the efficient green data center wp

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Delivering IT with Financial andEnvironmental Consciousness

The Efficient, Green Data CenterOctober 2008

EMC PERSPECTIVE


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Table of Contents

Preface 3

About this Document 3

How is this Document Organized? 3

Who Should Read this Document? 3

Acknowledgments 4

About the Author 4

Executive Summary 4

Introduction 5

The Financial Impact 5

The Environmental Impact 6

Considerations for an Efficient, Green Data Center 7

Consideration 1: Data Center Equipment Placement 7

Consideration 2: Data Center Power and Cooling 7

Consideration 3: IT Inrastructure Virtualization 8

Implementing an Efficient, Green Data Center 12

Data Center Environmental Optimization 13

Power and Cooling Assessment and Planning 13

Equipment Management 13

Core IT Inrastructure Optimization 15

Perorm Inrastructure and Resource Assessment 15

Virtualize & Consolidate the Front-end InrastructureServers & Applications 17

Virtualize & Consolidate the Back-end InrastructureThe Storage 19

Automate and Enhance IT Service Delivery 22

Apply High Availability or Continuous Business Operations 24Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery or the Eicient Inrastructure 24

Local Protection 25

Leverage Disk or Backup and Recovery 25

Leverage Disk-based Snapshots or Online Backup o Data 25

Leverage De-duplication 25

Provide Continuous Data Protection 26

Resource Management in an Eicient, Green Virtualized Data Center 30

Leveraging Inrastructure Virtualization Beyond the Core Data Center Inrastructure

The Desktop Virtualization 31

Ensuring Eiciency o the Non-Virtualized Server Inrastructure 32

Conclusion 33

Next Steps 34Power and Cooling, and IT Asset Assessment 34

EMC and VMware Data Center Eiciency Solutions 34

EMC Educational Services 34

VMware Education Services 34

References 35


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Preface

About this DocumentThis white paper will help you to build an eicient, green data center that will yield inancial and

environmental beneits Data center power and cooling, and virtualization are two key strategies to

reap these beneits We will discuss power and cooling optimization, as well as virtualization and

other related data center technologies that are required to develop and operate an eicient, green

data center This discussion will occur in the context o a virtualization-leveraged data center

Virtualization has been positioned as the core enabler or driving broader eiciencies It includes

server and storage procurement and utilization, inormation protection (backup and recovery), busi-

ness continuity and disaster recovery (local and remote replication), inrastructure management, and

inrastructure consolidation and automation This paper provides you with a breadth o knowledge

about the major data center unctions that have a direct or indirect impact on operational and envi-

ronmental eiciency

The discussion in this document is not limited to technology, but includes other relevant areas o

a data center that are either impacted by or have an impact on the technology inrastructure and IT

operations It identiies major areas o consideration as well as step-by-step guidance about how toimplement power and cooling, virtualization, and other related technologies Designs and architec-

tural drawings or optimization are included

How is this Document Organized?This paper consists o three sections:

Introduction:Focusesonnancialandenvironmentalimpactsofinefcientdatacentersandthe

caseforbuildingefcientandgreendatacenters.

ConsiderationsforBuildingEfcient,GreenDataCenters:Focusesonhigh-leveldatacenteroperat-

ingenvironments,ITprocesses,andtechnologyconsiderationsfordatacenterefciency.

ImplementinganEfcient,GreenDataCenter:Focusesonimplementationprocesses,steps,and

technologies; describes designs and architectural drawing in detail

Who Will Benefit from this Document?This paper is written or IT proessionals including senior-level IT managers (CxOs, VP/Line o Busi-

ness Managers) who deine the strategic direction o an organizations data center operations, mid-

dle-level managers (IT directors, operations managers, project and program managers) who execute

and implement strategy, and technical sta (architects, administrators) who evaluate, design, build,

and manage the data centers day-to-day operations

Any organization or individual with the ollowing interests will ind value in this paper:

Wouldyouliketobetterunderstanddatacenterefciencyopportunities?

HaveyoustartedorareyouabouttostartITandnon-IT-relateddatacenterefciencyprojectssuch

as data center consolidation, server virtualization and consolidation, storage virtualization or data

migration and mobility, storage consolidation, equipment placement planning or new or existing

data centers, and new design and implementation o a cooling system?

Haveyoucompletedefciencyprojects?Areyoulookingforadditionalideas?

Wouldliketolearnwhatstepstoconsiderpriortoandduringaproject?

Areyouinterestedinbetterunderstandingtechnologyrequirementsandconsiderationsforimprov-

ingassetefciency?

I youve answered yes to any o these questions, you will learn rom this paper


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AcknowledgementsI would like to thank a ew people who helped me to write and publish this paper First, I would like

to thank Tom Clancy and Christine McCarthy or motivating me to write about this topic Next I would

like to thank Tom Downey, Dick Sullivan, and those EMC Champions who took the time to review

this document and provide comments I would also like to thank VMware or their participation and

interest in working with me on this paper In particular, I would like to thank Rod Gilbert and Amy Lu

rom VMware Rod made sure that I had access to the right individuals at VMware, and Amy provided

inormation and reviewed this paper Finally, I would like to thank my good riend Alok Shrivastava

and his team or publishing this document; without their support you would not be reading this

About the AuthorRaza Syed is a senior manager responsible or technology sales and channel development at EMC

Corporation, based in Santa Clara, Caliornia Mr Syed, the author o several storage industry white

papers and a requent presenter at storage industry events, has over 14 years o storage industry

experience and has held several senior product management and marketing positions at Mercury

Interactive/HP, VERITAS/Symantec, and Sun Microsystems He has also held engineering positions at

Sun Microsystems, Data General/CLARiiON, Siemens/Pyramid Technology, and Seagate Technology

Incorporated Mr Syed requently meets with senior executives and IT specialists rom dierent

industries in the US and provides counseling on various IT and storage-related topics including datacenter eiciency and green initiatives Mr Syed has also been a member o SunTone Architecture

Council and has helped deine IT services architecture or the industry He has been awarded numerous

system engineering awards including the achievement award or sales and business development

at Sun Microsystems Mr Syed holds BSc degrees in mathematics and physics rom overseas

educational institutions, and a BSc in economics rom the University o San Francisco, CA He can

be contacted via e-mail at: syed_raza@EMCcom

Executive Summary

Estimates reveal that inormation is growing at about 55 percent (CAGR) Organizations are continuously investing in

IT capital and human resources to manage this massive inlux o inormation The net result is that organizations are

struggling to keep up with IT requirements rom the business This orces the IT team to implement tactical strategies rather

than building and maintaining broader, visionary data centers The block and tackle approach is leading to large-scale

ineiciencies across data centers, resulting in inancial loss and environmental impact

The expanding gap between a data centers physical and operational assets and their sub-optimal use is resulting in higher

costs or hardware acquisition and maintenance, energy consumption, data center real estate, inrastructure management,

and human resources There is also a corresponding environmental cost and impact Organizations have an opportunity

to improve their data center operations and reduce cost and environmental impact by better understanding all aspects

o an operational data center This includes knowledge o data center power supply, cooling systems and inrastructures,

equipment placement plans, IT inrastructure planning and design processes, and the use and operation o IT


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Introduction

Building an eicient, green data center requires increasing the utilization o existing and new

IT resources, containing and improving equipment power and cooling usage and requirements,

reducing the data centers physical inrastructure ootprint, reducing IT administrative and

maintenance costs, and optimizing sta productivity

The two drivers or eicient, green data centers are the:

