduced with vsphere 5.0 include VMFS-5 file system, Storage Distributed Resources Scheduler (DRS), Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 5.0, vstorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI) for NFS, and additional VAAI for Block. These features influence the design and administration of multiple aspects of a vsphere 5.0 environment, including storage tiering, VMware datastore sizes, disaster recovery, virtual machine deployment, number of virtual machines per datastore, and the decision whether to use Solid State Drives (SSD) in the vsphere hosts. This Technical Note presents the results of tests used to examine the performance of the storage-centric features of vsphere 5.0 and its multiple points of integration with the EMC VNX platform. The test results underscore the benefits of using EMC VNX as the storage platform for vsphere 5.0 deployments. 6

7 Introduction VMware introduced various storage-centric features with the release of vsphere 5.0. This document provides the tests results, performance analysis, and benefits gained when the following features are integrated with the EMC VNX platforms: Storage Distributed Resource Scheduler (SDRS) VMFS-5 performance improvements VAAI for Block VAAI for NFS Solid State Drive (SSD) features Site Recovery Manager 5.0 (SRM) 2-TB + LUN support iscsi UI support Storage vmotion Snapshot support EMC Virtual Storage Integrator (VSI) Audience Terminology The intended audience of this paper includes: Customers EMC partners Internal EMC and VMware personnel Table 1 defines the terms used in this document. Table 1. Term Intra-VM VMDK affinity Intra-VM VMDK anti-affinity POD Terminology list Definition A Storage DRS rule to place VMDKs of virtual machines on the same datastore. A Storage DRS rule to place VMDKs of virtual machines on different datastores. Pool of VMware datastores, also known as a Datastore Cluster Storage Distributed Resources Scheduler (SDRS or Storage DRS) Thick pool LUN Thin pool LUN A VMware vsphere 5.0 feature that provides efficient virtual machine storage placement and storage load-balancing mechanisms based on I/O and storage capacity. A thick LUN created within a storage pool. A thin LUN created within a storage pool. 7

8 Term Thick Provision Eagerly Zeroed (required for Fault Tolerance) Thick Provision Lazy Zeroed Thin Provision Traditional LUN VMware APIs for Array Integration (VAAI) Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) VM anti-affinity VMFS version 5 (VMFS-5) VMware ESXi VMware vcenter Server VMware vsphere Client Definition A type of thick virtual disk that support clustering features such as Fault Tolerance. The space required for the virtual disk is allocated and zeroed at the time of creation. A virtual disk in a default thick format. The space required for the virtual disk is allocated during creation, but is zeroed out only on demand during the first write from the virtual machine. A virtual disk in a thin format. The space required for the virtual disk is allocated and zeroed only on demand. A LUN created within a storage group. An application program interface (API) framework from VMware that enables specific storage tasks to be offloaded from the VMware server to the storage array. A special high-performance file system that is optimized for storing virtual machines in the VMware virtualization platform. A Storage DRS rule that places the VMDKs of specific virtual machines on separate datastores. The latest version of the VMware cluster file system that provides performance and scalability improvements. A virtualization layer that runs on physical servers and abstracts processor, memory, storage, and network resources into multiple virtual machines. The central point to configure, provision, and manage virtualized IT environments. An interface that enables users to connect remotely to vcenter Server or ESXi from any Windows system. 8

