IBM Active Cloud Engine centralized data protection

IBM Active Cloud Engine centralized data protection Best practices guide Sanjay Sudam IBM Systems and Technology Group ISV Enablement December 2013 Copyright IBM Corporation, 2013

Table of contents Abstract... 1 Intended audience... 1 Scope... 1 Prerequisites... 1 Solution components... 1 IBM SONAS overview... 1 IBM Storwize V7000 Unified overview... 2 IBM SONAS and IBM Storwize V7000 Unified system basics... 2 IBM Active Cloud Engine... 3 Active Cloud Engine overview... 3 Active Cloud Engine caching modes... 4 Read-only mode... 4 Single-writer mode... 4 Local-update mode... 4 Data caching with Active Cloud Engine to the core location... 5 Lab validation data caching with Active Cloud Engine and data protection at core location... 6 IBM SONAS or Storwize V7000 Unified system configuration... 7 Configuring shares at the core and remote locations... 12 Backup configuration at the core location... 12 IBM SONAS and IBM Storwize V7000 Unified system NDMP overview... 12 Scheduling backups at the core location... 12 Monitor the cache file set status... 12 Force outstanding changes to the home site... 13 Scheduling backups... 13 Summary... 14 Resources... 15 About the author... 15 Trademarks and special notices... 16

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how IBM Scale Out Network Attached Storage (SONAS) and IBM Storwize V7000 Unified systems, with the IBM Active Cloud Engine feature enabled, can help to distribute data from multiple remote locations to a central location without causing disruption to applications. Active Cloud Engine can be used with backup applications for performing the centralized backups at the core or edge locations and eliminates the need of backup infrastructure at the remote locations. This paper introduces the IBM SONAS and IBM Storwize V7000 Unified systems Active Cloud Engine feature, and outlines the best practices for centralized backups at the core or edge locations of the data cached from multisite extended global data centers. Intended audience This technical report is intended for: Customers and prospects looking to implement effective data protection on IBM SONAS and IBM Storwize V7000 Unified systems with IBM Active Cloud Engine. Scope This technical report provides: Consolidation of data from multisite remote locations to the core or edge location using the IBM Active Cloud Engine feature on IBM SONAS and IBM Storwize V7000 Unified systems and performing centralized backups at the core location. This technical report does not: Discuss any performance impact and analysis from a user perspective. Replace any official manuals and documents from IBM and VMware on the products used in the solution. Prerequisites This technical paper assumes familiarity with the following prerequisites. IBM SONAS systems IBM Storwize V7000 Unified systems IBM Active Cloud Engine IBM Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) Solution components This section briefly describes the components used in this solution. IBM SONAS overview The IBM SONAS product is an enterprise modular, scale out network-attached storage (NAS) hardware / software appliance that delivers high performance and massive capacity required for enterprise workloads. 1

SONAS distributed architecture provides performance, scalability, high availability, and functionality that are essential for meeting multi-petabyte and cloud storage requirements. IBM SONAS system offers the following features: Extreme scalability up to 21 petabytes (PB) and supports billions of files in a single large file system. Scale out performance by adding more interface nodes (front end) and storage pods (back end) Ubiquitous access to files from across the globe quickly and cost effectively Automated policy-driven storage management for operation efficiency Data protection with file system and fileset-level snapshots Disaster recovery and business continuity with asynchronous replication IBM Storwize V7000 Unified overview The IBM Storwize V7000 Unified system is a virtualizing Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) storage system that supports both block and file protocols. This unified system includes the IBM Storwize V7000 Unified system file module and the Storwize V7000 storage system. The Storwize V7000 Unified system uses many of the same capabilities offered in the SONAS systems to provide a single point of control for both file and block data storage access for medium- to entry-level workloads. The file module is a clustered system consisting of two units that provide file systems for use by networkattached storage. The file module uses the storage from the Storwize V7000 system to provide file access to the clients. Other volumes, which are block volumes, are provided on the storage area network (SAN) to be presented to hosts. IBM SONAS and IBM Storwize V7000 Unified system basics The IBM SONAS and IBM Storwize V7000 Unified system provides a globally clustered NAS file system built upon IBM General Parallel File System (IBM GPFS ). This file system is created on at least one Network Shared Disk (NSD). A NSD represents a logical unit number (LUN) of the underlying disk storage system and makes the LUN available to all GPFS cluster nodes. The global namespace is maintained across the cluster of multiple storage pods and multiple interface nodes. This capability allows all the interface nodes and storage nodes to share in the cluster to balance workloads and provide parallel performance to all users, which also ensures high availability (HA) and automated failover. IBM SONAS and Storwize V7000 Unified systems support client access protocol such as: Network File System (NFS) Common Internet File System (CIFS) File Transfer Protocol (FTP) Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) Secure Copy Protocol (SCP) Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP) Network Data Management Protocol (NDMP) 2

