Strategic End-to-End SAN Visibility for VMs

Transcription

1 openbench Labs Executive Briefing: November 22, 2011 Strategic End-to-End SAN Visibility for VMs Nexsan s Flexible Storage Platform and QLogic s Adaptive Convergence Strategies Empower The Virtual Enterprise and Pave the Road to Cloud Computing

2 Executive Briefing: Jack Fegreus November 22, 2011 Strategic End-to-End SAN Visibility for VMs N exsan s Flexible Storage Platform and QLogic s Adaptive Convergence Strategies Empower The Virtual Enterprise and Pave the Road to Cloud Computing ROADMAP TO THE VIRTUAL ENTERPRISE Rapid expansion of resource virtualization is now pushing the long standing IT distributed architecture paradigm towards a critical tipping point. At issue is the generalization of distributed computing into cloud architecture. The pivotal resource for this tipping point is a SAN-based storage. Nexsan-QLogic SAN Infrastructure Value Proposition: 1) Integrate tightly with multiple APIs to leverage productivity features developed by third-party vendors: Through strict compliance with storage standards and APIs including HBA visualization for a VM Nexsan allows IT to utilize a wealth of storage management tools on client systems to provide end-to-end visibility for all storage resources utilized in delivering a shared-file system to heterogeneous clients over a SAN 2) Provide SAN services for virtual HBAs in VMs: Simplify SAN management using N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) to create virtual QLogic HBAs which are recognized by QLogic switches and Nexsan arrays, to track I/O associated with a VM and implement SAN services for VMs, including zoning for security, no differently from physical servers. 3) Minimize SAN infrastructure costs for SAN scaling: Utilize both highperformance FC and low-cost iscsi paths with Nexsan and QLogic infrastructure to intelligently scale SAN storage resource connections. To meet the storage needs of small to medium enterprise (SME) sites, Nexsan arrays are built on a highly flexible software architecture that can be integrated with a wide array of operating systems. In a Windows Server environment, in particular, Nexsan integration reaches a level of near transparency. 4) Maximize Storage Density and Reliability: Nexsan devices support a mix of To help control SSD, SAS, and SATA drives to support a full range of SLA storage requirements capital expense (CapEx) with respect to capacity, throughput, access, and reliability. costs, the Nexsan arrays support a hierarchy of SSD, SAS, and SATA disk drives and easily fit into complex SAN fabrics with multiple options that combine both Fibre Channel and iscsi connectivity. As a result, a single Nexsan array provides an SME site with multiple storage targets that support a broad range of application-specific requirements with respect to access (IOPS), throughput (MB per second), or capacity (price per GB). It costs much more per GB to manage storage; however, than it does to acquire it. For IT, the bottom line for controlling budgets rests on controlling operating expense (OpEx). For storage resources in particular, OpEx dominates the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) by an order of magnitude, which pressures IT operations to minimize 02

3 END-TO-END SAN VISIBILITY resource management time while maximizing resource utilization. To address storage management issues, most SAN-storage vendors package proprietary software to create, manage, and add optional functionality to their subsystems exclusively. As a result, storage in SAN fabrics typically devolves into isolated pools of logical disks that IT can only manage as individual assets. Strategically, isolation of SAN resources leaves CIOs without a clear set of links needed to tie storage resources with applications and business value, just as Line of Business (LOB) executives pressure for faster delivery of services that they regard as having a high potential to transform business processes. With our QLogic-Nexsan infrastructure, we were able to maintain end-to-end SAN resource visibility within a VM using standard Windows tools, such as the Windows Disk Management console. Specifically, we leveraged Nexsan s API integration with Windows VDS to display all Nexsan array details for any volume mounted as an RDM device or imported as an iscsi LUN including the Nexsan system, its internal array and volume, as well as SAN MPIO paths. To prevent a SAN from becoming an archipelago of independent storage resources, the Nexsan Flexible Storage Platform strategy, enables IT to harness a wide range of third-party storage applications in conjunction with Nexsan s storage software. Thanks to Nexsan s extensive API integration and strict implementation of SCSI 3 standards, IT can adopt a stack-managed approach to storage management that incorporates technologies from multiple vendors with a Nexsan array to create an agile infrastructure that operates economically and scales up to a cloud environment. At a base level, logical disks created with Nexsan LUNs garner extended property sheets on a Windows OS. Specifically, examining a logical disk created on a Nexsan LUN will reveal the internal Nexsan names of both the LUN and the array on which the LUN was created. In addition, Nexsan integration continues up the Microsoft management stack, to include Storage Manager for SANs and System Center. BUILDING SANS AND BEYOND For CIOs struggling with the tradeoffs between current legacy network constraints and concerns for a future migration to converged Fibre Chanel over Ethernet (FCoE), the 03

