Tier X - Stretching Tiered Storage from SSD to Cloud

Storage ExpoLondon

Kirby WadsworthVice President – Global Marketing

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Outline

• Tiered storage basics• Introduction to file virtualization• Storage technologies continue to evolve• Optimizing for lower cost• Optimizing for application performance• Reduce costs and increase flexibility with cloud• Bringing it all together• Summary

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Tiered Storage Basics

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What Is Tiered Storage?

• Not all data is created equal• Dynamically match type of data with a storage system

optimized for that data type• A simple way to start:

– Segregate data into active and inactive data sets• Active data placed on high-performance storage• Inactive data placed on low-cost storage

• Dramatic cost benefits

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History of Tiered Storage

• Historical impediments– For many years, the opportunity to tier was limited by

the absence of a good choice for the second tier• Tape too slow and fragile for general purpose Tier 2

– Adding a tier of storage was not transparent to user and application access to data• Moving data is disruptive

• What changed?– Introduction of high-capacity SATA

• Acceptably slower when used to store less active data

– File virtualization

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Introduction to File Virtualization

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What Is File Virtualization?

• Logical abstraction of file systems• Decouples access to files from physical location of files

Servers

Applications and Users

File Virtualization with

Integrated Services

Logical Access

Physical Access

Servers

Applications and Users

“Decoupling”

Before After

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User View

“Virtual name” is independent of where the file is actually stored

Virtual Namespace

File Virtualization

u:\Presentations\BoD.ppt

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Storage View

File Virtualization

“Tier-1” “Tier-2”

Physical Namespace

“Tier-3”

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Transparent Mobility

“Virtual name” is independent of where the file is actually stored

Virtual Namespace

File Virtualization

u:\Presentations\BoD.ppt

“Tier-1” “Tier-2”

Physical Namespace

“Tier-3”

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Storage Technologies Continue to Evolve

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Traditional Storage Technologies

Lower Performance

Higher Cost/GB

Higher Performance

Lower Cost/GB

TraditionalTier-1

(High-perf SAS)

TraditionalTier-2

(High-cap SATA)

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Emerging Storage Technologies

Lower Performance

Higher Cost/GB

Higher Performance

Lower Cost/GB

TraditionalTier-1

(High-perf SAS)

TraditionalTier-2

(High-cap SATA)

Optimized Storage

(Dedupe SATA)

MemoryStorage

(SSD)

Lowest $ per IO/sec

Lowest $ per GB

“Elastic” Storage(Cloud)

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Integrate Heterogeneous Storage Technologies

File Virtualization

Applications and Users

Real-time matching of application/business needs and storage capability

Memory Storage

(SSD)

Traditional Tier 1

(High-perf SAS)

Traditional Tier 2

(High-cap SATA)

Optimized Storage

(Dedupe SATA)

“Elastic”Storage

(Cloud)

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Starting to Tier:Optimize for Lower Costs

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IDC: Worldwide Network Controller and Block-Level Storage Virtualization 2008–2012 Forecast: A Key Component in Building the Virtual Datacenter, April 2008

Total Enterprise Disk Storage Systems Shipped

IT is seeking cost and efficiency improvementsIT is seeking cost and efficiency improvements

Why Companies Started to Tier Storage

IT Budget Constraints Volume of Data Growing

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Simple Model for Active Data Management

Virtual Namespace

u:\Presentations\BoD.ppt

Physical Namespace

File Virtualization

Not modified in last month

Modified inlast month

Backup

Same Weekly Fulls (x5)But only 10% of the data

No Weekly Fulls (only Monthly+)

10% 90%

Tier 1 Tier 2

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Case Study – Medium Enterprise

• Challenge – rapid data growth:– High costs for disk capacity– Long backup times and high costs for backup media

• Solution– Moved data not modified in last month (90%) to Tier 2– Different backup policies for Tier 1 and Tier 2

• Benefits– Disk cost savings

• New disk capacity is all Tier 2 (at 1/5 the cost…)

– Backup cost savings• Weekly full backups consume 10% tape media• Weekly full backup times dropped from >36 hours to <3 hours

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Sample Cost Savings – 25TB Environment

• Hard cost savings– Use of lower-cost disk storage $270,000– Reduction in backup costs $50,000– Increased capacity utilization (40->80%) $536,000– Power savings $34,000 – Total $890,000

• Soft cost savings– Transparent cross-vendor/technology capacity expansion– Transparent cross-vendor/technology migration– Reduction in backup/restore times– Reduced backup failures

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$0.00

$5.00

$10.00

$15.00

$20.00

$25.00

$30.00

$35.00

$40.00

$45.00

Tier‐1 Tier‐1+2 Delta

$15.21

$4.26

$10.95

$22.81

$1.06

$21.75

$2.50

$0.50

$2.00

$1.53

$0.16

$1.36

Power

Backup

Util

Disk

Cost Comparison – $/GBTier-1

$42/GB

Tier-1+2$6/GB

Delta$36/GB

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Optimize for Application Performance