IBM Active Cloud Engine This section briefly describes the IBM Active Cloud Engine feature used in this solution. Active Cloud Engine overview Active Cloud Engine is scalable, high performance remote file data-caching solution that uses the active file management functionality in IBM GPFS. Active Cloud Engine has a client/server architecture in which home cluster (NFS server) provides the primary storage of data and one or more cache clusters (NFS client) can cache the exported data in a local file system. Multiple cache clusters read and write data from or to a single home storage cluster. Figure 1: IBM Active Cloud Engine overview Figure 1 provides an overview of an IBM Active Cloud Engine caching configuration. The Active Cloud Engine caching functionality is enabled at the caching site by defining a relation between home file set and cache file sets. The cache storage system is divided into gateway nodes and interface / application nodes. Gateway nodes act as NFS clients and are used to fetch the data in parallel from home storage (NFS server). Any interface node can be configured both as gateway and application node. Gateway nodes use the NFS protocol to mount the file set paths that are exported from the home site. File data is copied into a cache cluster when a client requests the data or it can be prefetched and stored at cache site. Active Cloud Engine serves the NAS client requests in two ways: Cached data from cache storage cluster: 1. NAS client issues an I/O request to IBM SONAS or IBM Storwize V7000 Unified system interface node. 2. If the data is in the cache (cache hit), interface node reads the data from local cache file sets. 3. The interface node serves the data to NAS client to complete the request. 3

Request to home storage cluster: 1. NAS client issues an I/O request to IBM SONAS or IBM Storwize V7000 Unified system interface node. 2. The request is forwarded to the IBM SONAS or IBM Storwize V7000 Unified system gateway node in either of the following cases: Data is not present in the cache cluster storage (cache-miss) Stale data in the cache cluster storage (data needs to be refreshed from the home cluster) 3. Cache cluster gateway node (NFS client) sends a request to home cluster storage (NFS server). 4. The gateway node then retrieves the requested data over wide area network (WAN) and stores it in the local GPFS cache file set. 5. The interface node reads the data from local cache file set and serves the data to NAS client to complete the request. Active Cloud Engine caching modes Data caching manages data consistency among versions of the same data across multiple IBM SONAS and IBM Storwize V7000 Unified systems. Caching mode is a way to control the flow of data between home and cache systems. The following Active Cloud Engine modes are supported on the IBM SONAS and IBM Storwize V7000 Unified systems. Read-only mode In the read-only mode, the data is fetched into cache and stored locally as required, and available as read-only for applications. It cannot be changed or deleted by applications, as data writes are not permitted on cache file sets. Single-writer mode One cache site has exclusive write permission to the data in the single-writer mode. Home system and additional cache systems will have read-only access and write access is not permitted. If multiple cache sites are configured to access the same file set, only one cache site is permitted in the singlewriter mode and rest of the systems that are caching that same data must be configured in the readonly mode. All of the cache file sets can read and cache the data locally, but only one cache file set, configured in the single-writer mode, can write to prevent potential data conflicts among systems. Local-update mode In the local-update mode, files that are modified at the cache file set are not pushed back to, or pulled from, the home file set. Changing the name or contents of a file in a local-update cache file set causes that file to be marked as being out of sync, and excluded from future pulls from the home file set. Files that are updated at the local-update cache file set become local to the local-update cache file set. 4