9 VMFS-5 performance improvements In ESXi 5.0, VMware included a new storage access method called VMFS-5 for datastores to provide performance and scalability improvements over VMFS-3. vsphere 5.0 facilitates a nondisruptive upgrade from VMFS-3 to VMFS-5, ensuring consistency across virtual infrastructures. In addition, the Thick Provision Eager Zeroed, Thick Provision Lazy Zeroed, and Thin Provision methods are available in the vsphere GUI. This section describes the performance of various storage access methods and various provisioning options available in VMware vsphere 5.0. Design considerations The vsphere 5.0 I/O performance test was performed with one database disk (200 GB) and one log disk (40 GB) on each storage group. For the block-based tests, the storage LUNs were presented over an Fibre Channel (FC) connection to the virtual machine that was hosting the Exchange load-generating tool, Microsoft Jetstress For the NFS-based tests, the file system mount options were set to noprefetch and uncached. The Using EMC VNX Storage with VMware vsphere TechBook, available on the EMC Online Support website, provides information about the best practices to mount NFS datastores. RAID 5 was used for the database disks. A single (4+1) RAID 5 storage pool was created and two LUNs of equal size were bound. These LUNs were owned by alternate storage processors (SPs). For the block-based tests, these LUNs were presented as VMFS datastores to the ESXi host and virtual disks were configured on them. For the NFS-based tests, the LUNs were presented to the Data Mover, configured for NFS, and mounted on the ESXi host as NFS datastores. RAID 1/0 was used for log disks. A single (1+1) RAID 1/0 storage pool was created and two LUNs of equal size were bound. These LUNs were owned by alternate SPs. For the block-based tests, these LUNs were presented to the ESXi host and configured as VMFS datastores. For the NFS-based tests, these LUNs were presented to the Data Mover, configured for NFS, and mounted on the ESXi host as NFS datastores. The database and log disks of Exchange Storage Group 1 and Exchange Storage Group 2 were owned by SPA and SPB, respectively. Validation The objective of the testing was to determine the performance of various virtual disk options available on ESXi 5.0. The following were the test cases: Thick-provisioned virtual disks on VMFS-5 datastore Thin-provisioned virtual disks on VMFS-5 datastore Thick-provisioned virtual disks on VMFS-3 datastore Thin-provisioned virtual disks on VMFS-3 datastore Virtual disk on NFS datastore Block-based thick pool LUNs presented as a Raw Device Mapping (RDM) disk Block-based thin pool LUNs presented as an RDM disk 9

10 For each test case, the virtual disks were presented to the virtual machine hosting the Exchange application. This virtual machine s operating system disk was placed on the local storage of the ESXi server. For each test case, the Exchange Jetstress 2007 test was run with 13 threads for two hours. The results were considered mainly in terms of IOPS achieved and database-read, database-write, and log-write latency. Test results Figure 1 shows the performance for all the test scenarios. Figure 1. VMFS performance results Figure 1 shows that the performance of thick block-based pool LUNs outperformed all the other virtual disk options. Key findings Table 2 shows the findings of the vsphere5.0 I/O performance testing. Table 2. Findings of vsphere 5.0 I/O performance testing Comparison Results Conclusion VMFS-5 and VMFS-3 Thick-provisioned virtual disk on VMFS-5 performed 10% better than virtual disk on VMFS-3. Thin-provisioned virtual disk on VMFS-5 performed 5% better than virtual disk on VMFS-3. VMFS-5 performs better than VMFS-3 for both thick- and thinprovisioned disks. 10

11 Comparison Results Conclusion Thick and thin disks on VMFS-5 and VMFS-3 Thick disk performed 2% better than thin disk on VMFS-5. Thin disk performed 2% better than thick disk on VMFS-3. Thick and thin disks performed almost identically for VMFS-5 and VMFS-3. Thick and thin RDM disks Block-based thick pool LUN performed 2% better than the thin pool LUN. For RDM, the performance of thick and thin LUNs is nearly identical. Conclusion This I/O performance testing validates that the newly introduced VMFS-5 datastore performs slightly better than VMFS-3 for the random workload used for testing. Of all the tested scenarios, block-based thick and thin pool RDM LUNs showed the best performance. Even though the NFS performance values were slightly less, the performance was quite comparable to the other disk configurations. 11

