Managing Change in the Data Center Network

Larry Hart

Head of WW Marketing

Robert Winter

Office of the CTO

MAINFRAME

MINI-COMPUTING

PC/CLIENTSERVER ERA

INTERNETERA

1950sIBMNCRControl DataSperryHoneywellBurroughs

1960sDECData GeneralHPHoneywellPrimeComputervisionWang

1980sDellCiscoIBMHPAppleCompaqASTGateway

1990sDellHPAppleIBMGoogleAcer

2010s

VIRTUAL ERA

2

Entering the Virtual Era

The Journey to Efficiency

Builds On Virtual Foundation

Dynamic Resource Optimization

Rapid Provisioning

Server & Storage Consolidation

High Availability

Disaster Recovery

Policy Driven Automation

STRATEGIC

AGILITY

QUALITY OF

SERVICE

ECONOMIC

SAVINGS

DATA CENTER

EFFICIENCY

MANAGEMENT CHALLENGES• Growth means complexity• Does not scale with virtualization demands• Cannot keep up with storage growth• Made up of discrete devices• Multitude of management tools

TECHNOLOGY CHALLENGES• Single Server with Single Application• Discrete Communications and Storage FabricsLow Bandwidth in the rack•Lossy QoS•Lots of Ports

Why DC Management Must Change

Fabric convergence, port proliferation, management sprawl & virtualization

forcing network management changes. Does that mean your legacy network

needs to be thrown out? How do we manage this change?

VS

VS

Legacy Networks(Physical)

MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS• High performance and scalability built-in• Virtualization-aware components• Unified Fabric enabling new levels of storage flexibility• Network building blocks are interactive and scalable• Data center orchestration

TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS•Dynamic Server with Virtual Applications •Unified Fabrics for Communications and Storage•More bandwidth per port•“Near” Lossless•Fewer Ports – Higher Bandwidth

Next Gen DC Networks(Virtual)

We Listened toIT Professionals

5

Keep it simple

Don’t lock

me in!

More

affordable

6

How You Get There MattersWhat’s Wrong with Some Implementations?

Today Time Line Goal

Components

Enabling Open, Capable, Affordable Solutions

Servers Rule Data Center

Networking Rules Data Center

Network

StorageCompute

Hypervisor

Orchestrated Data Center

A Differentiated Approachto Imminent Change In the Data Center

7

Uncompromised Virtual-integrated Solutions

Innovation Without Legacy

• Integrated & interoperable

• Customer vs. company

driven

• Path to advanced networking

technologies building from

traditional GbE

Flexible Delivery

• Business-ready

configurations

• Build and transfer

• Build and operate

• As-a-service deliveryOpen + Capable + Affordable

Best-of-Breed Partnerships

• PowerConnect, including

B-series and J-series

• Mutual commitment

• Fully integrated solutions

• Joint development

• Go-to-market alignment

8

The Next Step in Efficiency

Flexible infrastructure orchestrated through unified infrastructure management

Compute Storage Networking

Unified Infrastructure Management

Dell Business Ready Configurations for a Virtual Ready Infrastructure

– Dynamic data center building block

– Simplify remote management of regional datacenters

– Streamline dynamic infrastructure deployment

– Available as part of pre-configured solution

Dell Advanced Infrastructure ManagerPutting It All Together

Dell Advanced Infrastructure Manager

Unify management of existing & future infrastructure

DELL CONFIDENTIAL 9

Dell Blades

EqualLogic Storage

PowerConnect

Dell PowerEdge Dell EqualLogic Dell / EMC

Servers Storage Network

PowerConnect

10

Dell Advanced Infrastructure Manager Faster to Deploy, Easier to Manage

Respond Faster

– Deploy switches and servers from pallet to production in minutes

– Change workloads servers are running in 5 minutes or less

– Recover services automatically

Increase IT Productivity

– Rack once, cable once

– Single console for physical and virtual infrastructure management

Lower Costs

– Consolidate servers & improving asset utilization

– Reduce power, cooling and datacenter costs

Freedom to Choose

– Virtual and / or physical servers

– Multiple Operating Systems

– Open network solutions from Dell and others, servers and storage

We’re Building Upon Our Strengths

11

iSCSI STORAGE

SOLUTION

PROVIDER#1

SERVICES

PROFESSIONALS

41K+

100+BUSINESS READY CONFIGS

AND REFERENCE ARCHITECTURES

10,000IT SAAS

CUSTOMERS

#1 CLOUD

INFRASTRUCTURE

PROVIDER

TBR 2009 SUSTAINABILITY INDEX

#1

INTERNET SEARCH ENGINES

3 5

BLADE IN

PERFORMANCE/

PRICE

CATEGORY IN

INFOWORLD’S

2010 “BLADE

SHOOT OUT”

#1

OF

THE

TOP

$100M+SAVED OVER 2 YEARS WITH

VIRTUALIZATION

What Really Matters . . .