You need to perform the following steps to cache data from remote locations to the central core or edge location. 1. Create a new file system on IBM SONAS at the home location. This is an optional step and users can use an existing file system. 2. Create a new file set on the IBM SONAS system at the home location. This is an optional step and users can use an existing file set. 3. Create a new file system on IBM Storwize V7000 Unified system at the remote cache location. This is an optional step and users can use an existing file system. 4. Define file sets used for storing templates as Active Cloud Engine source file sets on the home IBM SONAS system. 5. Configure interface nodes as gateway nodes on the remote IBM Storwize V7000 Unified cache system. 6. Create single-writer mode as Active Cloud Engine relationship between home file sets (SONAS system) and cache file sets (IBM Storwize V7000 Unified) for caching the templates. 7. Create read/write NFS share and assign to the NFS client on the IBM Storwize V7000 Unified system at the cache location. 8. Create read-only NFS data store at the home site. 9. Writes from the Cache site will be transferred asynchronously to the home location. The lswcachestate and wtlcache commands can be used for monitoring and flushing the queue from the cache location to the central core site. 10. Define an NDMP group and add the home file system to the NDMP configuration at the core site. 11. Perform an NDMP test backup on the home file system at the core location. 12. Verify the backups from the TSM console Data caching with Active Cloud Engine to the core location As organizations grow and open offices across the country and the globe to conduct business, it results into global work force with multiple hub and remote offices. But as its IT infrastructure grows to support global requirements, most of the organization ended with hub and remote data centers distributed across the globe. At the same time, all the offices need to be connected and need an ability to share the documents across the global work force in a faster and secure manner for effective collaboration. The IBM Active Cloud Engine enables access to files from across the globe quickly and cost effectively by caching the data locally and improves user productivity and satisfaction by providing performance similar to local area network (LAN). Managing backups and recovery at remote locations can present many technical and logistical challenges. But with IBM Active Cloud Engine, data from the remote locations can be cached continuously to the central core location and data can be protected using standard backup solutions such 5

as TSM. This solution can eliminate unreliable, multiple backup solutions at different remote locations and helps in optimizing the data protection practices as per the corporate policies. Lab validation data caching with Active Cloud Engine and data protection at core location Active Cloud Engine single-writer mode can be used for sharing the data among global work force spread across multisite locations. For example, universities having campuses in three different locations: New York, Boston, and Washington can use the Active Cloud Engine feature for sharing the research project data and the course contents as shown in Figure 2. New York is the main campus and majority of the faculty and students are located at the central campus and other two edge campuses Boston and Washington are the extensions of the main location. However, these remote campuses need data protection and compliance against a variety of risks to ensure business continuity and recover after interruptions. IBM SONAS is deployed at the New York central campus location and IBM Storwize V7000 Unified systems are deployed at the edge campus locations, Boston and Washington (as shown in Figure 2). Edge locations are configured with the Active Cloud Engine single-writer mode, so that local users can have read/write access to their own folders and then cached to the central campus for backing up the data using Tivoli Storage Manager to ensure protection against different risks (as shown in Figure 2). Figure 2: Home directories caching across three university campuses using Active Cloud Engine Perform the following tasks for caching data across different campuses. 6

IBM SONAS or Storwize V7000 Unified system configuration 1. Create new file systems on IBM SONAS or Storwize V7000 Unified systems at home and edge locations. This is an optional step and users can use existing file systems for Active Cloud Engine configuration. For testing purpose ACE_NewYork file system is created at the New York Campus 2. Create a new file set on IBM SONAS or Storwize V7000 unified at the home New York location. This is an optional step and user can use an existing file set. For testing purpose, the following file sets are created at the New York campus. a. home_boston (for storing Boston campus data) b. home_washington (for sharing Washington campus data) 3. Define Active Cloud Engine file set relationships using the GUI interface. The IBM SONAS or Storwize V7000 Unified system GUI can be used for creating Active Cloud Engine relationships. a. Log in to the system at the New York data center and click Copy Services Remote Caching from main page, as shown in the following figure. Figure 3: Selecting remote caching b. Then click New Relationship to open the wizard for Active Cloud Engine configuration, as shown in Figure 4. 7