12 VAAI for Block VAAI enables very tight integration between the EMC VNX platform and VMware vsphere 5.This integration reduces the load on the hypervisor from specific storagerelated operations. VAAI is a set of APIs and SCSI commands used to offload certain I/O-intensive functions from the ESXi to the VNX platform for more efficient performance. VAAI was first introduced with vsphere 4.1, enabling offload capabilities support for the following three features: Full Copy or Hardware-Assisted Move Block Zero Hardware-Assisted Zeroing Hardware-Assisted Locking or Atomic Test and Set (ATS) vsphere 5.0 introduced an additional feature called Thin Provisioning. In addition, EMC continues to improve the implementation of the offloaded features and further extend the tight integration between the VNX platform and VMware vsphere. Full Copy Block Zero Hardware Assisted Locking Thin Provisioning This feature enables the storage arrays to create full copies of data within the array without ESXi server to read and write data. Without VAAI, the data copy process traverses through the connection between the storage array and the ESXi server, causing heavy network traffic. This feature enables storage arrays to zero out a large number of blocks to speed up provisioning of virtual machines and make their storage available immediately. Without VAAI, virtual storage cannot be available until the virtual disk zeroing process is completed. Hardware Assisted Locking provides an alternative means to protect the metadata for VMFS cluster file systems and improves the scalability of large ESXi servers sharing a VMFS datastore. This enables a VMFS datastore to maintain high levels of performance while supporting several virtual machines and connected ESXi servers. vsphere 5.0 introduces multiple VAAI enhancements for environments that use arraybased thin-provisioning capabilities. The two enhancements of VAAI Thin Provisioning are: Dead Space Reclamation Out-of-space conditions Dead Space Reclamation Historically, when virtual machines were migrated from a datastore or when virtual disks were deleted, the blocks used by the virtual machine before the migration was reported as in use by the array. This means the usage statistics from the storage array may have been misleading and expensive disk space may have been wasted. EMC VNX integration with vsphere 5.0 mitigates these problems and offers the ability to reclaim blocks on a thin-provisioned LUN on the array when a virtual disk is deleted or migrated to a different datastore. 12

13 Out-of-space conditions An out-of-space condition is a significant problem in array-based, thin-provisioned environments. Storage oversubscription in thin-provisioned environments leads to catastrophic scenarios when an out-of-space condition is encountered. EMC VNX integration with vsphere 5.0 mitigates these problems and simplifies storage management. If a Thin Provisioned datastore reaches100 percent, only the virtual machines that require extra blocks of storage space are paused, while virtual machines on the datastore that do not require additional space continue to run. Design considerations The testing was performed on two VMFS datastores provisioned over FC. The test virtual machine was located on one of the VMFS datastore. It was cloned and migrated to another datastore. Figure 2 shows the storage layout used in this test environment. Figure 2. Storage disk layout Validation Specific tasks were performed to test the VAAI features. Full Copy To validate the performance benefit of the Full Copy feature, the following tasks were performed: Storage vmotion with VAAI (enabled and disabled). Virtual machine clone with VAAI (enabled and disabled). Block Zero To validate the performance benefit of the Full Copy feature, a Thick Provision Eager Zeroed virtual disk with VAAI (enabled and disabled) was created. Hardware Accelerated Locking The majority of VMware administrators will not encounter the LUN-level locking issue as the VNX platform already handles locking process effectively. In extreme conditions, Hardware Accelerated Locking is beneficial. To demonstrate the performance benefit from Hardware Accelerated Locking, an extreme use case was used. 13

14 To demonstrate the performance benefit of Hardware Accelerated Locking, the following tasks were performed: 1. Create a virtual machine on ESXi. This virtual machine on a shared VMFS datastore was subjected to I/O load using IOmeter. 2. Perform continuous virtual machine power ON and power OFF operations on other ESXi servers attached to the same VMFS datastore. 3. Repeat the tests with VAAI disabled and enabled. Thin Provisioning Dead Space Reclamation To validate the performance benefit of the Thin Provisioning Dead Space Reclamation feature, the following tasks were performed: Test results 1. Create a VMFS datastore on a thin LUN. 2. Deploy a virtual machine with a 100 GB disk on a VMFS datastore and provision data on the disk. 3. Calculate the consumed space on the thin LUN before and after deletion and migration of virtual disk with VAAI (enabled and disabled). The test results for the four VAAI features are explained in this section. Full Copy Figure 3 shows disk command-related network traffic on the ESXi server when Storage vmotion and virtual machine cloning were performed with VAAI disabled and enabled. Figure 3. Physical disk adapter - commands per second Figure 3 shows that approximately 8,000 copy commands were reduced to 115 commands to complete Storage vmotion or virtual machine cloning. The overall reduction of disk commands was 98 percent when I/O operations were offloaded from the host to the VNX array. Key findings with VAAI enabled The time required to perform Storage vmotion reduces by 15 percent. The time required to clone a virtual machine reduces by 21percent. 14