1. opportunitytorealizesignicant,nearandlong-termnancialbenets

2. abilitytominimizetheenvironmentalimpactofinefcientdatacenters

The Financial Impact

The average utilization o physical IT assets, including servers and storage, remains well below the

75 to 80 percent desired rates Studies rom equipment manuacturers and independent analysts

reveal that the average utilization o servers is approximately 8 to 20 percent, while the average

utilization o storage is approximately 35 to 40 percent On the other end o the spectrum, the

amount o new inormation being created continues to grow at approximately 55 percent (CAGR),

requiring organizations to invest in new inrastructure to keep up with growth

This expanding gap o ineiciency between the data center inrastructure and the used capacities

results in ar greater dollar-to-value cost or the inrastructure than originally anticipated or desired

Hardware ineiciency also results in ineicient energy consumption and increased management

eorts In combination, the net result is increased operating costs

While the initial hardware (server, network, and storage equipment) procurement cost is becoming

more aordable, it still remains one o the major expenses and has a trickle-down eect on other

areas o data center operations that are increasingly becoming less aordable These new areas

include data center power and cooling and data center real estate Inrastructure administration and

maintenance remain the top operations expenses The opportunity to realize inancial beneits by

building eicient IT can be achieved not only by improving equipment utilization rates, but also by

considering associated resources and activities

Data center electricity costs, as an example, have become the second highest expense in data center

operations at 13 percent, ollowed by the cost o data center maintenance and administration, which

is about 67 percent o the overall operations expense(1) Businesses paid about 20 percent more

or electricity in 2005 than they did in 2004 It should also be noted that data centers in 2006 used

61 billion kilowatt-hours o electricitytwice the energy they consumed in 2000 and an output

equivalent o about 15 power plants It is estimated that i this trend continues, an additional 10

power plants will be required by 2011 to support data center operations(2)

Many IT organizations are ocused on transorming rom building core inormation inrastructures

that support business operations to building highly optimized, eicient, lexible, and lightweight

inrastructures

Figure 1: A study o over 300 IT proessionalsincluding senior and middle managers, technol-ogy analysts, and consultants conducted andreleased by the Uptime Institute in March, 2008


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The Environmental Impact

Data centers impact the environment in two ways:

thedirectgenerationofheatusedtooperateITandcoolingequipment

theon-goingprocessofpowergeneration,supply,andconsumption

Figure 2: A conceptual diagram illustrating how the use o power in data centers impacts the environment

As illustrated in igure 2, powered-up and operating data center equipment generates heat Coolingis applied through large-scale (commercial use) computer room air conditioning (CRAC) systems to

keep equipment operating within normal temperatures and prevent it rom overheating Both the IT

equipment and CRAC systems require operating power and consume energy; the availability o energy

requires power generation at power plants Power plants use ossil uels and other chemicals that

result in the emission o greenhouse gases into the earths atmosphere

The Bottom Line

Technology has matured Organizations can realize near and long-term inancial beneits and dem-

onstrate environmental responsibility by exercising diligence and prudence in technology evaluation,

purchase, implementation, and operations and management Our industry is now in a position to

deliver IT with inancial and environmental consciousness


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Considerations for an Efficient, Green Data Center

In this section, we will discuss some o the key considerations when transorming an existing data

center or building new data centers The goal is to eature eiciency and lexibility, make better use

o existing and new inrastructure and resources, and provide headroom to keep up with on-going

growth while minimizing the environmental burden

Consideration 1: Data Center Equipment PlacementTodays high-perormance equipment has densely packed electronics in a compact ootprint This

requires greater heat dissipation and higher cooling requirements Hence, it is important to pay close

attention to the placement o densely populated racks in the data center Misplacement o equipment

results in higher power and cooling usage and higher energy costs Organizations can take some

simple steps to reduce cooling requirements and costs These include creating hot aisles and cold

aisles when coniguring equipment placement This step is discussed in greater detail later in the

Implementing an Eicient, Green Data Center section

Similarly, separating high-density equipment across the data center helps to prevent the build-up

o major hot spots and maintains a relatively even temperature gradient The data center can then

be cooled with relatively higher room temperature requiring less cooling power This step is alsodiscussed in the Implementing an Eicient, Green Data Center section

Consideration 2: Data Center Power and Cooling

Assess Power and Cooling requirements

When considering a green data center initiative, begin with an inventory o all IT assets to assess and

understand current power usage patterns For increased assessment control and accuracy, consider

logical division o the data center into more than one section, where power and cooling readings can

be made in each section These logical divisions can be made along the lines o service to business

units; an assessment can be perormed or a complete inrastructure serving a given business unit

Similarly, a data center asset division can be made by asset type such as servers, networks, or stor-

age resources The goal o an assessment is to identiy ineiciencies in existing power and cooling

patterns, and areas o opportunity or the greatest impact An assessment is only as good as the

tools used to perorm it; hence it is important to use tools that provide granular power and cooling

inormation As an example, a tool that is designed to use vendor equipment speciications as input

will likely lead to inaccuracies It may not be suicient to capture the total potential power demand

o a rack o blade servers, and the total potential heat dissipation o the rack in a situation where the

actual count o servers in the rack may be dierent Using vendor power and cooling speciications

or a rack o storage alone in an assessment will likely lead to inaccuracies Storage usage within the

rack may require less than the ull rack

It is also important to project (within a reasonable margin o error) the short and relatively long-term

power and cooling requirements Anticipate growth and manage the risk o running out o data center

power Assessment tools that perorm trend analyses are useul to properly plan or current anduture power and cooling requirements

An energy assessment should also clearly identiy the energy and cost-savings over varying lengths

o time

Design Optimal Cooling Plans

The key objective when designing an optimal data center cooling system is to create a clear path o

air low rom the source o cooled air to the intake o equipment, and rom the hot air exhaust o the

equipment to the exhaust systems return air duct While there are a number o things to consider

when designing an optimal cooling system, a large majority revolve around the optimal operation o

the computer room air conditioning (CRAC) system Consider:


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Ongoing Health-Check Inspection and Cooling System Maintenance

A regular health-check inspection ensures that the cooling demands in the data center are su-

iciently met through the CRAC systems ull potential output utilization The health check inspection

and maintenance must include the entire CRAC system including chillers and condensers, pumping

systems, cooling loops, and direct expansion (DX) systems Sub-loor conditions, in the case o

raised-loor cooling, need to be inspected to ensure that there is no obstruction to air circulation due

to improper equipment cabling and wiring Dirt and dust in the sub-loor area will blow up into the

equipment; dirty and blocked coils and air ilters also impact cooling perormance

CRAC Positioning with IT Equipment

Data center CRAC units must align with equipment placement Once equipment aisle (hot aisle/cold

aisle) conigurations are determined, plan the placement o CRAC units inline with and on both sides

o hot aisles We have greater concentrations o heat in these aisles by design Also, ensure that blank

panels are installed in all racks or any unused and blank space Missing blank panels create openings

in the rack and allow the hot air rom the back end o the equipment (rom hot aisles) to enter the cool

air intake system o the equipment (in the cold aisles) and adversely impact cool air circulation

