Virtual Infrastructure Optimization

SAN Transparency and Performance

From Reactive to Proactive

Alex D’Anna

Director, Solutions Consulting, EMEA

November 9, 2010

Agenda

SAN & Virtualization Challenges

Virtual Infrastructure Optimization

Application Views and Risk Reduction

Customer Examples and Deployment

About Virtual Instruments

• Focus on optimizing Fibre channel

• Leader in Virtual Infrastructure Optimization

• Private equity spinout from Finisar: June 2008

• Virtual Instruments Leadership− John Thompson, former CEO of Symantec and

Director of IBM Americas

− Barry Cooks, Engineering of VMware

− Former Siebel Leadership

− Key Finisar Engineering

• Key partnerships: Brocade, HDS, VMware, IBM, LB Systems, MEN@NET

• Growing 2X Year over Year

• In EMEA: Nov. 2009 2 Dec. 2010 17

San Jose, CA Headquarters

About Virtual Instruments

• Where to find us?

• LB Systems and MEN@NET!!!

• Full lab, demo and offer the services and capabilities to deploy

• Where on the Web?

• LinkedIn Group: Virtual Instruments SAN Storage and Virtualization Forum

• Twitter: virtual_inst, virtual_wisdom, virtual_io

• YouTube: SNW Europe 2010 or http://www.youtube.com/user/sos4sans#p/a/u/0/1dnhEHKnWLE

San Jose, CA Headquarters

The Industry Challenge…The Industry Challenge…

...the “perfect storm”...the “perfect storm”

I/O

I/O

The Virtualization Challenge

1. The SAN has lacked any real I/O systems-level performance

– Original FC spec was designed for 32 “storage channels”

– Not designed as a “network”

– Lacks self-health, diagnostics and transparency to the I/O

FC Fabric

There’s a “perfect storm” happening in data management today…

Servers & Virtual

Machines

StorageArrays

SAN Cloud

Servers & Virtual

Machines

1. The SAN has lacked any real I/O systems-level performance

2. Data growth at an unprecedented rate (average 30-60% CAGR)

– A 200TB shop in ‘05 growing 50% is now 1PB & will be about 8 PB in 5 years

– A net-new 7 PB of storage; how much will it cost, and where will it be deployed?

There’s a “perfect storm” happening in data management today…

SAN Cloud

The Virtualization Challenge

1. The SAN has been a “black box”, lacking any real I/O systems-level performance, so it’s heavily over-provisioned as a result

2. Data growth at an unprecedented rate (average 30-60% CAGR)

3. More “abstraction” being added

– Further limits I/O visibility

– Challenges performance

– Slows deployment of cloud infrastructures

There’s a “perfect storm” happening in data management today…

Virtual Server Cloud

SAN Cloud

Storage Virtualization Cloud

The Virtualization Challenge

Common Large-scale SAN Challenges

• Explaining/avoiding application outages & slowdowns

• Identifying SAN problems

• Identifying physical layer problems

• Reducing vendor finger-pointing

• Tracking SLAs & compliance

• Over-provisioning and consolidation

• Storage tiering

• Environmental costs (avoiding new data centers)

• Capacity planning

• Containing rising costs of storage/SAN w/ flat budget

• Explaining/avoiding application outages & slowdowns

• Increasing server consolidation ratios

• Reducing vendor finger-pointing

• Tracking SLAs & compliance

• I/O subsystem troubleshooting

• Deploying Tier 1 mission critical applications

• Showing adherence to performance standards

• Isolating workload peaks that cause resource conflicts and bottlenecks

Common Virtual Infrastructure Challenges

The primary virtual infrastructure challenge

We have found greater than 90 percent of the

VMware-related performance issues

encountered by our customers are due to the

storage tier.

Scott Drummonds,Performance SpecialistVMware

Virtual Server Market Share 2008-2012

~ 55M vms~ 10M vms

Process and Tech Standard Phase

• “VM 1st” Policy

Heavy-Use Phase• Mission Critical • More than just

Servers

Light-Use Phase• “Virtualization-

Lite”Pilot Phase

• Play

TIME

NU

MB

ER

OF

VM

s

Are You Here?

Phases of VMware Infrastructure

Stuck due to:•Lack of “know-how”•Lack of Tier 1 app confidence•Lack of client virtualization maturity

Why Do Customers STOP Here??

VISIBILITY….of I/O

Identify / fix physical & virtual infrastructure problems before they occur

Ensure no loss of revenue/ productivityReduce Risk

Optimize IT asset utilization and personnelReduce Costs

Tier 1 apps meet performance SLAsImprove

Performance

What is needed…

Create “Predictability”

ProbeV• Identifies low overall SAN utilization via real-time dashboard• Identifies individual port utilization• Enables verification of historical utilization trends to verify loads over time• Enables intelligent load balancing to avoid expensive purchases