15 A drastic decrease in disk command network traffic was observed when I/O operations were offloaded from ESXi server to the VNX array. Block Zero Figure 4 shows network traffic on the ESXi server when Thick Provision Eager Zeroed virtual disk with VAAI (disabled and enabled) is deployed. Figure 4. Physical disk adapter writes per second Figure 4 shows that 71 percent of disk-write commands were offloaded from the host to the VNX array. Key findings with VAAI enabled The time required to create a Thick Provision Eager Zeroed virtual disk using thick pool LUN reduces by 56 percent and the time taken to create a traditional LUN reduces by 70 percent. A drastic decrease in disk-write command traffic when I/O operations were offloaded from the ESXi server to the VNX array. Hardware Accelerated Locking With VAAI enabled, the number of IOPS the datastore is able to service increased up to 70 percent compared with VAAI disabled. This result was observed when multiple continuous virtual machine power ON and OFF operations were performed on virtual machines stored on a shared VMFS datastore Thin Provisioning Dead Space Reclamation Figure 5 shows the consumed space on a thin LUN before and after the migration of virtual disk. Figure 5. LUN consumed space comparison 15

16 The portion highlighted in green in Figure 5 shows the User Capacity and Consumed Capacity of a thin LUN before the migration of the virtual disk to another datastore. Because the virtual machine has a fully provisioned100 GB virtual disk, it shows a Consumed Capacity of 106 GB in this example. The portion highlighted in red in Figure 5 shows the capacity available after the migration of virtual disk to another datastore. The Consumed Capacity shows the reclamation of all 100 GB on the thin LUN. Key finding The Thin Provisioning feature enables 100 percent reclamation of the dead space on a thin LUN, and avoids the waste of expensive disk space. Conclusion The tight integration of EMC VNX with vsphere5.0 and VAAI provides significant benefits and maximum performance for customers to build and maintain more scalable and efficient virtual environments. The combination of EMC VNX and VMware VAAI achieves high speed processing, reduced server load, and reduced I/O load. The following are the key benefits of VAAI primitives: The Full Copy feature speeds up the Storage vmotion or virtual machine clone operations and reduces network traffic considerably on ESXi hosts. This is because the operations are offloaded to the VNX storage platforms instead of sending the traffic through the ESXi hosts. The Block Zeroing feature speeds up the deployment of Thick Provisioned Eager Zeroed virtual disks by offloading the redundant and repetitive zeroing of large numbers of blocks to the VNX platforms, to free ESXi host resources for other tasks. The Hardware-Assisted Locking feature provides a much more efficient method to avoid retries when a datastore shared between multiple ESXi hosts is locked. It offloads the lock mechanism to the array, and then the array performs the locking at a very granular level. The Thin Provisioning feature provides significant benefit to reclaim blocks of a thin-provisioned LUN on the VNX array and overcomes out-of-space conditions without causing the virtual machines to fail. 16