Consideration 3: IT Infrastructure Virtualization

Virtualization is the single most important consideration in making a data center eicient and greenIt addresses the most chronic ineiciencylow equipment utilization rates and assets that consume

power and generate heat Virtualization enables inrastructure consolidation, provides lexible

resource provisioning, and yields tremendous resource utilization increases This allows IT to meet

business requirements with ewer resourcesgood or the business and the environment The ability

to do more with less equipment means less power consumption, which in turn means reduction in

the data centers operating cost Less power consumption also means lower heat dissipation This in

turn means a lower burden on power grids and power plants, which reduces greenhouse gas emis-

sions and the impact on the earths ecological system

Consider these issues when implementing an IT inrastructure virtualization:

Consideration 1: Start with Analysis

When virtualizing an inrastructure, perorm a detailed technical, operational, and business analysis

at the start o the initiative Create a map o business users and their applications along with the

usage pattern by departmental or business unit This will deine the unctional and operational

requirements o virtualization solutions

Focus your analysis on discovery o perormance, availability, and growth requirements under normal

and special conditions A special condition or an application can be a particular time o the day,

week, month, or year that requires increased availability and/or perormance Once this inormation

has been gathered, map it against the available IT inrastructure to identiy how best to meet these

requirements with available resources This mapping can be used later to build a charge-back model

Figure 3: Above, a sample o mapping between business criteria and the use o tiered storage to alignstorage use with business requirement Similar mappings or other components o inrastructure such asservers and networks can assist in building an eicient and well-leveraged virtualized inrastructure


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Consideration 2: Plan for Future Requirements

Include uture growth requirements in your virtualization plan to build an inrastructure with sustain-

able eiciency An application that becomes increasingly important in the day-to-day operations o

a company may require additional server resources and/or higher storage perormance over time

Investment in server and storage virtualization technology that eatures lexibility to scale and seam-

lessly adapt to evolving business requirements without disruption achieves the greatest eiciencies

The as-needed scaling o the existing inrastructure ensures that the ratios o eiciency or power,

cooling, and utilization derived in the initial deployment can be retained in the expanding inrastruc-

ture and that growth occurs in a controlled and accountable manner

Consideration 3: Start with the Easiest Resources to Virtualize and Consolidate

Servers and storage are the IT assets with the highest power consumption and lowest utilization

rates They consume approximately 50 percent o the overall data center power; however, the average

server utilization is below 20 percent and the average direct-attached storage utilization remains

below 40 percent Virtualization and consolidation o these resources can have a dramatic impact

in the cost o energy consumption, data center real estate, procurement o additional hardware, and

management o inrastructure The spare energy in the new eicient virtualized inrastructure can be

conserved and used or uture growth without new (additional) power requirements

Figure 4: Above, a three-year break down o inancial savings in power and cooling o servers by consolidatingon VMware server virtualization inrastructure Compare these savings against continuation o operations

without consolidation

Consideration 4: Use Energy Efficient/Green Equipment in the Data Center

Consider energy-eicient hardware when purchasing new equipment All major server and some

storage vendors are manuacturing energy-eicient hardware These systems eature low-voltage

CPUs designed to deliver more perormance per watt o power, adaptive cooling ans that automatically

throttle an speed based on workloads, and high-eiciency power supplies that draw signiicantly

less energy and reduce internal equipment temperatures High-capacity, low-power disk drives with

medium to high-perormance disk drives in tiered storage subsystems, and disk drive spin-down

eatures reduce power and cooling requirements and increase overall eiciency

Consideration 5: Optimize Infrastructure through Information Lifecycle Management

Leverage tiered storage to perorm ongoing inormation liecycle management Classiy inormation

and identiy its value to the business Store inormation in an appropriate type and class o storage

device within a storage array Storage subsystems consume a signiicant ootprint and require data

center power Mixing dierent types and classes (high, medium, and lower perormance) o disk

drives in a single storage rame delivers eiciency in data center loor space consumption and power

and cooling, as well as eicient management o the storage inrastructure Tiered storage must not

be limited to a given storage array, but rather must be applied across the broader horizontal storage

inrastructure to realize storage eiciency gains in the data center


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Figure 5: Above, a horizontal tiered storage deployment using storage devices in each tier with built-intiered storage capabilities or vertical storage tiering inside o each storage device This model yieldsmaximum, inside-the-box (vertical) and across the storage inrastructure (horizontal), eiciency or power,cooling, and management

Consideration 6: Optimize Information Archiving and Backup Data Management

Organizations can achieve operational, inancial, and environmental eiciencies by storing less-

requently-accessed inormation, reerred to as static or reerence inormation, on lower powered,higher capacity, low-cost storage

Reerence inormation can be archived on online disks to improve backup and recovery operations

across the data center Since all reerence inormation can be saely protected and made available

through the online archive, organizations can eliminate 60 percent or more inormation rom their

active backup cycles This reduction improves backup and recovery windows, requires ewer physical

resources, consumes less loor space, and results in reduced power and cooling requirements or the

backup and recovery inrastructure

Data de-duplication can improve the inrastructures backup and recovery eiciency This technique

is particularly useul or medium to large-size organizations with multiple operation centers and

branch oices Data de-duplication ensures that only unique elements o inormation are protected

and that there is no redundancy in the backup cycle I a set o inormation has already been

protected in a backup cycle, and only a small portion o this inormation changes ater the cycles

completion, only the new inormation elements will be protected

Data de-duplication can signiicantly reduce the total amount o data requiring backup and drasti-

cally improve overall inrastructure eiciency There are a ew dierent implementation techniques;

such as de-duplication o inormation at the source (de-duplicating inormation at the location where

the inormation is being picked up rom) or de-duplication at the destination (de-duplication o inor-

mation beore placing it in the backup repository) We must understand the business requirements to

make the correct implementation choice For example, is backup required or single or multiple sites?

Does each site perorm its own backup or is there a centralized backup model in place? Do remote

oices require backup over the wide area network? I so, how many remote oices and what type o

WAN bandwidth is available? Answering these questions will help to make a technology investmentdecision that delivers maximum eiciency


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Figure 6: Above, shows how total backup inormation is reduced through data de-duplication byidentiying and protecting only the unique inormation This improves resource consumption andachieves daily ull backups

Consideration 7: Secure Virtual Infrastructure Management

Organizations routinely secure perimeters o the data center and control user access with various

hardware and sotware solutions such as irewalls, ilters, anti-virus sotware, VPN, and authen-

tication systems It is also important to monitor direct access to the management o data center

resources such as servers, networks, storage, applications, and databases Data center operation

teams need only role-based access Access must be designed and restricted/controlled so that no

individual has enough access to single-handedly impact overall operations

Create isolated management VLANs to logically separate the user network (LAN) rom the manage-

ment network This not only ensures greater security when attempting to access IT assets, but also

ensures availability o deterministic network resources (bandwidth) to IT sta or management unc-

tions and to users or application unctions

Consideration 8: Set Appropriate Expectations with Your Customersthe Users of Technology

Setting realistic expectations is critical to build an eicient data center Not every user application or

environment is critical to a companys day-to-day business operations Over-provisioning resources

or provisioning expensive resources to operate less-demanding lines o business is ineicient Imple-

menting charge-back systems, where departments are required to pay or services used, can help to

prioritize the use o inrastructure and provide service delivery quality control data


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Figure 7: An example o an IT service delivery charge rate report to an organization with varied IT services

Consideration 9: Continuously Strive to Optimize IT Operations

An ongoing review o IT requirements and services with unctional departments and business units

will ensure continuous alignment with business requirements A quarterly review o delivered

services over the previous term and discussion o requirements or the uture will build conidence

and provide an opportunity to educate other organizations about how IT requirements are delivered

