Deploying Virtualised Infrastructures for Improved Efficiency and Reduced Cost Adrian Groeneveld Senior Product Marketing Manager Adrian Groeneveld Senior Product Marketing Manager

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3 Application-Aware Storage Key Differentiation Differentiated Storage Services aligned to Application Needs –All LUNs should not be created equal Highest utilisation Rates in the Industry –Buy less storage - use it more efficiently Optimal Performance, No utilisation Penalty –Remove the capacity versus spindle decision Provision Storage like Servers –You like VMWare for servers?...youll like Pillar for storage Dynamic storage resource (re)assignment –Easy to change priorities based on business needs

4 REAL Benefits Pillar Application Aware Storage Reduce Administrative Time by 50% Increase utilisation Rates up to 80% Lower Cost of Ownership by 50%

Why Virtualise?

6 Traditional Infrastructure Growth Users Server Proliferation Network Infrastructure

7 What Does Server Proliferation Mean? Footprint Power Poor Server Utilisation Administrative Burden –Upgrades –Changes –Processes Maintenance Cost Inconsistent Systems

8 Why Virtualise? Reduce physical footprint Flexible performance Application optimisation Quality of Service within physical resources High Availability Simplified DR Automation Future proofed environment

Deploying Virtualised Storage for Complete Virtualisation

A Brief History of Storage

11 Networked Storage Evolution Small tactical deployment Technology acceptance Increased tactical deployment Fall in cost of deployment Strategic consolidation projects Today – multiple islands of SAN and NAS

12 And Then Came ILM The promise of cost savings Seamless movement of data between tiers of storage Freeing up space on primary storage Storing data on the most appropriate storage devices It all seems to make sense

13 Todays Storage Landscape Multiple Technologies Storage Silos Training Costs Service Costs Admin Time Complexity Multiple Technologies Storage Silos Training Costs Service Costs Admin Time Complexity Expensive to Manage Expensive to Own Low Utilisation Power and Space Point Products Expensive to Manage Expensive to Own Low Utilisation Power and Space Point Products Performance falls behind capacity Space constraints Hidden costs Performance falls behind capacity Space constraints Hidden costs

14 What if We Could Consolidate Further? One storage solution to manage Simpler provisioning Faster provisioning Increased utilisation Lower power consumption Less cooling Smaller data centre footprint

Storage for VMware

16 Storage Requirements Server virtualisation only partially solves the problem Virtual environments require shared storage for maximum benefit Every virtual machine/application has different needs This presents a number of challenges –Performance –Scalability –Utilisation –Efficiency –Reliability

17 Storage Challenges in VMware Environments Performance –Multiple virtual machines with differing SLAs –Inflexible storage means all machines treated the same –Virtual infrastructures grow faster than expected –Simplicity of deployment further accelerates growth –Storage becomes a bottleneck More traffic through a single port Scalability –Typically VMware environments grow much faster than storage can be deployed –Typically scalability of underlying storage is limited and challenging –This encourages over-provisioning

18 Storage Challenges in VMware Environments Efficiency –The managing of the storage is often more complex than managing the virtual infrastructure Utilisation –VMware recommends provisioning 100% more storage than you need Virtual machine snapshots Memory buffers Future growth –Best practices encourage poor utilisation Reliability –Storage system single point of failure –High availability at the storage layer can be expensive

Solving the Storage Challenge

20 The Pillar Axiom System One Single Consolidated System –SAN, NAS or Both –Multiple workloads and performance levels –Modular growth –Scale capacity AND performance –High availability throughout –Six click provisioning –Flexible data protection and disaster recovery

21 Enabled by AxiomONE Software Multiple Tiers ONE Multiple Apps ONE SAN/NAS ONE SATA+FC ONE

Enabling Application Aware Storage AxiomONE Dynamic Performance Manager

23 Not All Virtual Applications are Made Equal Reference or Transactional How is it accessed? Block or file? How often is it accessed? Random or sequential? Priority over other apps? RPO? RTO? Disaster Recovery? Consistent restart?

24 Quality of Service for Storage Mixed workloads on a single system Prioritises I/O between applications across system Directs performance based on application importance Increases utilisation across system Instant performance tuning

25 What Quality of Service Does Minimum % of Queue Allocation Logical Volumes High Medium Low Archive Data Layout & Block Prioritization Bands High Archive Low

26 The Axiom Approach Whats the Problem? Performance Performance of Provisioned Storage Application A Application B Lower performance means missed SLA Higher performance means wasted money QoS Level 1 QoS Level 2

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28 CPU (Priority) Memory (Cache) Network (Priority) Application-Aware Storage Virtualisation Pillar Axiom Storage Services Virtual Server Environment Service Level A Service Level B Service Level C Virtual Machine 1 Virtual Machine 2 Virtual Machine 3 Physical Server Appropriate storage SLA mapped against VM Performance mapped against virtual application Storage instantly tuned for peaks and troughs in demand CPU (Priority) Memory (Cache) Disk (Layout)

29 Quality of Service for Application-Aware Storage

30 Scaling Your Virtual Infrastructure Bandwidth IOPs Capacity x 64 Storage CPUs IOPS TB IOPS TB IOPS TB IOPS TB Scalable Capacity and Performance in a Single Virtual Storage Grid

Application Aware Storage for VMware Environments

32 Storage in a Virtualized Environment Typical approach – one central array treating all virtual machines as equal Better than direct attached storage but creates problems

33 The Issue of Capacity vs. Spindles 300GB Drives set as Raid 5 (4+1) provides a 1.2TB LUN Multiple VMs are usually supported by this stacked array Result: 100% random I/O, overloading cache The Solution – Application Aware Storage Each LUN is striped across four RAID 5 disk groups Spindle count increased to a least 24 disks Performance of individual LUN optimized for each VM

34 Pillar in a Virtualised Environment Capital Savings –Optimization Removes the Capacity white-space Capacity lost to underutilised Server Capacity lost to various RAID configurations –Lower Initial Acquisition Cost due to higher utilisation $/GB Value assigned for each VM $/IOP Value assigned for each VM Thin Provisioning reduces initial capacity need

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36 Achieving Higher Utilisation Consolidation –Eliminate multiple physical tiers –Eliminate separate archive and content based storage Intelligent data layout –More intelligent use of spindles and available capacity –Distributed RAID to deliver better performance from existing capacity Capacity on demand growth –Intelligent thin provisioning across all data tiers or priorities

37 Utilisation Without Compromise We are consistently delivering over 62% utilisation of available capacity – and thats written data

38 Summary Virtualisation can make very significant efficiency improvements –Space, power, cooling, utilisation, maintenance, cost Virtualisation should be looked at from both a server and storage point of view –One has limited effectiveness without the other Dont forget to consider scalability –Virtual environments do scale quickly Quality of Service at the server level needs to be matched by storage level quality of service to be effective An effective virtual infrastructure will –Drive down costs –Increase administrative productivity –Improve efficiency –Just make life easier

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