PERFORCE EMC VNX, VMware, and FLASH 1st improve performance and development processes

ESSENTIALS Industry

Software

Company Size

SMB

Business Challenge

• Low performance levels slowed

time to market

• Legacy solutions did not support

virtualization strategy and lacked

scalability

Solutions

• EMC VNX unified storage

• EMC VNX Total Efficiency Pack

• VMware vSphere

Results

• 60 percent performance increase

• Reduction of server build times

from hours to minutes

• Support for virtualization

strategies

• Scalability to future proof IT

investment for five years

OVERVIEW As a privately held company with headquarters in Alameda, California, and

international offices in the UK, Australia, and Canada, Perforce credits its dynamic,

profitable growth to its robust and flexible version management software and

technologies. More than 400,000 users across 5,500 companies use Perforce

technologies to get to market faster.

To support its growth, Perforce’s IT department delivers infrastructure that enables

its many engineers to develop, test, and implement new products and revisions

quickly. By nurturing a culture of innovation and reducing its own time-to-market,

Perforce maximizes loyalty among current customers, while also increasing market

share.

BUSINESS CHALLENGES Perforce’s legacy IT systems, however, were a barrier to this innovation. Its slow

storage infrastructure was a key business challenge.

“We were using low-end infrastructure that could not handle the high product

development volumes that were coming down the pipeline. Yet our company’s

success is dependent on getting new products to market quickly,” says Perforce IT

Infrastructure Manager, David Ackerman. “We had also adopted a virtualization

strategy driven by VMware and the older infrastructure could not provide the

integrated VMware capabilities that we required.”

Lack of storage scalability was also a problem for Perforce—the company’s storage

requirements were growing at two to four TB per month and the company did not

have a way to manage this growth.

Determined to transform its IT infrastructure, as well as its new product

development workflow processes, Perforce IT worked with EMC partner Nexus, on a

new network and storage design.

Jim Collison, Perforce Storage and VMware Systems Administrator, explains: “We

developed very detailed and demanding specification requirements before searching

for a new unified storage infrastructure. These requirements revolved around our

challenge to better manage growing software build needs, while dramatically

reducing product build times. As Engineering turned to automated software

solutions, IT leveraged the advantages inherent in VMware and virtual machine

strategies to enable these solutions.”

CUSTOMER PROFILE

Specifications included high IOPS (20,000 at 8K); full VMware integration and VAAI

support; automated tiering capabilities for enhanced performance; scalability that

would future-proof the new solution for up to five years (thereby maximizing ROI);

and a core router backbone that incorporated high-speed Ethernet connectivity.

Perforce consulted with EMC partner Nexus, who recommended EMC® VNX® unified

storage and Cisco Nexus switches.

“Nexus’ engineering talent is second to none. With advanced certifications from EMC,

VMware, and Cisco, we have a depth of experience that allows us to make informed

and thoughtful recommendations,” said Colin McNamara, Director of Nexus’ Data

Center Practice. “The overall solution we designed for Perforce is a perfect fit. The

speed, flexibility, and built-in VMware optimization of EMC VNX, combined with Cisco’s

Nexus switches, has helped Perforce to transform its new product development

process.”

Collison adds, “We went with EMC VNX because of its revolutionary technologies, and

the high performance, scalability, and VMware integration it delivers. EMC is the only

company we found that has converged the technologies that we require—high

performance Flash drives, FAST Cache and FAST VP (Fully Automated Storage Tiering

for Virtual Pools), unified storage technologies, and the modularity that allows us to

configure the solution to meet requirements, at a price that small and medium

businesses can afford. In fact, it was so affordable that initially I thought there must

be a catch. But there wasn’t.”

“EMC is the only company we found that has converged the technologies that we require—high performance Flash drives, FAST Cache and FAST VP, unified storage technologies, and the modularity that allows us to configure the solution to meet requirements, at a price that small and medium businesses can afford.”

Jim Collison Storage and VMware Systems Administrator

EMC SOLUTION

Perforce partnered with Nexus to deploy EMC VNX. The VNX incorporates 10 percent

Flash drives, 45 percent SAS, and 45 percent nearline SAS drives. Perforce also uses

EMC Unisphere® for simplified infrastructure management and the EMC Total

Efficiency Pack for VNX (incorporating EMC FAST™ Suite and a range of security and

protection suites), and VMware® vSphere™ for virtual machine administration and

management. In addition, Perforce upgraded its networking core router backbone to

10 GB Ethernet Cisco Nexus switches. Today, Perforce stores 50 TB of data for its

Alameda facility on the VNX, as well as 20 TB of data for its UK facility.

IMPROVING PERFORMANCE WITH VNX AND FLASH 1ST VNX has easily surpassed Perforce’s performance expectations. “VNX has provided 60

percent across the board performance increases compared to our legacy solutions.

What used to take our engineers many hours to build can now be measured in

minutes. This has significantly reduced our time to market by accelerating new

product development processes.”