Simultaneously, IT teams will better understand how and why requirements are generated Engage-

ment with business owners can ine-tune IT Collaboratively, the business and IT stakeholders can

identiy areas where higher service levels are required, or areas where the existing quality o service

can be dialed down to increased IT eiciency

Consideration 10: Make Assessments a Routine Activity

Perorm asset utilization assessments on a regular basis to ensure that all assets are appropriately

and ully utilized Server assessments spanning a period o time provide practical and actionable

inormation on average, peak, and low utilization This helps to determine where adjustments can be

made Similarly, a ile system assessment or an application can identiy certain patterns o usage byprimary storage such as the type o data, number o duplicate copies o iles, when a given ile was

created, modiied, and last accessed

Implementing an Efficient, Green Data CenterIn this section, we will discuss designs and architectures or the most prominent aspects o a unc-

tional data center We will discuss data center power and cooling and the use o virtualization and

other data center technologies that orm and operate an eicient, green data center This will yield

inancial and operational beneits or the business and environmental beneits or the Earth

We will irst address those aspects o a data center that apply across the entire operation, namely

power and cooling requirements From there, we will work our way into the granular unctional ele-

ments o a classic operational data center Our deinition o a classic data center is one that hostsa complete inrastructure to deliver day-to-day services to businesses o any size including small,

medium, and large enterprises Our classic data center is one that has requirements o eiciency,

availability, perormance, scalability, manageability, and business continuity


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Data Center Environmental Optimization

Power and Cooling Assessment and Planning

Data centers require power and cooling Consider the total power available to the data center when

designing it Measure the total power available rom the power grid to the data center It is important

to note that the total power available is not a measurement o the actual power available to operate

IT equipment A signiicant portion o data center power is consumed in the operation o secondary

support equipment such as uninterrupted power supplies, power distribution units, lighting, cool-

ing, and so on Hence, calculate power utilization in operating these secondary support unctions

and equipment Once this data is available, we can calculate the power available or IT equipment

consumption

There are a number o metrics to calculate power eiciency One method, recommended by the

Environmental Protection Agency, is called Data Center Inrastructure Eiciency (DCiE) DCiE calcu-

lates total power available to operate IT load and is represented in percentages

The ormula or calculating DCiE is:

DCiE = Power to IT Load / Total Power to Data Center

Figure 8: An example o power consumption in a data center operation Using the DCiE metric or thisdata center will conclude that the data center is about 30 percent eicient Using appropriate tools andprocesses, we can improve the eiciency in the other 70 percent o power consumption and can better usethe data centers 30 percent eiciency

Once data relecting total power or IT equipment operations is available, the next step is to calcu-

late the equipments current power utilization The power consumption o any hardware such as

enterprise or blade servers, or network and storage devices, may vary signiicantly rom the vendor

speciications based on the deployed coniguration Thus, relying solely on a hardware manuac-

turers power speciications will not yield accurate results As an example, to accurately measure a

storage arrays power consumption, it is critical to measure component-level power consumption or

the deployed coniguration In this example, the measurement or the array must be based on the

number and type o storage processors; the speed, class, capacity, and total count o disk drives;

count o battery backup units; and any other array hardware

This cumulative study o power utilization across the data center will identiy opportunities or power

eiciency in the operation o secondary support and primary IT equipment This inormation will also

help to accurately project near and long-term power requirements to plan or and support business

growth

Equipment Management

Proper, proactive equipment management plays a vital role in decreasing cooling requirements and

impacting the data centers overall power and cooling demands The goal is to have a plan to gener-

ate eicient airlow circulation or the equipment


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Floor and Cable Management

First, consider the type o foor that will support the equipment In a raised-foor data center with

sub-foor cabling, a proper cable management system must be implemented in the sub-foor space

as well as in the back o equipment rack to ensure that cool air intake and hot air exhaust fow is

not obstructed by cables In a non-raised foor with overhead cabling, maintain a clear path or hot

air to exit the rear o the equipment rack and move along the ceiling to the hot air outlet without

obstruction

Rack Management

Manage open rack space to ensure proper airfow in the equipment aisles Close any unused space

in the racks with blank panels Missing blank panels allow hot air exiting the rack to mix with the

cool air coming into the rack, thus raising the overall level o cooling required

Figure 9: Above let, an illustration o ineicient air circulation due to missing blank panels in the rackrequiring lower ambient temperature or cooling and increased cooling power Above right, an illustrationo a rack with blank panels installed leading to proper air circulation

Create Hot Aisles/Cold Aisles

Createahotandcoldaislecongurationtosupportanefcientcoolingarchitecture.Coolingrequire-

ments can be minimized to a measurable degree by eliminating the mix o hot and cold air in the

same aisle Place equipment so that the ront o the equipment on the opposite sides o an aisle

ace each other, while the back sides o the equipment ace each other in the next aisle This creates

alternating cold air aisles and hot air aisles Ideally, equipment placement architecture needs to be

considered during the data centers design phase since CRAC system placement must be aligned

withtheaislecongurationtomaximizecoolingefciency.

Figure 10: An overhead illustration o a properly planned data center with optimal equipment placement,air cooling, and hot air exhaust system


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Separation of High-Density Racks

Theplacementofhigh-densityracksisanotherimportantdesignelementofanefcientpowerand

cooling architecture Separating and distributing high-density racks across the data center avoids

the build-up o hot spots and keeps the data centers relative temperature consistent Consistent

room temperature reduces overall cooling demand thus reducing cooling power usage and overall

heat generation

Once the environmental aspects o a data center have been appropriately addressed, the nextphase is to build a physical IT inrastructure that will yield operational, inancial, and environmental

eiciencies

Optimize Core IT Infrastructure

The core physical IT inrastructure includes servers, networks, and storage In many existing data

centers, addressing all elements o the core inrastructure at once is unmanageable It is best to

address one element at a time to better manage and ensure project success, while planning or other

elements in the process The objective o inrastructure optimization is to:

Increasetheutilizationofcoreresourcesandreducehardwarefootprintinthedatacenter.Thiswill

yieldnancialsavingsinoorspace,powerandcooling,andoperationsandmanagementcosts.

Achieveenvironmentalefciencybyreducingthedatacenterscarbonfootprint.

Consolidation o servers and storage are the two most appropriate opportunities or physical inra-

structure optimization Servers and storage consume the most ootprint and power with relatively low

utilization rates among other resources While there is no particular sequence to consolidate these

resources, there is a major dependency on storage inrastructure in the case o server consolidation

We will discuss this dependency in the section Virtualize & Consolidate the Back-end Inrastruc-

ture The Storage We will irst discuss server consolidation ollowed by storage consolidation to

logically organize the thought process rom the top o the operational IT inrastructure stack to the

bottom We will discuss network inrastructure in the context o storage consolidation

Perform Infrastructure and Resource Assessment

Current state inrastructure and resource assessment is required to understand and manage the

scope o the project This includes project goals and objectives, eort estimation and investment,

and expected returns The assessment will include inormation on existing server inrastructure,

including resource utilization rates, deployment, operational, and maintenance costs including

hardware, power and cooling, administrative, training, and services costs The assessment must

include inormation on uture (virtualized) states as well However, a phased adoption plan with

classiedworkloadisrequiredtoaccuratelyprojectfutureefciencytargetsfortheconsolidated

environment

Classify and Prioritize Applications

Therstandmostimportantstepistoinventoryallworkloads/applicationsinadatacenter,then

classiy and prioritize them by unction and criticality to the business This will determine workloads

that can be consolidated onto a single server and build out a complete virtual server Then,

requirements or physical hardware to host these applications as virtual servers can be derivedbased on the application perormance and availability requirements This will also help to identiy

workloads that are not good candidates or virtual servers, but must coexist alongside the virtual

inrastructure


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Figure 11: An example o 15 applications (represented by X) in an enterprise classiied by applicationliecycle phases and business priorities

Plan a Phased Approach to Infrastructure Virtualization and ConsolidationPhysical inrastructure consolidation to virtual inrastructure must be completed in our planned

phases:

Phase1isanassessment.Then,especiallyfororganizationsnewtoservervirtualization,there

should be an evaluation or easibility study that includes virtualizing a small number o test and

development workloads to a ew pre-production servers

Phase2deploymentbringsservervirtualizationmainstreamintoapre-productionenvironment.

