optimizing netapp snapmirror data replication with f5 big

PARTNER USE CASEPARTNER USE CASE

Optimizing NetApp SnapMirror Data Replication with F5 BIG-IP WAN Optimization ManagerF5 BIG-IP WAN Optimization Manager (WOM) helps organizations optimize data replication with NetApp SnapMirror on clustered Data ONTAP, improving replication performance and increasing bandwidth efficiency.

Matt Quill, F5 Networks | Renny Shen, F5 Networks | Sujith John, NetApp

2

PARTNER USE CASE | Optimizing NetApp SnapMirror Data Replication with F5 BIG-IP WAN Optimization Manager

Contents

Introduction 3

Benefits of BIG-IP WOM with SnapMirror 3

Accelerating Data Replication 3

Reducing Bandwidth Costs 4

Security Benefits 5

Review of Environment Setup and Deployment 5

Oracle Setup 6

NetApp Configuration 6

BIG-IP WOM Setup 7

Test Parameters and Results 7

Performance Tests 7

Bandwidth Optimization Test 11

Conclusion 12

3


IntroductionBusinesses today operate in an uncertain climate where a number of factors can

disrupt normal operations. Whether responding to technology failure, infrastructure

degradation, or a natural disaster, IT organizations must ensure that their businesses

can continue to run even with the loss of the supporting IT systems or infrastructure.

Essential to this responsibility are the abilities to fail over business applications and

back up data to a secondary site. This requires having not only the necessary

application infrastructure on standby at the secondary site, but also access to the most

recent set of business and application data.

NetApp SnapMirror provides a solution to that latter requirement, by replicating

business and application data from a NetApp storage system at a primary site to one

at a secondary site. But because data replication typically occurs over a wide area

network (WAN), replication performance may be affected by unpredictable latency. In

addition, many organizations are concerned about the cost of bandwidth consumed

and the security of transmitting business-sensitive data over the WAN.

F5® BIG-IP® WAN Optimization Manager™ (WOM) complements SnapMirror by

optimizing data replication over the WAN. BIG-IP WOM employs adaptive compression,

deduplication, TCP optimization, and encryption to help organizations accelerate and

secure data replication, while reducing the amount of bandwidth consumed. To better

quantify these benefits, F5 worked with NetApp to deploy a joint SnapMirror and

BIG-IP WOM solution, using an Oracle application environment to simulate a real-world

application environment.

Benefits of BIG-IP WOM with SnapMirrorGrowing organizations generate increasing amounts of data that must be replicated.

As the total amount of data grows, so does the number of users and applications,

which further increases the rate at which new data is generated. This growth in data

volume and rate of generation can have a serious impact on both the ability to replicate

data within available windows for disaster recovery (DR) purposes, as well as the

financial cost of doing so.

Accelerating Data ReplicationReplicating data over the WAN poses inherent performance challenges. Replication

performance can be affected by a number of factors, including the distance between

sites, network latency, and packet loss. Within an organization’s control, there can be

4


congested network conditions as different applications compete for limited bandwidth.

These factors all contribute to the growing amount of time required to replicate data.

BIG-IP WOM helps organizations better manage dynamic network conditions to

improve replication performance. BIG-IP WOM provides symmetric adaptive

compression and data deduplication to dramatically reduce the amount of data that

needs to be transmitted over the WAN. BIG-IP WOM can perform deduplication on

very large data sets using solid state drives, for up to a 3x improvement in replication

time over comparable memory-based deduplication.

Beyond compression and deduplication, BIG-IP WOM also provides several protocol

optimizations, including adaptive TCP optimization, to respond to changing network

conditions. This minimizes throughput degradation over long-distance and high-latency

links, helping to further accelerate replication traffic. In addition, BIG-IP WOM uses L7

QoS rate shaping to prioritize critical or time-sensitive applications. Organizations can

use rate shaping to help enable quality of service (QoS) for SnapMirror data replication

over the WAN.

Reducing Bandwidth CostsOrganizations are often concerned about the cost of bandwidth used for data

replication purposes, especially with a growing amount of data that needs to be

replicated. For organizations nearing the limit of their existing WAN link, upgrading to

the next level can be costly. For example, upgrading from an OC-3 connection to an

OC-12 typically costs another $1 million a year. Upgrading from OC-12 to OC-48 can

cost another $2.4 million a year. Because of this, organizations are often better served

by delaying a WAN link upgrade and instead finding ways to use their existing

bandwidth more efficiently.

BIG-IP WOM can help organizations increase bandwidth efficiency and get more out of

their existing WAN link. BIG-IP WOM provides symmetric adaptive compression and

data deduplication to reduce the amount of data being transmitted by up to 50 percent.

This ensures that organizations can make better use of their existing bandwidth, while

postponing any WAN link upgrade until truly needed.

5


Cost of bandwidth (annual)

T3(45 Mbps)

OC-3(155 Mbps)

OC-12(622 Mbps)

OC-48(2.5 Gbps)

$40K

$120K

$1.2M

$3.6M

Figure 1: Increase in annual bandwidth cost when upgrading WAN links.