Figure 4: Active Cloud Engine New Relationship wizard selecting home system c. Select Home system to make the system in New York data center as the source for Active Cloud Engine cache relationship and click Next. Then click the new cache system for defining the caching system, as shown in the Figure 5. Figure 5: Active Cloud Engine New Relationship wizard selecting a cache system d. Provide the management IP address of the IBM Storwize V7000 Unified system at the Boston campus and click OK, as shown in Figure 5. e. Then, select home_boston as the home file set for Active Cloud Engine relationship and click Next, as shown in the following figure. 8

Figure 6: Active Cloud Engine new relation wizard selecting the home file set Next step is to define the cache file system at the Boston campus that contains the cache file sets as shown in the following figure. Figure 7: Active Cloud Engine New Relation wizard selecting cache file system f. Select ACE_Boston as the cache file system for hosting the cache file sets and click Next to define the Active Cloud Engine cache mode, as shown in Figure 8. 9

Figure 8: Active Cloud Engine New Relation wizard selecting the Active Cloud Engine cache mode g. Select Single Writer as the cache mode (as shown in Figure 8). In this mode, edge location Boston file set will have read/write privileges and writes are cached backed asynchronously to the home file set on the system at the New York campus system. The home file set at the New York campus will have read-only privileges, whereas, cache file sets at the Boston campus will have read/write privileges. The next step (optional) is to change the remote cache file set name (as shown in the following figure). Figure 9: Active Cloud Engine New Relation wizard renaming the cache file set 10

Note: Active Cloud Engine relationship defining process will create a new Active Cloud Engine cache independent file set name in the cache file system. This new Active Cloud Engine cache file set must be a unique name and it cannot be the same name as an existing export or file set. h. Verify that the Active Cloud Engine relationship between home and cache systems is as shown in the following figure. Figure 10: Active Cloud Engine New Relation wizard summary Repeat these steps to create additional Active Cloud Engine relationships between home and remote locations. For lab validation purpose, the following Active Cloud Engine relationships are created, as shown in the following table. Home configuration Cache configuration Active Cloud Engine cache mode 1 Location: New York Storage: SONAS File system: ACE_NewYork File set: home_boston 2 Location: New York Storage: SONAS File system: ACE_NewYork File set: home_wasington Table 1: File sets created for validation Location: Boston Storage: Storwize V7000 Unified File system: ACE_Boston File set: home_boston Location: Washington Storage: Storwize V7000 Unified File system: ACE_Washington File set: home_washington Single Writer Single Writer 11

Configuring shares at the core and remote locations Create NFS shares for the Active Cloud Engine file sets and assign them to the clients. At the home New York location: Create a read-only NFS share for single-writer file sets: home_boston and home_washington At the Boston edge location: Create a read/write NFS share for a single writer file set: home_boston At the Washington edge location: Create a read/write NFS share for a single writer file set home_washington Backup configuration at the core location This section provides the best practices guide for implementing IBM SONAS or IBM Storwize V7000 Unified system NDMP backup solution using Tivoli Storage Manager. IBM SONAS and IBM Storwize V7000 Unified system NDMP overview NDMP is an open protocol for managing data stored on network servers. NDMP is a network-based protocol used by data management applications primarily for backing up and restoring the files contained within a NAS system such as IBM SONAS and IBM Storwize V7000 Unified system. The IBM SONAS and IBM Storwize V7000 Unified system support the NDMP version 4. The IBM SONAS and IBM Storwize V7000 Unified system NDMP implementation provides the capability to back up and restores the file systems with the system using NDMP. The granularity of backup is at the directory level. NDMP supports the concept of a full backup and an incremental backup. A full backup backs up all files and directories specified to be backed up by NDMP. An incremental backup backs up those files and directories that have changed since the last full backup. Incremental backups are cumulative. A cumulative incremental backup backs up the files that are specified in the backup selections list that have changed since the last full backup. All files are backed up if no previous backup has been done. Cumulative incremental backups occur automatically according to the scheduled criteria. A complete restore requires the last full backup and the last cumulative incremental backup. Scheduling backups at the core location This section lists the process for backing up the data at the core location using Active Cloud Engine and Tivoli Storage Manager on IBM SONAS and IBM Storwize V7000 Unified system Monitor the cache file set status The lswcachestate command is used to display the connection status of cache file sets and lists the status of pending and completed cache operations 12