17 VAAI for NAS Prior to VMware vsphere 5.0 and EMC VNX series build , VAAI consisted of a set of APIs that is communicated using SCSI commands. Since NFS does not support SCSI commands, VAAI did not work in an NFS model. EMC partnered with VMware to create a new way for VNX NFS Data Movers to implement VAAI hardware acceleration. To achieve VAAI hardware acceleration for NAS, storage vendors must provide a plugin for ESXi to interact with the hypervisor s I/O stack. Allowing NAS vendors to supply their own plug-in enables them to control the communication methods between ESXi and the storage. EMC s approach with its VNX product line is to simply send and receive VAAI communications between ESXi and the Data Movers through previously unused NFS commands. In vsphere 5.0, hardware acceleration for NAS has the following NAS VAAI features: Full File Clone Extended Statistics Space Reservation Design considerations This feature enables the VNX Data Movers to clone virtual disks. This feature enables vsphere to query space utilization details for files on NFS datastores through the VAAI interface. The statistics show the size of a file and the amount of space available. NFS datastores can quickly provision thick virtual disk files with the lazy-zeroed option. Also, the ability to create thick virtual disk files that are eager-zeroed is new in vsphere 5.0 for NFS datastores. The testing was performed with two file systems of 350 GB mounted as NFS datastores on the ESXi server. Each file system was created within a unique storage pool as shown in Figure 6. The test virtual machine was located on one of the file systems. Depending on the use case, either one or both of the file systems were used. Figure 6. Storage disk layout Test results Full File Clone The benefits of the Full File Clone feature are evident in use cases such as deploying a virtual machine either from a template or by cloning a virtual machine. Since the Full 17

18 File Clone feature offloads these operations to the NAS server, the efficiency of the hypervisor and network infrastructure operation increases. If two datastores are controlled by the same Data Mover, the Full File Clone of a virtual machine uses the Full File Clone Hardware Acceleration feature to clone virtual disks across different datastores of the same Data Mover. Full File Clone can also be performed at individual virtual disk level using vmkfstools. Figure 7 shows the performance benefits of VAAI in terms of bandwidth utilization during virtual machine cloning and deploying virtual machines from templates. Figure 7. ESXi network utilization Key findings The storage network utilization reduces by more than 99 percent with VAAI on EMC VNX series. Reserve Space In vsphere 5, VAAI for NFS enables additional VMDK provisioning options. In the earlier versions of vsphere, the only provisioning policy available on NFS servers was Thin Provisioning. With the introduction of VAAI for NFS, it is possible to create and use the Thick Eager Zeroed and Thick Lazy Zeroed virtual disk formats. Key findings The VAAI reserve space operation enables the NFS servers to preallocate the entire size of the virtual disk file and create a sparse file on the NFS file system. In the case of Eagerly Zeroed disks, the sparse file is immediately filled with zeroes (and becomes dense again) before the VMware operation completes and before the virtual disk is available for use by a virtual machine. Extended Statistics The Extended Statistics feature of VAAI enables to retrieve the accurate space utilization of a virtual machine by querying the NAS server for file properties that cannot otherwise be queried using standard NFS calls. 18

19 Figure 8 shows the Extended Statistics of a Thin Provision virtual disk. Capacity bytes shows the space allocated for the virtual disk, Used bytes shows the blocks used for the virtual disk, and Unshared bytes shows the actual number of bytes used by the virtual disk. Figure 8. Extended statistics of a virtual disk - with VAAI Key findings The Extended Statistics feature works in conjunction with the Reserve Space feature to monitor the space utilization within a sparse file, and also to assist in guaranteeing space for a virtual machine. Conclusion EMC and VMware have effectively partnered to ensure that the VNX product line is fully prepared for the new VAAI functionality for NFS available in vsphere 5.0. When customers add VAAI s new NAS features to their environment, consumption of ESXi resources such as CPU, memory, and network utilization are reduced by offloading I/O-intensive tasks to the storage arrays. Key benefits of this solution include: Virtual machine cloning and virtual machine deployment from a template are examples of operations that are offloaded to the VNX Data Mover by the Full File Clone feature of VAAI. Space Reservation and Extended Statistics features enable administrators to reserve space in the NFS file system for the entire capacity of a Thick Provision Lazy Zeroed virtual disk when provisioning a virtual machine. This prevents the possibility of an out-of-space error during an I/O-write operation. 19