4 synergies between Nexsan and QLogic devices provide an immediate means to build a cohesive flexible infrastructure needed to transition into a fully converged fabric topology. Specifically, IT can immediately leverage Nexsan E-Series arrays to simultaneously support SSD, SAS, and SATA drives. In addition, Nexsan E-Series arrays extend SAN connectivity options with both two dual-port 8Gb Fibre Channel (FC) and two dual port 1Gb iscsi controllers or with two dual-port 10Gb iscsi controllers. By adding a Nexsan array to a fabric underpinned with QLogic adapters and switches, which support TCP/IP, iscsi, FC, and FCoE, IT has everything needed to build and manage a highly scalable, highly virtualized SAN infrastructure. The Nexsan VMWARE INTEGRATION WITH NEXSAN AND QLOGIC Flexible Storage Platform strategy synergistically integrates with QLogic s Adaptive Convergence strategy, which covers APIs for HBA and SAN virtualization. A key QLogic driver API provides N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) to create virtual HBAs for VMs resident on a host server provisioned with QLogic HBAs. Via Using vsphere, we were able to view the SAN fabric relationships underpinning a VM, including the NPIV, a virtual VMFS datastore supporting the VM, the Nexsan array exporting the LUN supporting the datastore, and the QLogic dual-port 8Gb FC HBA installed in the ESXi host note the QLogic HBA provides each port with an HBA with a independent controller, which appears as distinct device. More importantly, when we generated and unique identity assigned two virtual node and port WWN IDs for the VM, each virtual ID was automatically assigned to and World each distinct physical port on the QLogic HBA to virtualize usage by the VM. Wide Port Name (WWN) can be assigned to a VM, in order to manage SAN traffic associated with the VM. Without device support for virtual HBAs throughout a SAN fabric, end-to-end SAN management necessarily ends at the host server. There is no other way to identify or manage a VM within a SAN. 04

5 DYNAMIC SAN MANAGEMENT Making virtual HBAs all the more important is the way that Virtual infrastructure (VI) initiatives dramatically intensify IO demands on servers and storage resources. In a traditional SAN, I/O fansout from a small number of storage resources to many lightlyloaded physical servers. In a VI environment, SAN I/O fanout is a near polar opposite. A large number of VMs move among a small number of host Using vsphere 5, openbench Labs created virtual HBAs to gain end-to-end visibility for a VM on our SAN. Without a virtual HBA, neither the Nexsan array nor the QLogic switch are able to identify a VM. Once we servers, which provisioned a VM with a virtual HBA, however, we could use Nexsan Storage Manager and the QLogic Enterprise generate I/O Fabric Suite (EFS) to independently manage storage access rights and to zone the VM within the SAN fabric. streams that are prone to exhibiting intense unpredictable IO storms. As a result, end-to-end storage resources dominate OpEx and CapEx in most IT budgets. Worse yet, SAN resource isolation leaves IT without a clear set of links needed to tie storage resources with critical end-user applications in order to evaluate the business value of key initiatives. END-TO-END SAN VISIBILITY OpEx in a VI rapidly escalates as the complexity of a SAN fabric forces IT administrators to treat storage resources as isolated disk pools managed with proprietary software tools. To avoid resource isolation in a Window environment, Nexsan s integration with Windows Server APIs particularly the Virtual Disk Service (VDS) 05