Figure 11: Active Cloud Engine status verification The QueueLength column, with the connectionstatus option represents the number of operations that are queued on the cached node for respective file sets and pending for the execution. A non-zero value in this column indicates that some operations are pending for caching execution. Force outstanding changes to the home site Changes made to the single-writer cache file set must be flushed to home periodically and it is controlled by the asyncdelay parameter defined for a cache file set. Changes in a single-writer file set are queued on a gateway node and then flushed to the home site as per the asyncdelay parameter. For immediate synchronization, the ctlwcache command is used for flushing the data to the home site without waiting for asyncdelay time interval. Figure 12: Active Cloud Engine flushing pending queue Note: Make sure that QueueLength is zero, if not flush outstanding changes using the ctlwcache command before scheduling backups at the core location. Scheduling backups Perform the detailed backup tasks on the IBM SONAS and Storwize V7000 Unified system and TSM server as mentioned in the Implementing NDMP backup solution using TSM on SONAS document referenced in the Resources section of this paper. Initiate the manual backup for the home file system from the TSM server console as shown in the following figure. Make sure that QueueLength is zero on the cache site before initiating the backups at the home site. 13

Figure 13: Manual backup from the TSM server As demonstrated in this section, the IBM Active Cloud Engine feature can be used for sharing the data back and forth in a secure and faster manner between different university campus premises at New York, Boston, and Washington for effective collaboration. In this example, the university use case is used for illustration purposes and the same can be extended for other industries, such as finance, telecom, healthcare, and media and communication for sharing the data among the global work force distributed across the country and the globe for effective collaboration. Summary This paper outlines the IBM Active Cloud Engine technology features and how it can enable data protection at the central core location with the distributed remote offices across the county and the globe. IBM Active Cloud Engine enables ubiquitous access to files from across the globe quickly and cost effectively. The following best practices are recommended for Active Cloud Engine environments: Deploy IBM SONAS at hub locations and Storwize V7000 Unified systems at remote and edge locations. Create an Active Cloud Engine single-writer mode for enabling edge locations in read/write mode and asynchronously cache back data to the home site. Configure backup schedules as per the corporate polices at the central location. Active Cloud Engine caching helps in consolidating the data at the central location for data protection. This paper is not intended to be a definitive implementation or solutions guide for Active Cloud Engine systems with IBM SONAS or Storwize V7000 Unified system. Many factors related to specific customer environments are not addressed in this paper. You can contact IBM to speak with one of the IBM Active Cloud Engine solutions experts for any deployment requirement. 14

Resources The following websites provide useful resources to supplement the information contained in this paper. The IBM SONAS Information Center http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/sonasic/sonas1ic/index.jsp The IBM Storwize V7000 Unified Storage Information Center http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/storwize/unified_ic/index.jsp The IBM NAS Systems Redbooks ibm.com/redbooks/portals/storage Implementing NDMP backup solution using TSM on SONAS ibm.com/partnerworld/page/stg_ast_sys_wp_ndmp_tivoli_storage_mananger_sonas About the author Sanjay Sudam is a Storage Technology Specialist in IBM Systems and Technology Group (ISV Enablement) Organization. He has more than 15 years of experience working with various storage and system technologies. You can reach Sanjay at sanjay.sudam@in.ibm.com. 15

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