20 Storage DRS Historically, virtual machine provisioning has always imposed operational challenges. Monitoring datastore capacity and I/O load has proven to be very difficult and is often neglected. During the provisioning process of virtual machines and virtual disks, datastores are often randomly selected, leading to hot spots and overor under-utilized datastores. EMC VNX integration with vsphere 5.0 mitigates these problems by providing smart virtual machine placement and load-balancing mechanisms based on I/O load and space capacity. The vsphere 5.0 Storage DRS helps to decrease operational efforts associated with the provisioning of virtual machines and monitoring of the storage environment. Datastore clusters Placement recommendations Affinity rules and maintenance mode A datastore cluster is a collection of datastores aggregated into a single unit of consumption from an administrative point of view. When a datastore cluster is created, Storage DRS manages the storage resources in the same way the Distributed Resources Scheduler (DRS) manages the storage resources in a cluster. A datastore cluster is used with a cluster of hosts to aggregate storage resources, enabling efficient and rapid placement of new virtual machines and virtual disk drives, and load balancing the existing workloads. Storage DRS provides initial placement and ongoing balancing recommendations, which enables vsphere administrators to make placement decisions based on space and I/O capacity. During the provisioning of a virtual machine, a datastore cluster is selected as the target destination for this virtual machine or virtual disk. Then, a recommendation for initial placement is provided based on space and I/O capacity. This aims to minimize the risk of storage I/O bottlenecks and their performance impact on virtual machines. Storage DRS affinity rules control the virtual disk placement on the same datastore within a datastore cluster. By default, a virtual machine s virtual disks are placed together on the same datastore. Storage DRS provides three types of affinity rules: VMDK anti-affinity The virtual disks of a virtual machine with multiple virtual disks are placed on different datastores. Intra-VM affinity The virtual disks of a virtual machine with multiple virtual disks are placed on different datastores. VM anti-affinity Two specific virtual machines, including their disks, are placed on different datastores. In addition, Storage DRS offers Datastore Maintenance Mode, which automatically evacuates all virtual machines and virtual disk drives from the selected datastore to the remaining datastores in the datastore cluster. Design considerations The goal of the testing was to determine the I/O performance when Storage DRS was in action and when Intra-VM affinity and VMDK anti-affinity rules were present. The vsphere 5.0 Storage DRS test was performed with one datastore cluster on three FC LUNs. A 150 GB disk for the Exchange database and a 15 GB disk for Exchange logs were attached to the test virtual machine. The block-based storage LUNs were presented to the virtual machine hosting the Exchange load-generating tool, 20

21 Microsoft Jetstress 2010 on an FC connection. RAID 5 was used for the database disks. Three RAID 5 (4+1) groups were created and two LUNs of equal size were carved from each RAID group. One LUN from each RAID group was presented to the ESXi server. These LUNs were owned by alternating SPs and configured as VMFS-5 datastores on the ESXi server. A datastore cluster was created from these three LUNs. A test virtual machine was presented with virtual disks (150 GB database and 15 GB log) from this datastore cluster. Figure 9 shows the storage disk layout. Figure 9. Storage disk layout Validation Table 3 shows the test cases and the corresponding test conditions. Test case Table 3. Analyze performance when VAAI is not enabled. Test cases for Storage DRS feature Test conditions Intra-VM affinity rule is present and Storage DRS is not in action. Intra-VM affinity rule is present and Storage DRS is in action. VMDK anti-affinity rule is present and Storage DRS is not in action. VMDK anti-affinity rule is present and Storage DRS is in action. 21

22 Test case Analyze performance when VAAI is enabled. Test conditions Intra-VM affinity rule is present and Storage DRS is not in action. Intra-VM affinity rule is present and Storage DRS is in action. VMDK anti-affinity rule is present and Storage DRS is not in action. VMDK anti-affinity rule is present and Storage DRS is in action. For each of the test scenarios, virtual disks were presented to the Exchange application virtual machine with the storage configuration shown in Figure 9. For each case, an Exchange Jetstress 2007 test case was run with five threads for two hours. The results were analyzed mainly in terms of IOPS achieved, database LUN-read latency, and database LUN-write latency. Storage DRS migrations were initiated by placing one of the datastores (where the virtual machine s disk was placed) in maintenance mode. Storage DRS relocated the virtual disk to another datastore while the Jetstress test was running. Test results Figure 10 shows the time taken for storage migration for various conditions with VAAI enabled and disabled. In each case, the time required to complete the Storage DRS operation was reduced when VAAI was enabled. Figure 10. Time taken for storage migration Key findings With VAAI enabled, the Storage DRS operation completed faster (15 percent to 31 percent) than with VAAI disabled. Figure 11 compares the IOPS and latency between base values (when a Storage DRS operation is not taking place) to the values observed when a Storage DRS operation is taking place with VAAI disabled (overall time was 12 to 18 minutes). 22

