How to Integrate Hyperconverged Systems with Existing SANs

Copyright © 2018 DataCore Software Corp. – All Rights Reserved.
WEBINAR
How to Integrate Hyper-converged
Systems with Existing SANs
Augie Gonzalez
Director of Product Marketing
DataCore Software

• Is Hyper-convergence for you?
• Where’s the best fit
• Special considerations for I/O-intensive apps
• 911 Emergency dispatch case study
• Leveraging resources from existing SANs
• Intermediate steps to ease the transition
2
Agenda

Copyright © 2018 DataCore Software Corp. – All Rights Reserved. 3
Shared Storage
Centralized vs. Distributed
Servers
External storage
Hyper-converged
Servers with Internal storage
- Storage software
APP APP APP APPAPP APP APP APP
“Virtual Storage Pool
a.k.a Virtual SAN”

DataCore offers Both
4
DataCore™ Hyper-converged
Virtual SAN
• Each node contributes local storage
accessible to other nodes in cluster
SANsymphony™
Software-defined Storage
• Hosts rely on storage from
external iSCSI / FC SAN

Central SAN
 Offload servers
 Network access
 Concentrate storage capacity
 Segregate responsibilities
Hyper-converged
 Leverage server resources
 Keep access local (where possible)
 Distribute storage
 Combine roles
Contrasting Objectives

6
Central SAN – Clear Separation of Roles
Central Storage
Pool
ComputeStorage
Network Access
[ iSCSI / Fibre Channel Fabric ]
S/W S/W

7
Hyper-converged Cluster – Mixed Roles
Network Access
[ iSCSI SAN ]
Storage + Compute
Internal Access
[ Virtual iSCSI ]

Central SAN
 Storage-centric
 Special Ops
 Control all capacity
 Services-minded
Hyper-converged
 Server-orientation
 Application focus
 Manage from host
 Self-provision
Social / Political Factors
Different vendor-affinity
Image source: MarketingProfs

• Appears simpler
• Only concerned with servers
• Seems cheaper
• Commodity servers less pricey than
proprietary storage arrays
• Must be faster
• Doesn’t incur SAN delay since
disks are on the same machine
9
Hyper-Converge Charm
Compute Network
Storage
Server

• General purpose environments
• Light loads
• Apps where users can be easily split
across different servers (web scale)
• Keeping hands off
• Datacenter in a box
10
Many Hyper-Converged Products are
Designed for Small Scenarios …
… Yet marketed to large enterprises
Image source: the free dictionary

Unable to meet SLAs
• Software cannot handle high I/O rates
• Sluggish response
• No chance to tune
• Un-deterministic behavior
Why not?
• Designed for light,
general purpose workloads
• All I/O waits on 1
overloaded processor
• Competition for resources causes
variability in response
… and Unsuitable for I/O-intensive Apps
DataCore is the exception

12
DataCore's SPC-1 Price-PerformanceTM
World Record Hyper-converged Results!
PERFORMANCE
1.2 million
SPC-1 IOPSTM
Highest
Productivity
PRICE-PERFORMANCE
$0.10
Per SPC-1 IOPSTM
Unmatched
Economics
RESPONSE TIME
0.22
milliseconds
Ultra Fast
Applications
High-Availability / Multi-Node / Fibre Channel

Criteria SPC Benchmark
Industry Standard
Independently Verified & Audited
Peer Reviewed
Covers different types & generations of technology
Maps to “real world” performance (OLTP databases)
Shows cost for achieving performance level
13
SPC is Basis of Comparison
Major Storage Vendors with SPC Benchmarks

Parallel I/O Breakthrough
TIME SAVINGS COST SAVINGS
Do more in
less time
2 machines can do
the work of many

• Mission-critical application:
Call dispatch application built on MS SQL Server
• Enter 911 call details
• Query databases to access call and case histories
• Find the closest unit to send for help using GPS
• Application was unable to keep up with dispatcher
• The dispatcher would have to wait for queries or commands to finish
• Root cause analysis showed bottleneck was storage
• Multiple times per day, latencies were 200ms+
15
Case Study: 911 Emergency Dispatch

Better Availability
• RPO goal of 0 (no data loss)
• Wanted synchronous replication
to DR site
• RTO goal of 30 mins
• Still long time for emergency
communications to be down
• Wanted vMotion to DR site when
needed
• Able to test failover and failback
Lower Costs
• Continue using existing NetApp
storage (only a year and half old)
• Needed new hosts with
additional compute and memory
• Wanted a single pane of glass for
management
Other Challenges
(aside from storage latency)