Avoiding Over-provisioning of Links

90% of ports used less than 10%

Improving SAN Utilization and Mitigating Risk

• SAN utilization < 2%

• Some links hitting 100%

• Traffic on ISL’s causing contention

• SFP low-light levels & flopping HBA’s causing CRC issues

Categorization Summary Count % of LinksBalanced 1228 69%

Passive 85 5%

Active 85 5%

Imbalanced 228 13%

Single (not redundant) 143 8%

ProbeV Software Audit

Record and play back metric recordings of intermittent

problems before they build up and disrupt the SAN

Faster Troubleshooting & Root Cause Analysis

ProbeFCX

• Continuously monitors and filters in real-time

• Calculates statistics based on measuring all fibre channel frame traffic

• Automatically notifies staff based on exceeded policy thresholds

Real-time root-cause analysis

Avoiding Performance Problems

ProbeFCX• Identifies potential application slow-down causes

• Recommends corrective action before the slowdown

• Enables fixes before application owner is aware of the problem

Provides visibility into Queue depths, CRC errors, physical link errors, protocol errors, code violations, etc

Optimizing Application Performance

ProbeFCX• Measures all network statistics

• Proactively alerts administrator based on policies

• Enables real-time tuning for maximum performance

Expanding VMware to Mission-critical Applications

ProbeVM• Monitors CPU, memory & SAN utilization and I/O response time

• Identifies performance bottlenecks & recommends vMotion transfers

• Enables “what if” load balancing simulations

• Proves consolidation ratios can be improved

w/out performance degradation

OS

APP

OS

APP

OS

APP

OS

APP

OS

APP

OS

APP

OS

APP

OS

APP

OS

APP

OS

APP

OS

APP

OS

APP

OS

APP

OS

APP

OS

APP

OS

APP

&Hosts

FC Switches

StorageArrays

ProbeV(SNMP data)

ProbeVM(VMware vCenter)

VirtualWisdom Deployment

ProbeV (software)

TAPs Probe FCX

ProbeVM (software)

ProbeFCX: (Real-time latency via FC headers) Traffic Access Point (TAP) Patch Panel

(Out-of-band copy of FC traffic)

Solution Example: Virtual Instruments

Guests

OS

APP

OS

APPOS

APP

OS

APPOS

APP

OS

APP

Server, GUI, Dashboards

&Hosts

StorageArrays

Solution Deployment

Comprehensive I/O Visibility is Essential

Guests

OS

APP

OS

APPOS

APP

OS

APPOS

APP

OS

APP

FCTAPs

SAN switches

Representative infrastructure

&Hosts

StorageArrays

Solution Deployment

Extract CPU, Memory data from

vCenter

Phase 1: Virtual Server Monitoring

Guests

OS

APP

OS

APPOS

APP

OS

APPOS

APP

OS

APP

FCTAPs

SAN switches

&Hosts

StorageArrays

Solution Deployment

Extract CPU, memory data from

vCenter

Extractdata from

FC switches

Phase 2: SAN Switch Monitoring

Guests

OS

APP

OS

APPOS

APP

OS

APPOS

APP

OS

APP

FCTAPs

SAN switches

&Hosts

StorageArrays

VirtualWisdom Deployment

Extract CPU, memory data from vCenter

Extract data from

FC switches

Extractdata from

FC frames

Phase 3: Fibre Channel Link Monitoring

Guests

OS

APP

OS

APPOS

APP

OS

APPOS

APP

OS

APP

FCTAPs

SAN switches

Everyone will TAP at Some Point

Traffic Access Points (TAPs):• Have been widely deployed in IP networks (LANs, WANs) for 20+ years

• Provide direct access to all levels of fiber traffic data on SAN/storage performance, utilization, and transmission errors

• “If I could make 1 Recommendation, it’s TAP every Storage Array you deploy”

– IBM Global Escalation Engineer

Faster problem identification & resolution

Proactively find problems before users

Maximize application performance

Other Options for TAPping

TAPping Integrated into the Cabling

&Hosts

StorageArrays

Solution Deployment

Virtual Server Monitoring

SAN Switch Monitoring

FC Physical Layer Monitoring

ConsolidatedView

Comprehensive I/O Visibility: VM to the LUN

Guests

OS

APP

OS

APPOS

APP

OS

APPOS

APP

OS

APP

SAN switches

VM to LUN Correlation

FCTAPs

Customer Example

SAN & Virtualization Challenges

Virtual Infrastructure Optimization

Application Views and Risk Reduction

Customer Examples and Deployment

Installed in 1.5 hours… on March 15, 2010

Multipath Verification • Verification including all Nicknames. The single HBA should be investigated.

Multipath Verification • MP after removing nicknames including the word TAPE . The single HBAs should be investigated.

• Increasing production virtual server deployments

• Application performance degradation• Inability to agree on root causes between

storage/server admins & vendors• Additional storage capacity/bandwidth

failed to resolve problemsSolutions

Results

Challenge

• Implemented VIO solution across server & storage tiersChallengeSolutionsResults • Detection of VMware configuration problems

• Diagnosis of storage I/O latency

• Identification of overloaded “hot” ports

• Correlation between VMware vMotion and performance degradation

Medium Bank 250 VM’s on 24 ESX Servers

Customer Success Story

Summary

• Comprehensive I/O visibility enables

– Real-time performance optimization

– Proactive re-balancing of applications/VMs

– Faster troubleshooting

– Higher infrastructure availability

– Confidence to deploy VMware with I/O-intensive Tier 1 business-critical applications

The Leader In SAN & Virtual Infrastructure Optimization

THANK YOU