23 Figure 11. Performance impact of SDRS operations VAAI disabled During a Storage DRS operation with VAAI disabled, IOPS reduced (50 percent to 55 percent) from the baseline values (when a Storage DRS operation is not taking place). Figure 12 compares the IOPS and latency between base values (when a Storage DRS operation is not taking place) to the values observed when a Storage DRS operation was taking place with VAAI enabled (overall time was 11 to 12 minutes). Figure 12. Performance impact of SDRS operations VAAI enabled During a Storage DRS operation with VAAI enabled, IOPS reduced (60 percent to 70 percent) from the baseline values (when a Storage DRS operation is not taking place). 23

24 Conclusion Storage DRS for vsphere 5.0 improves storage management and enables efficient use of storage resources through the grouping, placement, and balancing of virtual machine storage. The test results showed that VAAI can be used to accelerate the pace of Storage DRS migrations. When VAAI was enabled, the time required to perform the Storage DRS migration decreased (15 percent to 31 percent), although there was an accompanying reduction (10 percent to 15 percent) in IOPS as well. VAAI reduces the time required to perform the Storage DRS migration, but with a slightly larger decrease in performance of the primary application during the migration. Consider this trade-off before implementing Storage DRS. Adding additional disks to the storage pools that service the VMware datastores may reduce the performance impact observed during the Storage DRS migrations. 24

25 Solid State Drive features The features that use Solid State Drives (SSDs) are introduced in vsphere 5.0. The VMkernel automatically identifies and tags SSD devices that are connected to the ESXi server. In addition, the VMkernel scheduler is modified to enable ESXi swap to extend to either local or network SSD devices. This enables memory overcommitment and minimizes performance impact. Design considerations Validation Test results The SSD features were tested with different LUN types on EMC VNX platforms. Thick pool, thin pool, and traditional LUN types were created and presented to a vsphere ESXi 5.0 server. The virtual machine was created with 2 GB of memory and limited to 1 GB of RAM to ensure that the virtual swap space was used. Memtest 86+ was used as a memory exercise tool to create a load on the VSWP disk for analysis. The following are the objectives of the testing: Observe the functionality of SSD drives with vsphere 5.0. Determine the performance when swap space is used on SSDs and other magnetic disks that are directly attached to the ESXi host or on the storage array. SSDs are auto detected when they are used to create traditional LUNs. However, if the LUNs are configured from a storage pool (thick pool or thin pool LUNs), they are not detected as SSDs. This is because traditional LUNs created from RAID groups can only be one type of disk, while storage pools can contain a mix of drive technologies. Therefore, the drive type and rotational speed are not tagged to LUNs created from VNX storage pools. Figure 13 shows the IOPS and latency of local SCSI, SAS, and SSD drive types. Figure 13. IOPS and average latency of drive types when used for vswap Key findings When SSDs are used as swap space, IOPS increases dramatically and the device latency decreases compared with local SCSI and SAS drives. 25

26 Site Recovery Manager VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) in vsphere 5.0 is a disaster recovery product designed for virtualized environments. SRM provides numerous benefits: Automates and streamlines site recovery and migration processes to ensure a fast and reliable recovery. Enables administrators to test recovery plans nondisruptively to meet business requirements. Automates failback to the primary site, a feature first introduced by EMC in SRM 4 with the VNX Failback plug-in. SRM helps businesses meet their recovery point objectives (RPOs) and recovery time objectives (RTOs) in a highly efficient and predictable manner. EMC Storage Replication Adapter The EMC Storage Replication Adapter (SRA) is a plug-in that integrates EMC VNX platforms with VMware SRM to enable additional replication methods and more granular control over replication operations. The EMC SRA integrates with SRM to extend the following capabilities of SRM: Enable iscsi, NFS, or Fibre Channel array-based replication for SRM. Customize virtual machine replication to meet specific business or recovery plans. Provide SRM with information about virtual machines that are replicated at the array level. Coordinate the execution of recovery plans. Conclusion The EMC SRA plug-in tightly integrates VNX platforms with VMware SRM 5.0 to create a simple and highly reliable disaster recovery product for virtualized environments. 26