In addition, Perforce utilizes a FLASH 1st strategy to further improve performance,

maximize storage efficiency, and reduce costs. By using the EMC FAST Suite—

consisting of FAST Cache and FAST VP (Fully Automated Storage Tiering for Virtual

Pools)—combined with Flash drives, Perforce uses storage space in the best possible

way while eliminating waste produced by manual allocation.

”We have a very high IOPS requirement, and no other vendor utilized cache

technology as well as EMC. EMC VNX, front-ended with seven 100 GB Flash drives

that each run at 3,000 IOPS, provides us with read and write rates that amaze us,”

says Collison. “We’d have to string together 125 SAS drives to give us the same

performance as the VNX."

FLASH 1st automatically moves in-demand data to the solid state drives for high

performance and high data availability. When demand falls, data is automatically

migrated to high-capacity SAS or nearline SAS. FLASH 1st matches performance

requirements to demand peaks and troughs, while fully utilizing scarce Flash

resources and other storage infrastructure.

“Ten percent of our storage is made up of Flash drives,” Collison states. “Yet Flash

provides up to 60 percent of our IOPS capabilities. Mission-critical applications and

data such as our Electric Commander engineering processes and build systems, all

running in our VMware virtual cluster, migrate to Flash when demand is high.”

But automated storage tiering rules can be overridden by Perforce, if required. “We

analyze, monitor, and manage IOPS requirements using EMC Unisphere, EMC VNX

Analyzer, and analysis support from Nexus,” Collison adds. “Together, they allow us

to quickly reallocate IOPS to specific tasks, when required.”

NURTURING INNOVATION BY TRANSFORMING PROCESSES VNX, integrated with VMware, has also helped to transform new product development

processes, nurturing innovation among company engineers. Mission-critical

applications, including Electric Commander, have been successfully virtualized.

“Our product development processes have been transformed due to EMC VNX and

VMware technologies,” Collison states. “This has changed the way we build out and

test new products. VMware nurtures innovation because engineers can create new

virtual machines without assistance to try out new ideas, at no additional incremental

technology costs. EMC and VMware technologies help us to maintain our market

position and profitability by allowing us to increase our competitive advantage.”

HIGH ROI DUE TO SCALABILITY AND FUTURE-PROOFING VNX provides Perforce with a high return on investment due to its low pricing

structure, significant increases in performance, in-house productivity and efficiency,

and scalability.

“Due to its modularity, VNX enables us to scale up IOPS and storage quickly and cost

effectively. For this reason, VNX will meet our needs for the next five years,” says

Ackerman. “Compare that to our older systems where we’d often have to purchase

new infrastructure to meet every new requirement. That older process was expensive,

and did not produce the performance we required. While specific ROI numbers are

difficult to measure because most of our EMC storage and VMware cluster usage

enables new applications and processes, we are confident that the EMC VNX provides

a great ROI.”

PARTNERING FOR INSIGHT AND SUPPORT

Perforce IT management is very pleased with the support and insight that they

receive from Nexus and EMC.

“Nexus not only helped us to specify, configure, and install our VNX solution, but also

works as our partner,” Ackerman states. “The company has provided us with a high

level of expertise that we combined with our own expertise to design a

comprehensive solution. This level of design detail is often only done by dedicated

subject matter experts at much larger companies. In a medium-sized company like

Perforce, it is just one of many hats we wear, and we needed a partner that fit our

model. We have been extremely happy with the level of expertise, attention, and

support we have received from Nexus”

McNamara adds, “Nexus has had a longstanding relationship with Perforce, and

helping Perforce achieve its IT goals and objectives is our number one priority. Our

unique consultative approach focuses on really listening to the customer to fully

understand its immediate needs as well as its long-term goals. Together with EMC,

VMware, and Cisco, we’ve given Perforce enormous success and a strong platform for

future innovation.”

“EMC also provides this level of expertise,” Collison says. “When we have an issue, we

know that EMC personnel located in the U.S., India, Ireland, or elsewhere will always

be at hand. Often, they’ll use WebEx to access our VNX remotely and fix the problem

on the spot. The quality of support throughout the various support levels is superior,

and EMC support engineers will escalate an issue instantly if they can’t solve it

themselves. We have never found that high level of support in other IT vendors.”

Collison concludes by explaining the high levels of satisfaction that Perforce engineers

experience from its EMC VNX solution. “VNX has transformed the way that our

engineers do business. They used to work in a siloed environment—now everything is

on a single VMware-driven cluster stored on high performance VNX. The solution

promotes collaboration among our employees, high levels of innovation, quick time to

market, and high levels of satisfaction among our end users.”

CONTACT US To learn more about how EMC2 products, services, and solutions can help solve your business and IT challenges, contact your local

representative or authorized reseller—or visit us at www.EMC.com.

www.EMC.com

EMC2, EMC, the EMC logo, FAST, Unisphere, and VNX are registered trademarks or trademarks of EMC Corporation in the United States and other countries. VMware and vSphere are registered trademarks or trademarks of VMware, Inc., in the United States and other jurisdictions. © Copyright 2012 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Published in the USA. 06/12 Customer Profile H10806.1 EMC believes the information in this document is accurate as of its publication date. The information is subject to change without notice.