6 raises the visibility of internal Nexsan array devices and lowers the complexity of storage management for IT administrators. Further punctuating the need for end-to-end SAN visibility for VMs are Nexsan s robust path load balancing and failover mechanisms along with Nexsan s integration with Veritas Storage Foundation-HA (SF-HA), which provides a global locking mechanism to protect shared data from being corrupted in a SAN environment. In addition, Veritas Dynamic Multi-Pathing (DMP) enhances I/O performance by distributing I/O requests across all available paths, according to pre-defined load balancing policies and automatically re-routes I/O requests over alternate SAN paths when paths-fail. NEXSAN-VCS I/O RESILIENCE We used QLogic;s EFS to monitor Veritas validation tests of DMP path and VCS host failures. Using port zones pairs of SunFire and Nexsan array ports on the QLogic switch, Veritas scripts fail sequences of ports and measures the responses on the host and the array. In this DMP test, all paths to the array s third controller port are disabled. This action triggers an automatic internal failover within the Nexsan array to an alternate port. In turn, SunFire ports zoned with the disabled array port dropped all I/O, while SunFire server ports zoned with the Nexsan port that took over I/O processing exhibited an equivalent increase in I/O traffic. To assess the effectiveness of a Veritas cluster environment in a Nexsan-QLogic SAN environment, openbench Labs set up two SunFire T2000 servers running Solaris 10 on SunOS 5.1 foundation. Each SunFire server was provisioned with two dual-port QLogic Fibre Channel HBAs and two stackable QLogic FC switches. From the Nexsan array, we exported 96 LUNs configured on four internal RAID-5 arrays to each VCS member and used Veritas Volume Manager to create four striped volumes, each containing 23 LUNs. 06

7 Finally, we placed the four striped volumes in two disk groups and assigned each disk group to a default host server. To validate the ability of our QLogic-Nexsan SAN infrastructure to support VCS functionality, we ran DMP and VCS test scripts that disrupted SAN fabric paths and VCS member nodes while an I/O stress test ran in the background. The stress test streamed write-intensive I/O requests 80% writes and 20% reads at an average throughput rate of 120MB per second, while the main test script brought FC host ports, FC array ports, or VCS member nodes on- or off-line. In this process, we observed each test with QLogic s Enterprise Fabric Suite (EFS) and measured latency and recovery using the I/O stress test stream. AUTOMATING PERFORMANCE OPTIMIZATION While IT overhead is the primary factor in operating cost reduction, CIOs also have to worry about meeting Service Level Agreements (SLAs) made with Line of Business executives in association with key business initiatives. These executives think in terms of business process parameters. So SLA objectives focus around two distinct notions: process availability and process performance. B y complimenting end-to-end SAN visibility from both physical and virtual servers with high performance, sophisticated management software, and tight integration with third-party applications, Nexsan empowers IT to use any advanced automation features to provision storage, enhance the performance of applications, and ensure process availability. With respect to these needs, IT sites struggling with implementing critical businessdriven initiatives from collaboration to cloud computing have the ability to provide a highly manageable multi-fabric SAN infrastructure. The robust Nexsan-QLogic SAN infrastructure provides IT with an environment that satisfies a wide range of I/O metrics with respect to access (IOPS), throughput (MB per second), and capacity (price per GB), while simultaneously supporting multiple levels of resource availability and security. By complimenting end-to-end SAN visibility from both physical and virtual servers with high performance, sophisticated management software, and tight integration with thirdparty applications, Nexsan empowers IT to use any advanced automation features to provision storage, enhance the performance of applications and ensure process availability. Jack Fegreus is Managing Director of openbench Labs and consults through Ridgetop Research. He also contributes to InfoStor, Virtual Strategy Magazine, and Open Magazine, and serves as CTO of Strategic Communications. Previously he was Editor in Chief of Open Magazine, Data Storage, BackOffice CTO, Client/Server Today, and Digital Review. Jack also served as a consultant to Demax Software and was IT Director at Riley Stoker Corp. Jack holds a Ph.D. in Mathematics and worked on the application of computers to symbolic logic. 07