It deploys most test/dev and quality assurance workloads onto a virtual inrastructure There may

still be a requirement to test certain products under development on a physical inrastructure, so

we should also account or these special requirements However, physical inrastructure should

become an exception ater successul completion o phase 2 The primary ocus o server virtualiza-

tion evaluation and adoption in phase 1 and phase 2 needs to be hardware acquisition and datacenter ootprint cost containment

Phase3introducesservervirtualizationfornon-criticalproductionworkloads.Theprimaryobjective

o phase 3 is to urther build on cost containment achieved in phase 2 by streamlining core

inrastructure management and taking preliminary steps toward business process automation In

phase3,planforbroaderefciencies,includingoperationsmanagementautomationandsome

level o business process automation

ThefocusandobjectiveofPhase4deploymentistobringthevirtualinfrastructuremainstreamin

the production environment with the physical inrastructure or special-case requirements Business

process automation and optimization via end-to-end inrastructure mapping and management also

need to be the centerpieces o the phase 4 virtualization initiative and planning


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Figure 12: A phased approach to the adoption o virtualization illustrating key business drivers andworkloads, inrastructure scale, key initiative ocus, and timeline or each o the our adoption phases

Virtualize & Consolidate the Front-end InfrastructureServers & Applications

The resource utilization o an actively accessed x86 server in production is estimated to be well below

20 percent A typical server consumes between 30 to 40 percent o its maximum power in idle state

Servers also consume a large portion o data center loor space, power resources, and operational

budgets Server virtualization provides the undamental platorm upon which an entire, eicient data

center with enterprise-class services or robustness, availability, and perormance are built

Server consolidation is accomplished by increasing the number o applications and workloads on

a physical server In a typical enterprise, applications run on heterogeneous server and operating

system platorms Since operating systems directly interact with server hardware, this limits the abilityto eectively consolidate server and application inrastructure and reduce operational and manage-

ment costs Server virtualization breaks the barrier by introducing a layer o abstraction, called the

Hypervisor, between the operating systems and the server hardware This allows multiple instances o

dierent operating systems to run simultaneously on any single x86 32-bit and 64-bit server

Figure 13: Three physical servers running VMware server virtualization sotware to create multiple virtualservers and host multiple heterogeneous operating system environments with each running heterogeneousapplications with complete isolation and security

This results in server utilization increasing rom the typical 8 to 15 percent to 70 to 80 percent

Reducing the number o physical servers also reduces power and cooling costs and provides more


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computing power in less space As a result, energy consumption can also decrease by as much as 70

to 80 percent A consolidation ratio o 8-to-10 server workloads on a single physical server is typical;

however, based on the processing capabilities o servers, some organizations have consolidated as

many as 30 to 40 workloads onto a single server

The oundational components required to build a virtual server inrastructure include:

VirtualInfrastructureOperatingSystem

VirtualInfrastructureManagementServer

VirtualInfrastructureSDK

StorageInfrastructure

Virtual Infrastructure Operating System: Virtual Inrastructure Operating System, reerred to as

Hypervisor, is a robust virtualization layer that runs on physical servers and abstracts processor,

memory, storage, and networking resources into multiple virtual machines (virtual servers) The

virtual operating system provides all essential unctions or the virtual inrastructure Some o these

unctions include:

VirtualSMP:VirtualSymmetricMulti-Processingenablesasinglevirtualmachinetousemultiple

physical processors simultaneously

VirtualMachineFileSystem:Anenterprise-class,high-performanceclusterlesystemtohostvirtual

machines

VirtualNetworking:Providesallofthefunctionsandcapabilitiesofaphysicalswitchinsidethe

virtual operating systems o all virtual machines

VirtualInfrastructureClient:AninterfacethatallowsuserstoconnectremotelytotheVirtual

Inrastructure Management Server or individual Virtual Inrastructure Servers rom any Windows PC

Virtual Infrastructure Management Server is the central point or coniguring, provisioning, and

managing virtualized IT environments All essential and advanced unctions such as online migration

o running servers, online power and resource management, high availability, and disaster recovery

unctions are conigured and managed through the VI Management Server

Virtual Infrastructure SDK provides a third-party solution to integrate with the core virtual

inrastructure

Figure 14: A logical representation o VMware Virtual Inrastructure components

Storage Infrastructure: Storage Inrastructure is required on the back-end to host (store) the entire

virtual inrastructure Storage is a critical element The realization o eiciencies in the virtual


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environment hinge on the correct and appropriate adoption o storage Requirements and the role o

storage inrastructure are covered in much greater detail in the ollowing sections

There are tools available to assist in consolidating and converting existing physical servers into

virtual servers They are wizard-driven and presented in a tutorial-like ashion These server consoli-

dation process automation tools use capacity-planning unctions to discover physical systems in the

environment, analyze them, and make recommendations or server consolidation based on workload

requirements Integrated conversion unctionality in these tools transorms physical systems intovirtual servers Once applications have been consolidated to ewer physical servers, these and other

service optimization tools help to migrate applications rom one virtual server to another to maintain

service quality and inrastructure eiciency

It is also important to implement a process to transition applications rom one stage o application

liecycle to another There are tools available to assist IT administrators visualize and deine applica-

tion services, system conigurations, and release processes to accelerate the completion o change

requests to production Some o the use cases or these tools include patch revision o existing

production applications and introduction o new applications, enorcement o IT policies, and compli-

ance with industry regulations

Virtualize & Consolidate the Back-end InfrastructureThe Storage

As organizations work their way through the deployment phases o the virtual inrastructure (seeigure 12), it becomes extremely important to pay close attention to the selection and purchase o

appropriate storage Adoption o an incorrect storage platorm can very quickly lead to ineiciencies

in the virtual inrastructure with penalties in the orm o storage inrastructure acquisition, opera-

tions and management, data center ootprint, power and cooling costs, and environmental costs

Storage Considerations and Requirements for Phase 1 and Phase 2

Requirements or storage are relatively simple during the initial project easibility, evaluation, and

small-scale test/development deployment phase o an inrastructure consolidation project These

requirements include simplicity and ease o storage use, basic storage connectivity support or server

virtualization technology, support or the iSCSI protocol or block storage, low cost o storage, and

some level o maximum storage capacity While unctional storage requirements during the evalua-

tion phase are simple, organizations must understand that requirements evolve very quickly as theymove rom initial to pre-production phase, and then rom inrastructure virtualization into produc-

tion The use o multi-protocol uniied storage is a undamental requirement in building an eicient

and consolidated storage inrastructure During this evolution, unctions such as point-in-time data

copy, data cloning, support or NFS (NAS) protocol, and time-to-deployment become additional stor-

age requirements Investment in multi-protocol uniied storage keeps the environment consolidated

as storage requirements can be met and serviced out o the same storage inrastructure Uniied stor-

age also contains and streamlines power and cooling, loor-space, and management requirements

