how nimble storage integrates into the vmware environment

How Nimble Storage Integrates into the VMware Environment Wen Yu, Nimble Storage

Agenda

2 © 2013 Nimble Storage

  Business Critical Apps Virtualization Considerations

  VMware & Nimble Integration Points and Use Cases

Considerations for Biz App Virtualization

3

Business Critical Apps Virtualization

Performance

Availability

Operational Efficiency Scalability

Data Protection +

Business Continuity

© 2013 Nimble Storage

Performance

4


Performance

Availability


Data Protection +

Business Continuity

CASL


Performance Acceleration with CASL

UNIVERSAL COMPRESSION: 30-75% SAVINGS

WRITE-OPTIMIZED LAYOUT: 100x FASTER WRITES

DIS

K

SS

D

Cac

he

DYNAMIC CACHING: 50x FASTER READS


Availability

6


Performance

Availability


Data Protection +

Business Continuity

H/W + S/W


Availability: Storage Hardware

7

Resiliency built in Active-Standby controllers

Block level checksum and address verification

RAID-6 protection for HDD

Redundant connectivity and components


Availability: Protection At All Levels

8

Failure Recovery Disk failure In block checksums and RAID-6 ensure data continues to

remain available.

Controller or network port failure

Quick failover to the standby controller resulting in minimal to no application disruption.

Accidental data deletion (PEBCAK)

Recover from a previously taken application/VM-consistent snapshot.

Site failure Recover from application/VM-consistent snapshot copy from secondary system at the DR site.


Availability: Software Layer - NMP

SATP PSP

HBA 1 HBA 2

NMP PSA VMkernel Storage Stack

 Storage Array Type Plugins (SATPs)  SATP_ALUA

 Path Selection Plugins (PSPs)  PSP_RR


SATP PSP

HBA 1 HBA 2

NMP PSA VMkernel Storage Stack

Availability: NMP Workflow

1 2 3

4

5


Operational Efficiency

11


Performance

Availability


Data Protection +

Business Continuity

•  Perf Policy •  vCenter Plugin

•  VAAI


Exchange 2010

SQL2005 / Share Point

Exchange Log Exchange 2003

VMware ESX (VMDK)

32K 8K 16K 4K 32K 8K 16K 4K 4K 4K

Operational Efficiency: Performance Policy Agility


VMware vCenter Server

Operational Efficiency: vCenter Plugin Integration

VMware vSphere

Nimble vCenter Plugin

Storage Usage + Performance

Add Storage

Expand Storage

Clone Storage

Data Protection


Operational Efficiency: VAAI Integration

  vStorage APIs for Array Integration

  A set of APIs and SCSI commands to offload certain functions to the storage array to :

–  Increase scalability and performance –  Free server and network resources

  VAAI is a joint development between VMware and Nimble


Operational Efficiency: VAAI Primitives and Use Cases

15

Create VMs with ‘eagerzero’ Zeroing blocks in VMs

on first write

VM operations (power on, vMotion, snapshot)

View, vCloud

Block Zeroing/WRITE_SAME Hardware Assisted Locking/ATS

Application or Use Case

VAAI Primitive

esxtop name ZERO ATS

VM Deletion, Storage vMotion

Space Reclamation/UNMAP

DELETE

Nimble OS 1.4.3 or Later


ESX Cluster

Imag

e by

Vau

ghn

Ste

war

t

Nimble Volume

Datastore

16

VM VM

VM

VM

VM VM

VAAI: Block Zeroing – Without VAAI

000


ESX Cluster

Nimble Volume

Datastore

17

VM VM

VM

VM

VM VM

VAAI: Block Zeroing – With VAAI

000


Server 1 locks VMDK. Server 1 releases LUN.

Other servers can resume metadata update

VAAI: VMFS Locking – Without VAAI

18

Normal I/O

VMware ESX VMware ESX VMware ESX VMware ESX VMware ESX VMware ESX 0011 1001 0100

1100 0110 1101

1011 0010 1100

Server 1 wants to start a VM and needs to lock the LUN

Server 1 Server 2 Server 3 VM VM VM VM VM VM VM VM VM

VM power-on/snapshot/vMotion operations cannot

proceed!


VMware ESX

VM VM VM VM VM VM VM VM VM

VAAI: HW Assisted Locking – With VAAI

19

VMware ESX VMware ESX VMware ESX 0011 1001 0100

1100 0110 1101

1011 0010 1100

Read lock

Free

Check if free, and lock Success!

Normal I/O Server 1 wants to start a VM, checks VMDKs for locks.

Server 1 tells storage “If lock still free, lock it for me”

Servers 2 & 3 can still access the LUN

Server 1 Server 2 Server 3

VMware ESX VMware ESX VMware ESX


VAAI: Space Reclaimation (UNMAP)

20

vSphere

VMFS volume A VMFS volume B

Follow VMware

KB 2014849


VAAI: Listing VAAI Stats using ESXTOP

 Press “u” to switch to device stats

 Press “f” then toggle off un-needed columns and toggle on VAAI stats

 <DEMO>

21

Scalability



Performance

Availability


Data Protection +

Business Continuity

Scale to Fit

Scalability: Scale-to-Fit Architecture P

ER

FOR

MA

NC

E

CAPACITY

Scale Performance

Scale Capacity Add

FUTURE


Considerations for Biz App Virtualization

24


Performance

Availability


Data Protection +

Business Continuity

•  VSS •  SRM


Application Aware Snapshots with Microsoft VSS

Data Protection: VSS Integration

VM consistency

Application consistency


VSS: Native VSS Hardware Provider

Volume Shadow Service

New writes

1 2

3 5

Nimble NPM Requestor

VSS Writer

Nimble Hardware Provider

6

7

NTFS

4

Nimble Volume

Snapshot


VSS: Integrated VMware Software VSS Provider

27

Volume Shadow Service

New writes

2 3

4

VMware VSS

Requestor

VSS Writer

VMware VSS

Provider

ESX Server

7

Array based

snapshot

8 1

VMware snapshot

NTFS

5

6

VMDK


Site Recovery Manager

VMware + Nimble = DR Automation and Testing

(Protected Site) (Recovery Site) VMware

vCenter Server

VMware vSphere

Servers

Site Recovery Manager

VMware vCenter Server

VMware vSphere

Servers

Storage Replication Storage Replication


Nimble + VMware SRM Integration

  Storage Replication Adapter (SRA) Nimble SRA does:   Discovery   Test Failover   Failover   Re-protect

Nimble brings:   Efficient, policy-driven WAN replication   Space efficient clone


In Summary

30

ESX Storage Stack

VMFS

NMP VAAI

vCenter Server SRM

vCenter Plugin

Storage Replication

Adapter

Multipathing & Array offloads


More Information

  Lunch & Learn events throughout North America –  [email protected] for more info

  Website: www.nimblestorage.com

  Local and regional VMUGs, industry trade shows

  Demo or eval unit? [email protected]


how nimble storage integrates into the vmware environment

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