Automated SAN Storage Tiering: Four Use Cases

Șerban ZîrnovanEnterprise Business Manager / South Adriatics, Bulgaria & RomaniaDell | Central Emerging Europe, LE EM-EMEA Commercial

Data Growth – by 2020…

Digital Universe

Unstructured data

Source: IDC White Paper sponsored by EMC, The Digital Universe Decade - Are You Ready? , May 2010

44X Growth

67X Growth

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Other trends driving tiered storage

Virtualization

Complexity

Diversity

Compliance

Traditional SAN designs bring limited benefits• Storage objects are bound to physical resources

– Statically configured and operated– Individual islands of storage within the SAN– Performance and capacity resources

not easily reallocated

• Difficult and costly to operate– Specialized training and staff– Many planned outages for upgrades and migrations

• Professional services often required – Just to get a configuration operating– To implement changes

• Enterprise features require additional software licenses– High acquisition and software support costs – Costs continue to increase as the environment grows4

EqualLogic PS Series is changing the way people experience storage

By delivering dynamic virtual storage solutions that enable IT organizations to address changing business needs in real time at a reasonable cost

• Breakthrough storage economics• Next-generation storage from a global leader• Enables end-to-end data center virtualization• Complete solutions provided by Dell

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Intent: To mask underlying complexity for productivity gains

Benefits• Reduce cost and complexity• Enhance performance tuning• Enable online data migrations • Simplify storage provisioning • Optimize capacity utilization• Centralize and simplify

storage and data management

• Seamless scalability

Architectures Host-based Network-based Array-based

Storage virtualization abstracts logical storage operations from physical resources

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WITH NEXT GENERATION STORAGE• Simplified storage management reduces OPEX

•More capacity managed per storage administrator

• Seamless Expansion through Virtualization

• Freedom from traditional disruptive, fork-lift expansion and upgrades

• Lean Operations reduce CAPEX• Purchase storage on-demand

Storage virtualization is a cornerstone of Dell’s game changing storage solutions

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Intelligent, virtualized storage simplicity gives time back to the IT administrator Intelligent Virtualized

Storage(Simple and Automated)

How to set up a network

Workload capacity needs

Traditional Storage(Complex and Labor Intensive)

InteroperabilityOperating system to driver/FW revision matrix

Operating system to management SW revision matrixHost Software purchase and installation

Details, Details, DetailsDisk Speeds

Controller DetailsInternal controller balancing, LUN masking

Spindle balancingFeatures availability and license counts

RAID levelsPerformance vs. availability implications

Sparing rulesNetwork

Zoning, Port loadingSwitch management and monitoring

Workload NeedsCapacity needs

Availability & backup needsIO sizes & patterns

What part of workload is on which type of RAIDInteraction with other workloads (sharing) on SANWorkload mapping to network links on storage arrays

Workloads across array controllers

Specialist ANY IT staff member8

EqualLogicIntelligent, seamlessly expandable virtualized iSCSI SANVirtual storage architecture enables:

• Efficient Enterprise Scalability Seamless scaling of both performance and

capacity Investment protection – no fork-lift

upgrades• Powerful & Simplified

Management Intelligent and automated management

• Perpetual self-optimization Automated load balancing across disks,

RAID sets, connections, cache and controllers

• All-inclusive functionality Enterprise software capabilities included,

no add-on licenses

EqualLogic can provide storage management manpower savings of 45 days/year – ESG

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Simple SAN consolidation = single-tier storage

Source: TheInfoProTM Storage Study, December 2009

(12/14/09): F1000 Sample. n=177.

Backup ContentVirtualized Servers & OS imagesData Warehouse & DB contentArchive ContentUnstructured file content

?

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Where data lives today….

Source: TheInfoProTM Storage Study, December 2009

Anticip

ated G

rowth

% of St

orage

Capaci

ty on

This

Tier

(12/14/09): F1000 Sample. Tier 0:Capacity, n=20; Anticipated Growth ,n=19; Tier 1:Capacity, n=180; Anticipated Growth, n=174; Tier 2:Capacity, n=170; Anticipated Growth, n=162; Archive Tier:Capacity, n=117; Anticipated Growth, n=113.

Perfo

rman

ce

Per GB Cost

Storage tiering reduces costs by matching storage with business need

Per-gigabyte costs for capacity-optimized Tier 3 storage media

can beless than 1/10th the

costof performance-

optimized Tier 0 media†

1.7XTier 2

2.5XTier 1

11XTier 0

Reduces costs by properly matching storage with business need

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XTier 3

†Cost multiples are estimates only, based on recent component cost data, and subject to change.

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Storage tiering can be labor-intensive

Inventory Applications

Categorize

Workloads

Forecast Storage Growth

Forecast App

GrowthDefine Storage

TiersInstall SAN

Arrays

Associate Arrays with

Apps

Monitor Performanc

e

Monitor Capacity

FillFine-Tune Tier

SettingsForecast

Storage Growthetc.