Storage Considerations and Requirements for Phase 3

As organizations move inrastructure virtualization into production, begin with tier 2 applications

that are not mission-critical Deploying tier 2 applications gives organizations an opportunity to eel

their way into production with a virtual inrastructure and work out the operational and management

issues beore deploying business-critical applications

Phase 3 introduces a new set o storage requirements For instance, the level o availability and per-

ormance o a production IT inrastructure has a direct impact on the business Hence, redundancy

o storage and support or the Fibre Channel protocol, in addition to iSCSI and NFS, are important

additional storage requirements In phase 3, or tier 2 production applications, the use o low-cost

Fibre Channel or Serial-ATA storage may be required to serve certain operational requirements such

as data staging or backup or staging o applications on class-B Fibre Channel storage prior to pro-

moting applications to a Class-A inrastructure Hence, in addition to multi-protocol uniied storage,

tiered storage is another major requirement when building a compact, agile, and eicient storage

inrastructure Once again, investment in multi-protocol uniied storage that eatures tiering unc-

tions results in inrastructure optimization


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Storage Considerations and Requirements for Phase 4

Once experience has been acquired in deploying some production applications on a virtual inra-

structure, Tier 1 workloads such as sales, inance, marketing, and other mission-critical applications

and databases that involve online transaction processing can be consolidated onto ewer physical

servers Since tier 1 applications carry the most inancial impact to the business and even minimal

unavailability or poor application response time may result in millions o dollars in lost revenue,

there are stringent storage availability and perormance requirements These environments can

beneit rom both multi-protocol uniied tiered storage and purpose-built tiered storage designed

speciically to meet the highest perormance requirements and eicient data management through

inormation liecycle management

Organizations must deploy a storage platorm that provides ive-nines availability (99999 percent)

and deliver complete protection rom any type o system outage to address phase 4 storage inra-

structure availability requirements Deployed equipment must be ully redundant and protected at

all levels including everything rom power distribution units and power rails to storage processing

controllers and storage memory Additional redundancy must be available at a data layout and disk

drive level inside a storage enclosure In case o an outage, the storage system must be able to ully

protect in-light transactions in the storage system memory Similarly, the SAN or NAS inrastructure

outside o the storage subsystem must be conigured or ull availability with multiple access paths

through redundant SAN and Ethernet networks Furthermore, multiple application I/O processingpaths must be conigured in the host to reroute client (system users) transactions in case o a path

ailure in the end-to-end inrastructure between the user interace o the application to the location

o inormation on any given disk or disk set in the storage subsystem

The same storage platorm must leverage and support all existing and uture industry-leading data

processing protocols, such as 4 Gb and 8 Gb Fibre Channel and 10 Gb Ethernet protocols to address

phase 4 storage inrastructure perormance requirements To keep the data center consolidated and

eicient, these storage subsystems must support all classes o storage devices in the same unit rang-

ing rom enterprise-class solid state (Flash) disk drives to all speeds o FC drives to Serial-ATA drives

Figure 15: EMC Symmetrix and CLARiiON storage platorms with multi-protocol, tiered storage, quality-o-service capabilities to support availability, perormance, and salability requirements or an organization oany size

To optimize application perormance, these storage subsystems must contain the lexibility and

intelligence to dynamically ine-tune and right-size the use o system processing resources according

to the applications perormance requirements For example, to consolidate three workloads with

varying perormance requirements onto a storage subsystem, the memory and storage processor

resources must be assigned according to their perormance requirements To achieve this objective,

storage subsystem intelligence is required to monitor and act against a set o established priorities

or system memory, CPU, and I/O bandwidth utilization Upon meeting the set priorities, either adjust

and assign resource allocation to applications in a sel-tuning automated ashion or provide the

storage administrators with recommendations about the correct resource allocation to maintain the

quality o storage service and meet overall inrastructure and application service levels


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Figure 16: Examples o how EMC storage platorms optimize quality o service through intelligent optimiza-

tion o storage cache and I/O bandwidth

Similar to storage subsystem resource allocation, server resources must be monitored and right-sized

using either an automated or a guided policy-based resource allocation system Once the server

inrastructure has been right-sized on the ront end, application path management tools on the server

optimize application response time by distributing the I/O load across all available paths Address

and optimize perormance at all levels o the inrastructure including applications and databases,

servers, networks, and storage to generate and deliver best possible application response time

Secure the Information Repository in the Consolidated Infrastructure

Controlling Access through Service Credentials

Storage security must be considered along with the other storage requirements previously discussed

The relevance o inrastructure security to operational eiciency may not be readily visible; however,

inrastructure security is necessary An optimized and eicient inrastructure must not be vulnerable

to external or internal security threats Deployed storage must include strong data security unctions

to completely eliminate unauthorized access to the system and inormation This requires storagesecurity applied at multiple levels

First, the subsystem must be sae; no unauthorized individual should be able to gain access to or

control o the storage subsystem and perorm service unctions This requires implementation o

role-based access control, validation, and authentication though secure service credentials in the

storage subsystem For instance, a rule can be established that allows sta members to gain access

to storage control unctions rom speciic servers via complex service credential authentication

while denying all other attempts to access Similarly, a storage sta member may be allowed system

access to generate reports, but may make no coniguration changes; or a team member may add new

storage, but make no changes to the existing coniguration Other rules may include sta members

access to the system during a certain time o the day or or a speciic period o time, etc

Implement Activity Log and Incident Management SystemImplementing system access logging across the inrastructure enorces and enhances enterprise

security Maintaining access log inormation may also be required or compliance with various

industry regulations Log management systems incorporate logging o all vital elements o the

inrastructure They capture and store hundreds o thousands o events per second To ully secure a

storage inrastructure, incorporate storage access logs into an enterprise log and incident manage-

mentsystemtoperformsecurityfunctionssuchasstorageassetidentication,accessreportsand

alert generation, and incident management Ensure compliance with the organizations security

policies

Encrypt Data

Once the storage subsystem perimeter has been secured and access activity can be ully tracked

and reported, the next step is to secure the data residing inside storage subsystems This isaccomplished by encrypting the data in-fight and the data at-rest Data in-fight is traveling over the

wire between the points o origination and destination, while data at-rest is stored and retained on

the storage device Data encryption protects against electronic and physical security breaches such


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as unauthorized access to the system; and protects at lease rollover or storage upgrades that may

result in physical movement o data outside the secure perimeters Applying host-based encryption

ensures that data remains completely secure beore it leaves the point o origination, during its

fight, and ater it arrives and is stored in the storage repository

Figure 17 (A): EMC storage with secure role-based administrative access with ull access logging (B): EMCPowerPath eaturing security o data at rest with strong data encryption architecture (C): Uncompromised

protection o data through EMC Certiied Data Erasure Service

Use Data Erasure Services

Ensure that the security o data remains uncompromised during a lease roll-over, technology

upgrade, or when perorming bad disk replacements Use certiied data erasure service or open

systems and mainrame storage These services must adhere to stringent data erasure speciications

such as DoD 522022-M and provide auditable records o data erasure

Automate and Enhance IT Service Delivery

Adoption o advanced automated IT service orchestration and operations unctions are essential to

ensure the high quality o IT service and to enhance eiciencies derived rom virtualizing and consoli-

dating the core inrastructure

Keep the Infrastructure Optimized with Minimal to No Disruption

A slow or poorly perorming service/application means loss o potential revenue An application that

cannot ulill user workload requests means that clients will turn to alternatives The Internet is an

example I an online shopping service takes too long, users will turn to competitors Notice that

this is due to the poor quality o service and not a result o service unavailability Hence, optimizing

end-to-end system perormance where the inrastructure can remain ine-tuned under heavy stress is

extremely important Virtualization addresses this level o perormance optimization ar more eec-

tively than the physical environment For virtual servers, solutions that can move workloads between

virtual and physical servers, based on requirements, in a nondisruptive and automated manner are

very useul Using this technology, live, running applications with active in-light transactions are

moved rom one server with insuicient resources to another server with necessary resources IT sta

has the option to either entirely automate this process or set alerts I they opt to set alerts, they willbe inormed either prior to or upon a violation; they can then make an appropriate decision

