What's New in vSphere Platform & Storage

Kyle Gleed, VMware

Cormac Hogan, VMware

VSVC5005

#VSVC5005

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Agenda

New vSphere Platform Features

New vCenter Server Features

New vSphere Storage Features

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vSphere 2013 Platform Features

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vSphere 5.5 Platform Improvements

Scalability

• Doubled several configuration maximums

• Virtual Machine Compatibility ESXi 5.5 (aka Virtual Hardware Version 10)

Performance

• Expanded vGPU support

• Improved power management with support for server CPU C-States

Availability

• Hot-Pluggable SSD PCIe devices

• Support for Reliable Memory

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Several vSphere 5.5 maximums doubled

• Logical CPU, Virtual CPU, NUMA Nodes, RAM

Virtualize any size workload with confidence

Item 5.1 5.5

Logical CPUs per host 160 320

NUMA Nodes per host 8 16

Virtual CPUs per host 2048 4096

RAM per host 2TB 4TB

vSphere Host Configuration Maximums Increased

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Virtual Machine Compatibility ESXi 5.5

• aka Virtual Hardware 10

• LSI SAS for Solaris 11

• Latest CPU Architectures

• Advanced Host Controller Interface

(AHCI)

• New SATA controller

• Virtual disks and CDROM

• 30 devices per controller

• 4 controllers per VM

• Total of 120 devices per VM

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Expanded vGPU Support

Added support for AMD GPUs

• NVIDIA available since 5.1

Three rendering modes:

• Automatic = Use GPU when available, otherwise use software rendering

• Hardware = GPU is required

• Power-on fails if no GPU

• vMotion check fails if no GPU at destination

• Software = don’t use GPU, software rendering only

vMotion between GPU vendors

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Expanded vGPU Support Cont.

vGPU Requirements:

• AMD or NVIDA Graphics Card (GPU)

• See vendor websites for supported cards

• 3D graphics must be supported by the guest operating system

• http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php

• Virtual Machine:

• Compatibility ESXi 5.0 or higher (vHW 8) (Windows 8 must be vHW 9)

• VMware Tools must be installed

• Linux distributions must have a 3.2 or later kernel

• Most modern Linux distributions package our drivers by default

• VMware is the only vendor accelerating the entire Linux graphics driver stack and providing it as free software!

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Hot-Pluggable SSD PCIe Devices

No downtime to Hot-Plug PCIe SSD drives (add/remove) on a running ESXi host

• PCIe IO expansion chassis to provide Hot-Plug of PCIe devices to an ESXi host

Support both orderly and surprise hot-plug operations

• Orderly operation initiated through hardware elements or software interface

• Surprise operation initiated by physically removing or adding device without notifying the system

Requirements

• Hardware and BIOS must support Hot-Plug PCIe

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Support for Reliable Memory

Reduce memory corruption

• Memory corruption = PSOD = BAD!

• Provider greater uptime and reliability for ESXi

How does it work?

• Feature of the hardware

• Some memory is more “reliable” than others which is reported up to ESXi for optimization

Protecting Critical Components:

• VMkernel

• UW (User Worlds)

• Init thread

• Hostd and Watchdog

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Enhancements for CPU C-States

Use deep C-states in default Balanced Policy

• Saves much more power

• Can potentially increase performance by quickly entering Turbo Mode frequencies if some other core(s) in the same physical CPU are in deep C-State

More aggressive settings in Low Power Policy

• More eager to enter deeper C-states

USB Auto-suspend

• Automatically put idle USB hubs in a lower power state

• Unused port doesn’t draw much power

• BUT, the controller still DMAs

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Summary vSphere Platform Features

vSphere configuration maximum increases

• 2x increase from vSphere 5.1

Virtual Machine Compatibility ESXi 5.5 (vHW 10)

• LSI SAS for Solaris 11, New CPU Enablement, AHCI SATA Controller Support

Expanded vGPU support

• Support AMD and NVIDIA GPUs, vMotion across GPU vendors

Hot-Plug SSD PCIe devices

• Hot Add/Remove SSD Devices without any downtime

Support for Reliable Memory

• Improved uptime and reliability

Reduced power consumption with enhancements for CPU C-States

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vSphere 2013 vCenter Server Features

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vCenter Server 5.5 Improvements

Security

• Improved vCenter Single Sign On

Usability

• vSphere Web Client enhancements

• Increased platform support

Availability

• App HA

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vCenter Server 5.5 – Single Sign-On