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Performance Comparison

Type of Storage

AggregateBandwidth

Single OperationLatency

Memory Storage (SSD)

> 1000 MB/sec < 500 usec

Traditional Tier 1(SAS)

500 MB/sec 0.5 to 5 msec

Traditional Tier 2(SATA)

100 MB/sec 0.5 to 15 msec

“Elastic” Storage(Cloud)

0.1-10 MB/sec 100 msec to >10 sec

Notes:These are general guidelines but your mileage may vary…

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Case Study – Technology Company

• Challenge– Migrated software developers from physical to virtual

servers– User response time became unacceptable when multiple

software builds were running parallel against the shared VM storage

• Solution– Moved data from disk to “low-end” SSD

• Benefits– Worst-case response times dropped 50x – Increased developer productivity

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Performance Benefits

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

10:3

2:50

10:4

0:55

10:4

9:09

10:5

7:17

11:0

5:26

11:1

3:31

11:2

1:34

11:2

9:38

11:3

7:44

11:4

5:55

11:5

4:04

12:0

2:10

12:1

0:15

12:1

8:19

12:2

6:25

12:3

4:29

12:4

2:36

12:5

0:44

12:5

8:51

13:0

6:57

13:1

5:01

13:2

3:03

13:3

1:06

13:3

9:08

13:4

7:11

13:5

5:16

14:0

3:27

14:1

1:30

14:1

9:36

14:2

7:42

14:3

5:53

14:4

3:59

14:5

2:04

15:0

0:15

15:0

8:31

15:1

6:36

15:2

4:40

15:3

2:47

15:4

1:04

15:4

9:10

15:5

7:16

16:0

5:24

16:1

3:27

Storage Response Time (msec) from Production Development Environment

500 msec

BeforeSSD

BeforeSSD

AfterSSDAfterSSD

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Reduce Cost and Increase Flexibility with Cloud

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How Does Cloud Storage Compare?

Characteristic Local Typical CloudPath to storage

LAN 10 – 1000 MB/sec

WAN0.1 to 10 MB/sec

Typical Performance High Low

“Native”Interface

File system(read/write anything)

Object store(put/get only “entire files”)

“Capacity”Economics

Complexpurchase and maintain storage cost calculation

Simplerental model

($/GB-month)

“Access”Economics

Simple“bandwidth is free” model

Complex“access pattern” based cost

calculation

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Cloud Economics Can Make Sense Today

Tier-1

Tier-1+2Tier-2

Tier-1+CloudCloud

$42/GB-36mTier-1@40%

$6.0/GB-36mTier-1+2 @80%

$8.7/GB-36mTier-1+Cloud@100%

10% access

$/G

B (3

-yea

r)

Storage Utilization

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Leverage Cloud for Increased Flexibility

Virtual Namespace

File Virtualization

u:\Presentations\BoD.ppt

Physical Namespace

“Tier-1”Traditional

NAS

“Tier-2”Dedupe

NAS

“Tier-3”CloudNAS

Last modified >30 days

Last Modified <30 days

Maintain Tier-2freespace goal

Recall if accessfrequency exceeds defined threshold

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Case Study – Health Care Provider

• Existing file virtualization customer– Large NAS environment with two tiers today

• Tier 1 is traditional high-performance NAS• Tier 2 is deduped NAS

• Starting a pilot with cloud as Tier 3– Use cloud as “spillover” capacity– Accesses cloud though a file system gateway

• Benefits– Maximizes utilization of Tier 1 and Tier 2 (= lowest cost…)– Supports dynamic capacity increases and decreases

• No hardware provisioning needed

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Bringing It All Together

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Storage Tiering Extracts Synergies

Tier-1* Tier-2OptimizedTier-1 + Tier-2

Cloud

OptimizedTier-1 + Tier-2 + Cloud

Capacity ($/GB) 3 1 1 1-2 1

Access ($/GB) 1* 2 1 3 1

AccessPerformance 1* 2 1 3 1

BackupOptimization 3 3 1 1 1

Utilization 3 3 1-2 1 1

Dynamic Capacity Adds 3 3 1-2 1 1

Key: 1 is best; 3 is worst* For simplicity assume that Tier-1 includes the ability to use SSD technology

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Summary

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Summary

• Storage tiering optimizes storage resources for performance and cost based on business value– There are many storage choices available– File virtualization enables you to easily utilize

heterogeneous storage resources or technologies• How do you start?

– Deploy Tier 2 today to reduce costs and improve backup– Consider deploying SSD to address application

performance challenges– Start planning for cloud

• Deploy today for increased flexibility in managing storage• Ramp up deployment as prices continue to decrease

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F5 ARX® Product Family• Scalable product family

– ARX500: Departmental Device– ARX1000: Mid Tier Device– ARX4000: Mid to Large Enterprise

Device– ARX6000: Data Center Device

• Common Data Management Operating System software

• Enterprise-class management and serviceability – CLI, GUI, SNMP– Logging, reporting, scripting– Diagnostics, “e-mail home”