This technology also helps to eliminate maintenance windows as maintenance can be perormed

around the clock For example, suppose we want to apply critical patches to a production application

in the middle o the day System administrators can seamlessly move live applications running on a

maintenance target server to another server Once the target server has been appropriately updated,

the live/running applications can be moved back to the original server This can all happen with

complete transparency to users with no disruption

Similarly, the quality o service issue may not be due to or limited to server resources It can result

rom the storage subsystems suboptimal coniguration and resource utilization Hence, it is impor-

tant to use storage devices with built- in service quality management and optimization eatures

Some o these include support or multiple tiers o storage such as enterprise-class Flash disk drives,

high-speed and low-cost Fibre Channel disk drives, and Serial ATA disk drives Additionally, dynamic

alignment o storage processor CPU, cache based on tiers, and characteristics o applications such as


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read or write patterns and workload luctuations are required Seamless, non-disruptive migration o

application data rom one class o storage to another, or one RAID coniguration to another, is needed

to ensure optimal business operations

Figure 18: Above let, a logical illustration o non-optimized use o server and storage resources impactingthe perormance o applications o dierent classes On the right, an illustration o the use o VMware DRSand various EMC storage resource optimization technologies which align the use o server and storageresources with application priorities and classes

Add Seamless Data Mobility across Storage Subsystems

In addition to seamless optimization and data mobility within storage subsystems, it is equally

important to address seamless data retention, movement, and migration across physical storage

subsystems A number o situations require this level o mobility One example is an initiative to

increase storage utilization across physical storage subsystems by making storage space rommultiple physical storage arrays available to any given application Others include upgrading storage

subsystems to newer ones, expiring and rolling over leased storage rom one vendor to a dierent

vendor, and consolidating data centers that requires data migration between sites Similarly, data

mobility across heterogeneous storage may also be required to make a copy o production data avail-

able to support business unctions These may include data mining or decision-support systems,

research and development unctions, and data backup unctions

There is a tremendous opportunity to optimize the eiciency o block and ile storage For block

storage, organizations can either deploy host-based data mobility solutions or leverage intelligent

SAN abric-based solutions that allow the use and movement o data across heterogeneous storage

inrastructure or any or all application workloads

Similarly, in NAS environments, there are solutions that leverage both in-band and out-o-bandoptimization technologies This makes NAS storage eicient, simple, and easy to manage It is

important to ensure that these solutions do not introduce data vulnerability and do not operate in a

manner that results in data loss due to equipment unavailability, especially or in-light transactions

that have not yet been committed to disk Hence, these data mobility solutions must be stateless and

act only as a pass-though service or requested unctions These devices must not store in-light or

committed data in their cache prior to committing data to disk, otherwise there will be an additional

point o potential data loss


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Figure 19: Examples o dierent options available or non-disruptive, seamless migration and managemento data in SAN and NAS environments

Apply High Availability for Continuous Business Operations

It is necessary to address inrastructure availability when optimizing the inrastructure or peror-

mance Complete, end-to end high availability o the entire inrastructure is the only way to ensure

ongoing business operations Any outage rom server to storage or anything in between means down-

time resulting in lost revenue and productivity Implement advanced, high-availability eatures rom

leading server virtualization vendors to ensure that virtual servers can be restarted automatically

on an available server to protect a server rom becoming unavailable in the virtualized environment

Clustering can be implemented at a virtual server level to ensure applications are started in the

proper sequence with all required dependencies This level o application protection urther ensures

that i only one virtual server becomes unavailable, the ailing virtual server and related applicationscan be started on an alternative machine instead o ailing over all virtual machines There are tools

available to orchestrate the entire process and worklow required or quick recovery They urther

streamline availability in a virtual environment High availability in a virtualized environment also

means availability o shared storage to all nodes in a cluster Ater virtual server ailover, the server

with workload ownership can acquire access to application data and keep the application running

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery for the Efficient Infrastructure

Business continuity and disaster recovery are related concepts that are oten conused While the

net desired result or both is the same, availability o IT services to the business, business continu-

ity means taking proactive measures to avoid an IT service outage The outage could be due to any

operational issue such as application or database problems, ile system crashes due to storage space

outage, equipment ailures, or data corruption In most cases, these issues cannot be categorized as

disasters and do not involve outage o an entire data center site

Disaster recovery means taking reactive measures to quickly restore service ater a ailure, mostly

involving a site or partial site outage, due to natural or unnatural causes such as earthquakes, hurri-

canes, looding, ire, and so on This results in sizeable damage to the data center Disaster recovery,

typically, involves restarting IT services rom a second data center Technology is one major element

in the implementation o disaster recovery scenario Planning or disaster recovery involves people,

process, and procedure with clearly deined and articulated roles, responsibilities, and steps Imple-

menting robust disaster recovery practices is critical since many aspects o business operations rely

on technology

In addition to the basic high-availability and clustering technique discussed in the previous section,

there are a number o inormation protection techniques to provide business continuity and disasterrecovery or data center protection These techniques can be broadly deined as local protection and

remote protection


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Local Protection

Local protection involves various degrees and methods o data backup and recovery It protects rom

inormation loss scenarios such as user errors, application or database corruptions, and equipment

ailures Building an eicient inrastructure means leveraging the right technology or every environ-

ment and scenario in a data center There are a number o methods available to protect inormation;

most environments use a mix o techniques For non-critical applications, basic tape or disk-based

backups might be suicient, whereas or more important applications, online disk-based backups

with various levels o recoverability can be implemented The exact protection methodology will

depend on the applications recovery-point and recovery-time requirements When implementing a

backup solution, it is important to consider varying requirements or dierent workloads and ensure

that the implemented solution can handle all diverse local protection requirements

Leverage Disk for Backup and Recovery

Backup disks have replaced traditional tape to a great degree in many organizations However, tape

continues to coexist with disk backup due to industry regulations and other requirements There

are a ew reasons or the popularity o disk as a backup medium, including aordability, capacity,

integration with backup applications and online snapshot sotware, online availability o inormation,

quick data recovery, ease o use and management simplicity Disk-based backup libraries, known as

virtual tape libraries, emulate physical tape libraries making the replacement o tape libraries simple

and easy Disk libraries can be programmed to behave as tape libraries, thus requiring no changesin backup applications, scripts, or processes The addition o data de-duplication unctions in disk

libraries urther justiies the business case or the use o disk as the preerred backup and recovery

medium

Leverage Disk-based Snapshots for Online Backup of Data

While there are a number o ways to perorm backup, a typical online backup o an important

application or a database uses the backup application to initiate the job and create a o point-in-time

copy o data The backup application integrates with storage sotware to perorm online snapshots o

applications and databases This data is typically stored on Serial-ATA disk or some period o time

beore it is moved to its inal backup repository, which could either be another set o Serial-ATA drives

in a disk array, a disk library, or a tape device The intermediate repository, where data is held or

some time, is called the disk staging area Since most data recovery requests are made during theirst ew days or weeks ater backing up a dataset, the purpose o disk staging is to retain recent data

or quick recovery in case o a request or inormation Ater a ew weeks, data can be moved to an

oicial backup repository and the staging area can be recycled

Leverage De-duplication

Data de-duplication is one o the latest innovations in the backup space It oers unparalleled levels

o eiciency to streamline and minimize the total amount o unique data that requires protection