Simplified View of the Dispatch Application
17

• Numbers
• In Production: 20x improvement in latency
• Previously, peak latency was 200ms; hit multiple times per day
• Current peak is less than 5ms
• In Lab: 4x to 14x performance increase
• In some cases 100X improvement in IOPS and Throughput
• Anecdotes
• Dispatchers no longer complain about the input lag they were experiencing
• Able to vMotion virtual machines to secondary site for maintenance yet users
unaware they are no longer running on primary site
18
Summary of Performance Improvement

• 60%+ less infrastructure
• Reduced hosts from 8 to 3 and eliminated external storage for production data
• Saved on administration time and PCSE
• Saved ~$100K on SQL Server licenses
• Change to per core licensing was going to cost ~$120K with physical hosts
• Each physical host was single processor with 12 cores (5 servers x 12 cores)
• By virtualizing SQL Server, able to control number of cores
• 1 VM with 8 vCPUs – Cores and 2 VMs with 4 vCPUs – Cores (total of 16 vCPUs – Cores)
• Better performance enabled consolidation of instances
• Went from 5 physical servers to 3 VMs
• ~$25K in license costs afterwards
19
Cost Benefits
https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/11531/259931/a-case-study-on-improving-
sql-server-performance-20x-with-hyperconverged

Comprehensive Set of Advanced Data Services
VIRTUALIZED HOSTS PHYSICAL SERVERS
EFFICIENCYAVAILABILITY
Synchronous Mirroring
Snapshots / Backups
CDP
Asynchronous Replication
PERFORMANCE
High Speed Caching
Random Write Accelerator
Auto-tiering
Quality of Service (QoS)
Thin Provisioning
Storage Pooling
Data Migration
Deduplication/Compression
NAS/SAN
(Unified Storage)
Centralized
Management
Analysis
& Reporting
Cloud
Integration
MANAGEMENT
VVols
Adaptive Parallel I/ODataCore™ Parallel I/O

• Scale linearly
• Use whichever server models & manufacturers at your disposal
• Some nodes can be storage heavy, others compute only
21
Web-scale when Appropriate
Easily Expands to 64 Nodes
1 2 3 4 5 64

Choice of Deployment models
with same license
Pool & virtualize
popular storage arrays
Create purpose-built
storage servers
Hyper-converge storage
across a cluster of servers
Configure hybrids
of these
V
V V V V

vSphere Self-Provisioning with VVOLs
Policy based self-provisioning and management
of virtual machines and storage
1. Storage admin:
► Creates a storage container
instead of assigning individual
volumes
2. vSphere admin:
► Defines policies –
e.g. Gold, Silver, Bronze
► Uses policy to provision a new VM
with the appropriate storage
3. vSphere storage (VASA) API connects
the new VM to the storage container
1
2
3

… or from Microsoft System Center VMM

Cloud
Integrated Enterprise-wide Solution
25
Data Center
External Storage Arrays
Mainstream IT Services
iSCSI / Fibre Channel
Disaster Recovery
Site
Hyper-converged Cluster
Remote Office /
Branch Office (ROBO)
Centralized Management
Secondary
Storage

Hyper-converged Advantages from DataCore
26
Best Price-Performance in peer-reviewed SPC-1 benchmark $0.10 / SPC-1 IOPS™
Highest Performance w/ DataCore™ Parallel I/O 1.2 Million SPC-1 IOPS™
Fastest Response ever measured for SPC-1 OLTP workloads 0.22 millisecond @ 100% load
Fewer nodes to do far more work (reduce cost & complexity)
Scale out storage capacity independent of compute
and serve capacity to external hosts
One management platform across entire storage infrastructure
Support for Multi-hypervisor & Bare-metal environments
Hardware independent (wide choice of server platforms) and
can mix different server suppliers in same virtual SAN
Same set of services across all storage devices
(Internal / external DAS, SAN, Cloud)

Easing the Transition
Pool & virtualize
popular storage arrays
Create purpose-built
storage servers
Hyperconverge storage
across a cluster of servers
Configure hybrids
of these
V V V V

Try it: Schedule a live demo
https://www.datacore.com/products/hyper-converged-infrastructure/live-demo/

Questions?
info@datacore.com
www.datacore.com

How to Integrate Hyperconverged Systems with Existing SANs

More Related Content

What's hot

Similar to How to Integrate Hyperconverged Systems with Existing SANs

More from DataCore Software

Recently uploaded

How to Integrate Hyperconverged Systems with Existing SANs