New vCenter Single Sign On

• Improved installation experience

• Improved Active Directory integration

• One-way and two-way trust

• Multi and single forest

• Built-in high availability

• Continued support for local authentication

• No manual database configuration

• SQL authentication no longer required

• No longer require creating DB user accounts

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vCenter Server 5.5 – Web Client

vSphere Web Client

• Increased Platform Support

• Added support for OS X

• VM Console access

• Deploy OVF Templates

• Attach Client Devices

• Enhanced Usability Experience

• Drag and Drop

• Improved Filters

• Recent Items

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vSphere 2013 vCenter App HA

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vSphere App HA

Protects apps running inside virtual machines

Provides application visibility, monitoring and restart

Allows for automated recovery from:

• Host failure, guest OS crash, application failure

Protected applications:

• Apache Tomcat 6.0, 7.0

• IIS 6.0, 7.0, 8.0

• MSSQL 2005, 2008, 2008R2, 2012

• TC Server Runtime 6.0, 7.0

• Apache HTTP Server 1.3, 2.0, 2.2

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vSphere App HA Policy

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vSphere App HA Application Availability

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vSphere HA VM-to-VM Anti-Affinity

vSphere HA in vSphere 5.5

vSphere vSphere vSphere

vSphere HA/DRS Cluster

DRS Affinity Rule:

VMs must not run

on the same host

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vSphere APP HA

Summary

• Reduce Application downtime

• Protection for several off-the-shelf

applications

• Recovery from a variety of scenarios

• VM-to-VM Anti-Affinity

• Optimal workload placement

More Information

• BCO5047 – vSphere HA – What’s New

and Best Practices

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vSphere 2013 Storage Features

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New features in vSphere Storage

Scalability

• Support for 62TB VMDK

Performance

• 16Gb E2E support

• vSphere Flash Read Cache (vFRC)

Availability

• MSCS Supportability Enhancements

• Storage vMotion & SDRS compatibility with

vSphere Replication

Operations

• PDL Enhancements

• VAAI UNMAP Enhancements

• VMFS Heap Enhancements

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62TB VMDK

• Supported on VMFS5 & NFS

• No specific virtual hardware requirement

• Requires ESXi 5.5

62TB Virtual Mode RDMs also introduced in 5.5

• No change in 64TB pRDMs

Support for Larger VMDK & vRDMs

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Support for Larger VMDK & vRDMs

Supported

• NFS & VMFS

• Offline extension of 2TB+ VMDK

• vMotion

• Storage vMotion

• SRM/vSphere Replication

• vFlash

• Snapshots

• Linked Clones

• SE Sparse Disks

Not Supported

• Online/hot extension of 2TB+ VMDK

• BusLogic Virtual SCSI Adapters

• Virtual SAN (VSAN)

• Fault Tolerance

• VI (C#) Client

• MBR Partitioned Disks

• vmfsSparse Disks

• vSphere 5.5 introduces support for 62TB VMDKs & Virtual RDMs

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Heads Up! C# Client Interoperability

SRM

• 2TB+ VMDK can be

managed successfully via

vSphere web client.

• SRM still requires C#

client for management

• Attempting to examine

62TB VMDK properties

via C# client can cause

errors:

All new features/enhances supported via web client

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16Gb E2E Support

With the release of vSphere 5.5, VMware now supports 16Gb E2E (end-

to-end) Fibre Channel

16Gb

16Gb

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MSCS - Microsoft Cluster Services Enhancements

MSCS

Node A MSCS

Node B

Microsoft

Windows 2012

Clustering

supported

Round Robin

Path Policy

Supported

Round Robin

Path Policy

Supported

FCoE & iSCSI protocols supported

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PDL AutoRemove

PDL (Permanent Device Loss)

Occurs on failures or is incorrectly removed from host

Based on SCSI Sense Codes

PDL means host no longer sends I/O to these devices

PDL AutoRemove in 5.5

PDL AutoRemove automatically removes a device with PDL from the host

Benefit of PDL AutoRemove

A PDL state on a device implies it cannot accept more IOs, but needlessly uses

up one of the 256 device per host limit.

Now device is automatically removed since it is never coming back.

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VAAI UNMAP Improvements

vSphere 5.5 introduced a new simpler VAAI UNMAP/Reclaim command

• # esxcli storage vmfs unmap

• Reclaim size now specified in blocks rather than a percentage value

• Dead space reclaimed in increments rather than all at once

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VMFS Heap Improvements

An issue with previous versions of VMFS heap meant that there were

concerns when accessing above 30TB of open files from a single ESXi

host.