Security BenefitsWhile not specifically included in the joint testing described here, BIG-IP WOM provides

site-to-site data security features. BIG-IP WOM transmits all data over the WAN

through encrypted iSession® network tunnels, ensuring the security of data replicated

through SnapMirror. In addition, hardware-accelerated SSL processing is available on

all BIG-IP platforms, offloading bulk encryption and decryption from the NetApp

storage system. The ability to consolidate replication performance and security features

into an integrated WAN optimization platform can reduce upfront and management

costs for organizations’ data replication needs.

Review of Environment Setup and DeploymentTo demonstrate the benefit of optimizing SnapMirror data replication with WOM, F5 and

NetApp deployed a test environment at NetApp’s Research Triangle Park campus in

North Carolina. The test environment reproduced a typical enterprise application

infrastructure and consisted of two virtual data centers: a primary data center and a

failover site. The two data centers were connected by a simulated WAN link that was

configurable with various settings for bandwidth, latency, and packet loss.

In the primary data center, an Oracle Database 11g instance generated real-world

application data that was stored on NetApp storage systems configured with clustered

6


Data ONTAP 8.1.1. SnapMirror replicated Oracle data to the secondary site, over the

WAN link optimized by BIG-IP WOM.

Oracle SetupAn Oracle Database 11g instance provided the application data for all the joint

replication tests. The database server was run as a virtual machine on VMware ESX

Server. For testing purposes, F5 and NetApp provisioned four data volumes for the

Oracle database—7 GB, 13 GB, 30 GB, and 1 TB in size—and generated Oracle data

using Quest Software’s DataFactory software tool.

OptimizedWAN Link

Primary Data Center Secondary Data Center

NetAppFAS

NetAppSnapMirror

BIG-IP WAN Optimization Manager

BIG-IP WAN Optimization Manager

Oracle Database 11g

NetAppFAS

NetAppSnapMirror

Oracle Database 11g

Figure 2: Test configuration of BIG-IP WOM with NetApp SnapMirror.

NetApp Configuration To ensure high performance, a pair of NetApp FAS 3240 controllers configured with

clustered Data ONTAP 8.1.1 and 450 GB 10K SAS disk technology provided storage for

the test environment.

FAS 3240

Software version Clustered Data ONTAP 8.1.1

Disk shelf 24 x 450 GB 10K SAS

Figure 3: Configuring NetApp storage.

7


BIG-IP WOM SetupTo support this validation, F5 provided two BIG-IP 11000 appliances running BIG-IP

WOM and configured with an SSD option.

Device model BIG-IP 11000

Software version TMOS 11.2

Hard drive 4x 300 GB SSD

Figure 4: Configuring BIG-IP WOM.

Test Parameters and Results

Performance TestsBIG-IP WOM can dramatically reduce the amount of time required to replicate data

with SnapMirror. To help quantify this benefit, F5 and NetApp performed a series of

joint tests that measured replication times under three scenarios:

• Replication over metro distances

• Replication over regional distances

• Replication over long distances

In addition, the tests examined the benefit of BIG-IP WOM over four different WAN

links: T3 (45 Mbps), OC-3 (155 Mbps), OC-12 (622 Mbps), and 1 Gbps.

Replication over metro distancesIn this test, F5 and NetApp reproduced conditions typically experienced by enterprises

replicating data over metro distances. The simulated WAN link was configured with the

following characteristics:

Network bandwidth T3 (45 Mbps)

Network latency Low (5 ms)

Network integrity Lossless (0% packet loss)

Figure 5: WAN characteristics for simulating replication over metro distances.

8


This test measured the amount of time required to replicate a 7 GB Oracle database

and involved the following steps for both the unoptimized and WOM-optimized test

cases:

1 Create a 7 GB Oracle data volume at the primary site using the DataFactory tool.

2 In the unoptimized test case, replicate the entire Oracle data volume to the

secondary site without BIG-IP WOM.

3 In the optimized test case:

a Replicate the entire Oracle data volume to the secondary site with BIG-IP

WOM to measure the initial data deduplication impact.

b Perform a second replication pass with BIG-IP WOM to measure the additive

effects of data deduplication.

Replication time over metro distances

30205 10 15 25 350

WOM Optimized (Pass 2) WOM Optimized (Pass 1) Unoptimized

Minutes

Figure 6: BIG-IP WOM reduced replication time more than 9x when tested over metro distances.

In this scenario, the test results demonstrated an improvement in performance of

more than 2x in the first pass and more than 9x in subsequent passes. Without

BIG-IP WOM, it took SnapMirror 24 minutes, 21 seconds to replicate 7 GB of data.

With BIG-IP WOM, symmetric compression, data deduplication, and TCP optimization

reduced the amount of time required to 11 minutes, 30 seconds. The second

replication pass showed further improvement, reducing the amount of time required

to 2 minutes, 39 seconds.

9


Replication over regional distancesIn this test, F5 and NetApp reproduced conditions typically experienced by enterprises

replicating data over regional distances. The simulated WAN link was configured with

the following characteristics:

Network bandwidth 1 Gbps

Network latency Medium (20 ms)


Figure 7: WAN characteristics for simulating replication over regional distances.

