Cloud Webinar Series

Plan your IaaS Environment for Optimal PerformanceJanuary 15, 2013Speaker: Jeremy Littlejohn, Founder and Chief Analyst RISC Networks

Agenda1. Understand common performance issues

2. How to establish a performance baseline

3. Keys to your success

4. Our Analysis

Common Performance Issues

Cloud is Still Virtualization – Same Rules Apply

• Disk Latency• Hypervisor Memory Oversubscription• Packet-loss on the network• Hypervisor CPU Oversubscription

Disk Latency

55% of organizations have storage latency of over 50ms

Hypervisor Memory Oversubscription

Organizations that have VMware Servers with performance degradation due to Memory Swap In / Swap Out.

53%

Learn More: Performance Troubleshooting for VMware vSphere

Packet Loss

64% of organizations have receive packet loss occurring on virtual switch ports and 26% have transmit packet loss occurring on virtual switch ports

64%26%

CPU Oversubscription

Of organizations have at least 1 VMware Hypervisor with CPU Oversubscription

33%

Learn More: VMware recommends less than 5% ready time for all VMs’

Here is the Kicker!

All of these challenges exist in cloud environments, both Public and Private. The question is, how can you build a baseline that helps you prepare to deal with them?

Establishing a Performance Baseline

Infrastructure Performance Statistics

In order to establish an effective baseline, you have to focus on more than ONE dimension.

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Infrastructure Performance Statistics CPU Usage

Data Center

73 % Network

Perf Problems

33 % Oversubscribed

Line Cards

47 % Storage

Perf Problems

54% Vmware

Perf Problems

Cross-Functional Analysis

1. Don’t Focus on CPU usage2. Analyze Disk I/O3. Analyze Network I/O4. Capture Network Traffic5. Look at the network relations

and dependency

Analyze, Don’t Monitor

VS

• CPU• Usage %• % Steal time OR % Ready Time

• Memory• Swap In/Out Rate (hypervisor if virtual)• CPU % Wait Time (can show disk slowness for swapping)• VM Swap Wait

• Disk• IOPS (I/O Per Second)• I/O Block Size• Latency and Queue Length

• Network• Packet Loss %• Delay

Collect (at least) the following data

A quick example – Planning for Disk Performance in Amazon AWS

• Amazon EBS (Basic) Supports 100 IOPS (@16KB)

• Step 1: Collect I/O statistics from your vCenter• Sum the Reads/Writes/Sec for each hour

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Max IOPS

Max IOPS

A quick example – Planning for Disk Performance in Amazon AWS

• Step 2: If you are < 100 IOPS directly measured, also determine the Write / Read Size to see if you need to adjust to Provisioned IOPS

(KB per Write/16) *Writes/Sec<100 = OK(KB per Write/16)*Writes/Sec>100 = Need Provisioned IOPS

• If you have latency > 50ms, you are already having problems

• If you are under 50ms, then you want to be sure that you don’t introduce latency to the applications as you move them.

• You can track queue length on your current system, and then compare that to AWS EBS VolumeQueueLength metric to verify performance

Benchmark your Disk Latency

Keys to Success

Keys to your success

3. Best Practices1. Gather Data 2. Benchmarking 4. Proactive Management

Gather Data

• General usage info for CPU, Memory, Disk• Current usage and impact on performance• Current network performance information• Virtualized environment analysis

Benchmarking

• Clearly identify specific areas of opportunity

• Set performance expectations

• Validate infrastructure assumption

• Monitor company performance and manage change

Best Practices

- Amazon AWS Performance Information- http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/EBSPerformance.html

- Performance and Troubleshooting Guide- http://www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/10179

- Network Performance Statistics Information- http://www.slac.stanford.edu/comp/net/wan-mon/

thru-vs-loss.html

Proactive Management

• Compare statistics to earlier benchmarks

• Work on Lead, not Lag metrics

• Test routinely – Traffic Simulation, etc

• Capture Traffic so that you can validate Network Performance

Our Analysis

Our AnalysisCollect and aggregate component-level data using secure data encryption.

Virtual Appliance* Securely Installed in as little as 15 minutes

(*) Physical Appliance may be required during network traffic analysis, depending on the required infrastructure configuration

RISC Network’s only listens during infrastructure analysis and during network/cloud traffic analysis. Only during network traffic simulation is there active data being put onto the network

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SaaS delivered analysis and reporting portal for anywhere engagement management

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Cloud Provider

Simulate and analyze cloud infrastructure traffic

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Our Analysis by the #’s

VMware Virtual Machines Analyze

Virtual Machines97,000

Our Analysis by the #’s

4,000+

BusinessNetworksAnalyzed

Our Offering

Cloud Readiness Analytics

• Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) • Pricing Model Analysis• Network Performance Analysis• Move Group Planning and Analysis• Server & App Dependency Visualization• Cloud Performance Testing and

Validation

http://www.riscnetworks.com/cloudscapeTo learn more about our analytics go to:

Planning

Performance

Pricing

Validation

Upcoming Webinars

https://www.brighttalk.com/channel/10539• Subscribe to our BrightTALK™ Channel:

• February 5th – Why Network Testing is Critical for Cloud Success• February 19th – Top 5 Network Infrastructure Performance Issues• March 5th – Be Confident That Your Cloud Solution is Working Well• March 12th – Performance Benchmarking for Private and Hybrid Cloud

Thank you

About Us

60+ Partners Including (but not limited to):

At RISC Networks we imagine a world where IT leaders are not constrained by the complexities of their IT tools. We have a perspective, a different way of thinking about IT, a simpler way! We believe you should have more meaningful data analysis; information that actually helps guide you in solving your problems, tools that help you research and take immediate action. IT – As simple as it should be™

Based in Asheville, North Carolina, RISC Networks is a Actionable IT Analytics firm that focuses on developing research and technology that helps IT organizations improve their IT operations. More information is available at: http://www.riscnetworks.com/. Follow RISC Networks on Twitter @Risc_Networks or on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/RiscNetworks.