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Automation tools on EqualLogic PS Series SANs simplify tiering design and management

Tier by…•Disk Medium• RAID Policy•Data Protection Treatment•Organizational Structure• Location•Other Criteria

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EqualLogic PS Series SANs support 3 techniques for tiering storage

• Auto-Tiering (via Automatic Load Balancing)

• RAID Preference Configuration

• Pool-Based Tiering

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Terminology review

Volume

Member

Pool

Group

RAID

Thin Provisioning

IOPS

SAN HQ

Challenge #1: A mix of applications and an overworked staff

+ +=

Ethernet Switch Fabric

•Leverages PS Series Auto-Load Balancing algorithms•Fully automated mechanism

Suggestion: Use PS Series automatic tiering

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Challenge #2: Certain applications in the data center with special storage needs

• Uses Group Manager Advanced volume settings• Requires multiple

RAID policies within a single pool• RAID preference

policy will attempt to honor setting

Suggestion: Configure PS Series RAID Preference

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Challenge #3: Multiple independent user groups that need dedicated storage

+ +=

Ethernet Switch Fabric

• Pooling mechanism commits arrays to applications or user groups• Similar to RAID preference, but policy is enforced, not simply prioritized

Suggestion: Use PS Series pooling

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One simple scheme for leveraging PS Series pool-based auto-tiering

Tier

Application Workload

Storage Medium

RAID

0 Ultra-high random IOPS

SSD 10

1 High random IOPS 15K RPM SAS

10

2 Moderate IOPS 10K RPM SAS

50

3 Low IOPS SATA 50

Define tiers using PS Series featuresall-inclusive with no additional costs

BASESOFTWARE FEATURES

Management Instant on ‘set-up’ manager Group manager Rapid provisioning Roles-based management

Data Protection and Availability

RAID 5, 6, 10, and 50 Automatic RAID placement Multi-path / IO support

Maintenance Phone home Enclosure monitoring system Performance monitoring

ADVANCEDSOFTWARE FEATURES

Storage Virtualization Complete SAN virtualization Thin provisioning Auto-load balancing Automatic storage pools &

tiering Array evacuation

Data Protection and Recovery

Writeable snapshots Multi-volume snapshots Instant restore / cloning Multi-way replication for

disaster recovery

Multi-Group Monitoring SAN HeadQuarters (SAN HQ)

event & performance monitoring

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Server Management Integration VSS and VDS Providers Automatic MPIO Connection

Management Auto-Snapshot Manager/

Microsoft Edition Exchange , SQL Server and

Windows file systems data, now including MSCS

Hyper-V Support* Auto-Snapshot Manager/

VMware Edition Hypervisor-aware SAN-based

snapshots and rapid recovery

ASM/VE 2.0 VMware vSphere 4.0

Advanced MPIO integration VMware SRM Storage Adapter

Automated DR for thevirtual data center

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Challenge #4: VDI stores include both “hot” and “cool” data

SSD Speed & HDD Capacity

• PS6000XVS/6010XVS combines SSD and 15K RPM SAS on a single array– Automated data

tiering hot data within volumes placed on SSD

• Improves performance of multi-tiered workloads like virtual desktops – Reduces time to boot

multiple VMs by up to 76%†

†Based on testing performed by Dell Labs in May 2010 comparing Dell EqualLogic Firmware v. 4.3 to Dell EqualLogic Firmware v. 5.0 with VMware API for Array Integration. Actual performance will vary based on configuration, usage and manufacturing variability.

Suggestion: Use PS6000XVS/6010XVS “hybrid” arrays

• Fully Redundant & Hot Swappable (5-9’s Availability)– Controllers– 16 or 48 disk drives– Fans and power supplies

• High-end Components– 4 active 1GbE or 10GbE network

interfaces– Enterprise SATA, SAS or SSD drives– 2 or 4 GB battery-backed mirrored

memory

Performance and end-to-end hardware reliability

Hot-Swappable Drive Carriers

Redundant Power Supplies & Fans

Dual Controllers

Enclosure Monitoring

System– Component status– Disk drive health– Temperature

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Manage all tiers via Group Manager

• Provisioning of administrator accounts, volumes (LUNs), snapshots, cloning, replication, RAID preference, pools, etc.• Granular administrator access control, from

group-wide to volume-level management

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SAN HQ is vital for designing, architecting and fine-tuning tiered architectures• Visibility into statistics and utilization at multiple levels

– Volume– Pool– Member – Group– IOPS

• Supports export of trend data for analysis

• Automation and intelligence that accelerates deployments and simplifies operations• High performance and highly scalable iSCSI SAN• All inclusive price with no hidden costs• Enterprise-class system designed for iSCSI• Comprehensive iSCSI ecosystem support

EqualLogic PS Series benefits extend far beyond Auto-Tiering

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ConclusionsReduce CAPEX/OPEXImprove Performance Identify Goals

Set Targets

Learn about EqualLogicPS Series

Talk to Dell about IDM and Professional

Service Offerings

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Additional resourceswww.equallogic.com/tieringserban_zirnovan@dell.com