12

• Management of physical resources to management of virtualized applications

• Every vendors’s tool to heterogeneous management tools

• Discrete DC silos to orchestrated DC management

Management Transitions

• GbE to 10 GbE @ the right economics

• Infiniband Ent. Clusters to 10GbE

• Traditional Priority to Data Center Bridging

• Storage transitions: FC to iSCSI, FCoE

• Multi-layered networks to flat L2 networks (e.g, TRILL)

Technology Transitions

Emerging Technological Changes In the Data CenterDCB, iSCSI and FCoE

Robert Winter

Dell OCTO

Why iSCSI In the Data Center?

14

Utilizes current IT investment to evolve into a next generation data center

ServerMigrate when you are ready,

without ripping and replacing

SwitchUse mature

current technology to

converge fabrics

StorageHigh

performance from branch to

data center

Data Center Bridging (DCB) Ethernet is a good thing

15

DCB provides a number of advantages:

• Congestion management

• Bandwidth management

• More discriminating flow control

• Self-configuring links

But…..we need to answer these two questions:

1. Does DCB Ethernet benefit iSCSI?

2. Does FCoE with DCB behave well in congested environments?

Review: DCB, TRILL and a “better” Ethernet

16

FCoE and DCB are interconnected, but aren’t the same thing.FCoE requires DCB for best experience, iSCSI doesn’t (but can use DCB)

802.1Qbb (Per-Priority Flow Control)

10GE

Link

IEEE

DCB

802.1Qaz (Enhanced Transmission Selection)

t1

5G

4G

1G

3G

4G

3G

10GE

Link

t2

IEEE

DCB

TRILL (or 802.1aq) (Ethernet Multi-Pathing)

STP TRILLX

X

IETF

TRILLIEEE

DCB

802.1Qau (Congestion Notification)

DCB is an improvement over legacy Ethernet fabric but it does not provide the same experience as a Fibre Channel fabric.

Performance: iSCSI, FCoE and FC

17

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

450

500

4K 8K 64K 512K 4K 8K 64K 512K

Read Write

Throughput (Mbps)

iSCSI Offload FCoE FC

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

4K 8K 64K 512K 4K 8K 64K 512K

Read Write

Efficiency (Mbps/%CPU)

iSCSI Offload FCoE FC

10GE, fully offloaded iSCSI stacks up well against FC and FCoE

[Source: iSCSI/FC Performance Analysis in Dell CTO Storage Architecture Lab

IOMeter, 4 Gb/s targets

Recovery: iSCSI and FCoE

18

Assumption: FCoE may take up to 60 seconds to re-send the packetMeasured: iSCSI (with TCP fast-retransmit option) takes <= 25 milliseconds

Start I/O (ex. OS WRITESCSI WRITE CMDiSCSI REQ)

Start 60 second I/O timer

Re-Start I/O

XI/O timer expired

Transmit Packet

Re-transmit Packet

XPacket Dropped

No ACK received in 25 ms, or

3 DUP ACKs received

TCP fast re-transmit option selected, RFC 2001(assume packet lost if ACK not received in 25 ms or 3 duplicate ACKs received

[window-size/seq#/ACK# same and segment length = 0] and re-transmit)

60 seconds

25 milliseconds

FC/FCoE

TARGET

iSCSI

TARGET

FCoE

INITIATOR

FCoE

iSCSI

INITIATOR

iSCSI

Packet Dropped

DUP ACKs

Flow Control: FC and Ethernet

DCB 802.1Qbb

PAUSE-based (FCoE) flow controlFC credit-based flow control

iSCSI,FCoE/Reactive-Time Dependent

Frame in Flight Delay

High Level Delay

Interface Delay

Frame in Flight Delay

High Level Delay

Interface Delay

Threshold

PAUSE

Sent

TX1RX1

PAUSE

Received

TX2RX2

STATION 1 STATION 2

t

t

t

t

t

t

tMedia Delay

FC/Proactive-Time Independent

STATION 1 STATION 2

Buffers

AvailableBuffers

Available

Count++

Buffers

Available

Count--

Packet (s)

Buffers

AvailableBuffers

Available

Count++

19

Flow Control: iSCSI

20

Dell WINDOWS SERVER 2008 x64

10GbE CNA (Intel)

802.3X or DCB PFC

Switch (PC 8xxx)

10GbE iSCSI RAM-Disk ARRAY

(StarWind + Intel)

10G10G

10G

iSCSI congestion testbed

FLOW CONTROL

OFF

FLOW CONTROL

ON

Flow Control: iSCSI

21

91000

84250

355

330

1

1000

iSCSI Write I/Os/sec

iSCSI Write MBs/sec

TCP Re-Transmits/sec

FLOW

CONTROL

ON

FLOW

CONTROL

OFF

More I/Os, more MBs/sec, less re-transmits

DCB makes iSCSI/TCP more efficient; provides TCP “offload”

Technology Conclusions

22

The questions:

1. Does DCB Ethernet benefit iSCSI? YES

2. Does FCoE behave well in congested environments? TBD

These are important questions with long overdue answers.

Help in characterizing DCB’s practical benefits is welcome.

Planning for the Change

23

• Evaluate management tools that deliver data center management that delivers an “open” approach (think OS and hardware platforms)

• Plan for 10GbE as the foundational fabric of your DC

• Plan for a future with DCB in your network

• Evaluate the potential benefits iSCSI could bring to your data center

• Consider new networking providers as some networking vendors are forcing platform shifts anyway