This scenario measured the amount of time required to replicate a 30 GB Oracle

database and involved the following steps for both the unoptimized and WOM-

optimized test cases:









In this use case, the test results demonstrated an improvement in performance of

almost 3x in the first pass and 4x in subsequent passes. Without BIG-IP WOM, it took

SnapMirror 30 minutes, 5 seconds to replicate 30 GB of data. With BIG-IP WOM,

symmetric compression, data deduplication, and TCP optimization reduced the

amount of time required to 13 minutes. The second replication pass showed further

improvement, reducing the amount of time required to 7 minutes, 36 seconds.

10


Replication time over regional distances

30205 10 15 25 350


Minutes

Figure 8: BIG-IP WOM reduced replication time more than 4x when tested over regional distances.

Replication over long distancesIn this test, F5 and NetApp reproduced conditions typically experienced by enterprises

replicating data over long distances. The simulated WAN link was configured with the

following characteristics:

Network bandwidth OC-3 (155 Mbps)

Network latency High (80 ms)

Network integrity Lossy (0.1% packet loss)

Figure 9: WAN characteristics for simulating replication over long distances.

This scenario measured the amount of time required to replicate a 7 GB Oracle

database and involved the following steps for both the unoptimized and WOM-

optimized test cases:







11




In this use case, the test results demonstrated an improvement in performance of more

than 12x in the first pass and 18x in subsequent passes. Without BIG-IP WOM, it took

SnapMirror 63 minutes, 26 seconds to replicate 7 GB of data. With BIG-IP WOM,

symmetric compression, data deduplication, and TCP optimization reduced the amount

of time required to 5 minutes, 24 seconds. The second replication pass showed further

improvement, reducing the amount of time required to 3 minutes, 34 seconds.

Replication time over long distances

604010 20 30 50 700


Minutes

Figure 10: BIG-IP WOM reduced replication time more than 18x when tested over long distances.

Bandwidth Optimization TestIn addition to increasing performance, BIG-IP WOM also enables organizations to use

available bandwidth more efficiently. F5 and NetApp performed a final test to quantify

this benefit. The test configuration reproduced a typical configuration used for data

protection over metro distances, using a simulated WAN link with the following

characteristics:

Network bandwidth OC-12 (622 Mbps)

Network latency Low (5 ms)


FIgure 11: WAN characteristics used during the bandwidth optimization test.

12


This test measured the amount of data transmitted in replicating changes made to the 1

TB Oracle database. The test involved the following steps for both the unoptimized and

WOM-optimized test cases:

1 Create a 1 TB Oracle data volume at the primary site using the DataFactory tool.

2 Perform an initial SnapMirror replication synchronization of the Oracle database

with the secondary site.

3 Generate an additional 59 GB of data to the Oracle database at the primary site.

4 In the unoptimized case, replicate the additional changes to the secondary site

without BIG-IP WOM.

5 In the WOM-optimized case, replicate the additional changes to the secondary site

with BIG-IP WOM to measure the data deduplication impact.

The test results demonstrated a significant reduction in the amount of data transmitted.

When optimized by BIG-IP WOM, symmetric compression and data deduplication

reduced the amount of data transmitted from 59 GB to 18.6 GB.

Amount of data transmitted

604010 20 30 50 700

WOM Optimized Unoptimized

Minutes

Figure 12: BIG-IP WOM improved replication efficiency by more than 3x.

ConclusionOptimizing SnapMirror data replication can enhance an organization’s ability to

replicate data for DR purposes. BIG-IP WOM offers capabilities that help decrease

replication times under a variety of network conditions. In addition, BIG-IP WOM helps

organizations make better use of their existing bandwidth and delay costly WAN link


F5 Networks, Inc.Corporate [email protected]

F5 Networks, Inc. 401 Elliott Avenue West, Seattle, WA 98119 888-882-4447 www.f5.com

F5 [email protected]

F5 Networks Ltd.Europe/Middle-East/[email protected]

F5 NetworksJapan [email protected]

©2013 F5 Networks, Inc. All rights reserved. F5, F5 Networks, and the F5 logo are trademarks of F5 Networks, Inc. in the U.S. and in certain other countries. Other F5 trademarks are identified at f5.com. Any other products, services, or company names referenced herein may be trademarks of their respective owners with no endorsement or affiliation, express or implied, claimed by F5. CS34-2009 0113

upgrades. Consolidating increased performance, reduced costs, and secure data

replication into a single appliance offers a simple and cost-effective solution for

optimizing SnapMirror data replication.

For more information about unified application and data delivery solutions from F5 and

NetApp, visit f5.com/products/technology/netapp or contact [email protected].

mailto:info%40f5.com?subject=

http://www.f5.com

mailto:apacinfo%40f5.com?subject=

mailto:emeainfo%40f5.com?subject=

mailto:f5j-info%40f5.com?subject=

http://www.f5.com/products/technology/netapp

optimizing netapp snapmirror data replication with f5 big

Documents