27 2 TB + LUN Support The support for FC LUNs up to 64 TB size is introduced in vsphere 5.0. This is an increase over the 2 TB (exactly 2 TB+512 bytes) LUN size limit in vsphere 4.0. This feature enables VMware administrators to create the higher capacity VMware datastores required to support the growth of their virtual infrastructure. Design considerations This feature was tested on an EMC VNX platform. A 4 TB LUN was presented to the ESXi server and used to create a VMware VMFS-5 datastore. Figure 14 shows a 4 TB VNX LUN presented to the ESXi server. Figure 14. A 4 TB LUN presented to ESXi 5.0 Figure 15 shows the datastore created from a 4 TB LUN. Figure 15. Datastore created from a 4 TB LUN Validation Test results The goal of the testing was to validate the support for the increased vsphere 5.0 FC LUN size on an EMC VNX platform. This validation test result shows that the EMC VNX platform is capable of using the 2 TB + LUN support introduced in VMware vsphere

28 iscsi UI support Overview The enhancements to the iscsi Initiator user interface were introduced in vsphere 5.0. This further simplifies the configuration of the iscsi Initiator. The following tasks can be performed in a single dialog box by using the vsphere Client: Configure dependent hardware iscsi and software iscsi adapters. Perform network configurations. Perform port binding. Figure 16 shows the new graphical interface. New Figure 16. New UI for iscsi Configurations Benefit This improvement in the iscsi UI makes the configuration of the iscsi adapter easier than ever before, streamlining the process of vsphere configuration and deployment. 28

29 Storage vmotion Snapshot Support Overview vsphere 5.0 introduced Storage vmotion of a virtual machine with snapshots. Figure 17 shows a virtual machine with a snapshot in the process of being vmotioned. Figure 17. vmotion with snapshots Benefit Administrators can manage storage capacity and improve performance by leveraging the flexibility of migrating a virtual machine and its snapshots to a different datastore. 29

30 Virtual Storage Integrator Overview The EMC Virtual Storage Integrator (VSI) for VMware vsphere is a plug-in for the VMware vsphere Client. This plug-in provides a single management interface to manage EMC storage from within the vsphere environment. The features in VSI are added and removed independently, which provides flexibility to customize the VSI user environments. The features are managed by the VSI Feature Manager. Some of the features available for VSI are Storage Viewer (SV), Path Management, Storage Pool Management (SPM), Symmetrix Storage Replication Adapter (SRA) utilities, and Unified Storage Management (USM). Figure 18 shows the UI of the VSI USM. Figure 18. VSI USM Figure 19 shows the various tasks that are initiated through the VSI USM menu. Figure 19. Features in the USM UI 30

31 Benefit VSI provides a single management interface to manage EMC storage from within the vsphere environment. It provides a unified administration experience to EMC storage array features in vsphere

32 Conclusion The new storage-centric features in VMware vsphere 5.0 were tested with the EMC VNX platform. These features provide VMware customers with additional functionality and improved performance over the previous vsphere versions. The EMC VNX platform has been extensively tested with the vsphere 5.0 to ensure compatibility with the latest vsphere features and performance improvements. 32

33 References Product documentation The following documents, located on the EMC Online Support website, provide additional and relevant information: EMC VNX Series System Operations Using EMC VNX Storage with VMware vsphere TechBook VMware vstorage APIs for Array Integration with EMC VNX Series for SAN White paper VMware vstorage APIs for Array Integration with EMC VNX Series for NAS White paper VMware documentation The following VMware document, located on the VMware website, also provides useful information: What s New in VMware vsphere 5.0 Storage Technical Marketing Documentation 33