ESXi 5.0p5 & 5.1U1 introduced a larger heap size to deal with this.

vSphere 5.5 introduces a much improved heap eviction process,

meaning that there is no need for the larger heap size, which consumes

memory.

vSphere 5.5 with a maximum of 256MB of heap allows ESXi hosts to

access all address space of a 64TB VMFS.

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Storage DRS, Storage vMotion & vSphere Replication Interop

If a VM which was being replicated via vSphere Replication was

migrated to another datastore, it triggered a full sync because the

persistent state files (psf) were deleted – all of the disks contents are

read and check summed on each side.

In vSphere 5.5 the psf files are now moved with the virtual machine and

retain its current replication state.

This means that virtual machines at the production site may now be

Storage vMotion’ed, and conversely, participate in Storage DRS

datastore clusters without impacting vSphere Replication’s RPO

(Recovery Point Objective).

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What is vSphere Flash Read Cache?

Key Features

• Hypervisor-based software-defined flash

storage tier solution.

• Aggregates local flash devices to provide a

clustered flash resource for VM and

vSphere hosts consumption (Virtual Flash

Host Swap Cache)

• Leverages local flash devices as a cache

• Integrated with vCenter, HA, DRS, vMotion

• Scale-Out Storage Capability: 32 nodes

SSD SSD SSD SSD

vSphere Flash Read Cache Infrastructure

vSphere Flash

Read Cache

vSphere Flash

Read Cache

vSphere Flash

Read Cache

vSphere

SSD

Flash as a New Storage Tier in vSphere

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Why vSphere Flash Read Cache?

• Cache is a high-speed memory that can be either a reserved section of

main memory or a storage device.

• Supports Write Through Cache Mode

• Improve virtual machines performance by leveraging local flash devices

• Ability to virtualize suitable business critical applications

Write Commit

Ack

3 2

Write Through

1 Cache

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vSphere Flash Read Cache Fully Integrated with vSphere

• All the management tasks pertaining to the installation, configuration &

monitoring of vSphere Flash Read Cache will be done from the vSphere client.

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vSphere Flash Read Cache – Flash Resource

• Each host creates a Virtual

Flash Resource containing

one or multiple flash based

devices.

• There can only be one Virtual

Flash Resource per vSphere

host.

• Flash based devices are

pooled into a new file system

called VFFS.

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• Virtual Flash Host Swap Cache configuration is only available via the vSphere

Web Client.

• Ability to utilize up to 4TB of vSphere Flash Resource for vSphere Flash Swap

Caching purposes.

vSphere Flash Read Cache – Virtual Flash Host Swap Cache

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• Virtual Machine Virtual Flash Read Cache

configuration is only available via the

vSphere Web Client.

• Configure Virtual Flash Read Cache per

VMDK – set to match working set size.

• Block Size 4KB – 1024 KB

vSphere Flash Read Cache – Virtual Machine Flash Cache

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Virtual SAN: Radically Simple Storage

• Policy-driven per-VM SLA

• vSphere & vCenter integration

• Scale-out storage

• Built-in resiliency

• SSD caching

• Converged Compute & Storage

Key Features

vSphere

Hard

disks

SSD

VSAN

Hard

disks

SSD

..…3 to 8…

Hard

disks

SSD Hard

disks

SSD

VSAN Aggregated Datastore

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Virtual SAN: Radically Simple Storage

• Radically Simple Storage designed

for Virtual Machines

• Fast, Resilient & Dynamic

• Lower TCO for comparable

performance

Customer Benefits

vSphere

Hard

disks

SSD

VSAN

Hard

disks

SSD

..…3 to 8…

Hard

disks

SSD Hard

disks

SSD

VSAN Aggregated Datastore

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vSphere Storage Features Summary

Support for 62TB VMDK

16Gb E2E support

MSCS supportability enhancements

PDL Autoremove

Storage vMotion and SDRS compatibility with vSphere Replication

VAAI UNMAP & VMFS Heap enhancements

vSphere Flash Read Cache

Virtual SAN

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Other VMware Activities Related to This Session

HOL:

HOL-SDC-1310 vSOM 101

HOL-SDC-1308 vSphere Flash Read Cache and VSAN

Group Discussions:

VSVC1003-GD vSphere Core Upgrades with Kyle Gleed

STO1001-GD VSAN with Cormac Hogan & VMware R&D

VSVC5005

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Thank You

What's New in vSphere Platform & Storage

Kyle Gleed, VMware

Cormac Hogan, VMware

VSVC5005

#VSVC5005