This technology revolutionizes how organizations approach backup and recovery Data de-duplica-

tion, as the name suggests, identiies unique instances o data at a sub-ile level, eliminating backup

redundancy Given that only a small portion o the overall dataset changes on a daily or a weekly

basis, data de-duplication delivers tremendous eiciency to the environment Eiciencies include

shorter backup cycles, meeting backup windows, protecting more data in original backup window,

and a major reduction in the total used storage capacity

It is important to understand the environment when implementing data de-duplication technology

In a virtual inrastructure environment, there are multiple virtual servers running in a physical server

Each virtual server requires protection In these environments, since there are inite available CPU,

host bus adapter, and network resources that are shared among all virtual servers, the most eicient

way to perorm backup is to de-duplicate data at the source, prior to it leaving the physical server

Using this technique, inite server resources do not become bottlenecks and online production appli-

cations in these virtual servers do not suer rom lack o perormance


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Provide Continuous Data Protection

Mission-critical applications with very aggressive recovery-point requirements such as inancials,

securities exchange, online auctions, and live media broadcast cannot aord to lose any data Con-

tinuous data protection provides the ability to take ongoing snapshots o data Every write committed

to production storage is sent in parallel to a ully redundant CDP appliance that maintains a log and a

ull replica volume o production data Data can be accessed rom the CDP journal and replica volume

to provide business continuity in the event o an outage o production storage

Figure 20: An illustration o how continuous data protection (CDP) or up-to-the-second local data protectionis implemented in an EMC RecoverPoint solution

Protect NAS environments

NAS is a popular architecture to store data or a variety o workloads such as engineering data or

research and development, ile sharing, storing templates, ISO images, and print services Since

NAS deployments leverage the existing IP network, the classic method or protecting NAS is to

send backup data over the IP network This is not the most easible and eicient solution in many

environments where network bandwidth comes at a premium and administrative use o a produc-

tion network means taking resources away rom production workloads While backup traic can

be separated rom production network traic via creation o separate vLANS, carving out vLANs or

backup jobs still means reducing the aggregate available bandwidth or production use The Network

Data Management Protocol (NDMP) is designed speciically or NAS data backups NDMP is supported

by and comes as part o major backup sotware utilities It streams data directly rom the NAS device

to the backup unit that could either be a tape, disk library or disk storage unit Using NDMP, only

control rames rom the backup server traverse over the IP network enabling LAN-less and server-less

backups The net eect is sustained inrastructure eiciency by optimizing the use o the IP network

or production traic

Automate the backup process

A complete backup process involves a number o steps and is not limited to scheduling the backup

job in the backup utility Some o the process steps include creating disk-based snapshots,

integrating with application rameworks and databases such as Microsot VSS and Oracle RMAN

to synchronize data and perorm application-level data integrity checks, and handing o valid and

veriied snapshot data to the backup utility The deployed backup sotware must be comprehensive

and eature-rich to ensure the eiciency o backup operations It must handle all dierent types o

backups and must be able to manage the entire backup worklow and process It must also automate

all o the required backup process unctions


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In addition to backup sotware, there are also tools to handle the entire disk-based data replication

process at an application and database level with ull integration with Microsot, Oracle, SAP, and

other application and database vendors rameworks and utilities These tools can be leveraged on

an as-needed basis to optimize backup operations

Stay Informed of Backup Environment and Manage through Canned and Custom Reporting

The ability to generate and receive on-going reports on the status o your backup environment is one

o the most critical requirements or backup administrators Reporting is the only way to managebackup environments in the majority o medium to large-size organizations Awareness is the irst

step to take proactive or reactive corrective action Using automatically generated reports, adminis-

trators can study backup reports in the morning to get a picture o the previous days and/or nights

backup activity There are backup reporting tools that tightly integrate with backup sotware and

provide business-level and detailed reports Some o the reporting unctions include status o backup

jobs, inventory o resources, capacity utilization rates and trend analyses, bandwidth utilization,

duration and length o backup jobs, and many other valuable reports

Remote Protection

Remote protection involves replicating data between physical sites as close as the building next door

or as ar as another city, state, country, or continent Businesses have various reasons to perorm

remote data replication These include the need to service a geography or region rom a secondary

site or to quickly recovery rom a disaster to provide business continuity There are a number o ways

to replicate data between sites It can be replicated rom within the physical or virtual servers or the

networks, or the storage devices through local or wide area networks

As with any other IT implementation, the goals and objectives o perorming remote replication must

be clearly deined and well understood to ensure eicient and successul deployment Applications

must be classiied and prioritized based on business requirements, internal and intra-application

dependencies must be identiied, and recovery-point and recovery-time requirements must also be

deined This inormation is necessary to select and implement a solution that is eicient and meets

business objectives

Server-based Remote Replication Protection

Data can be replicated in a synchronous or asynchronous manner using server-based replicationsotware Synchronous replication ensures that data is best protected with the potential o data

loss approaching zero Every transaction is committed on both the primary and the secondary site in

real time While synchronous replication has the least exposure to data loss, this method requires

suicient network bandwidth or practical operations and has distance limitations The distance limi-

tation is dictated by the use o network technology and the application characteristics Attempts to

replicate application data over extended distances using insuicient network bandwidth may result

in network congestion and application timeout leading to service unavailability

Asynchronous replication oers the lexibility o replicating data over extended distances without

limitation However, since data is transmitted on a scheduled basis, there is a time lag in the states

o data between sites so the degree o data loss can be minutes to hours depending on replication

requency While server-based replication may be the most aordable solution rom a cost-o-imple-

mentation perspective, this method has drawbacks These include server resource utilization or

replication unctions, and limitations in scalability relative to network- or storage-based replication

Server-based replication may be a good remote protection solution or some small to medium-size

organizations For larger organizations, network- and storage-based remote replication oers the

highest scalability and perormance

Network-based Remote Replication Protection

Network-based remote replication leverages an out-o-band appliance architecture that complements

the existing IP network The redundant network appliance oloads the replication unction rom the

host or the storage and oers the lexibility to replicate data between heterogeneous storage devices

on two sites This method eliminates the need or special data protocol converters such as an FC-to-IP

converter The appliance perorms important unctions such as optimizing network bandwidth utiliza-

tion through automatic network throttling and data compression with compression ratios as high as

three to 15 times the original payload


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Figure 21: A unctional illustration o the use o EMC continuous remote replication solution or businesscontinuity and disaster recovery

Network-based remote replication also eatures consistency groups in which multiple individual

storage LUNs are logically treated as one unit Replication policy is applied to all member LUNs in the

consistency group simultaneously This is especially important or applications and databases that

operate across heterogeneous server and storage environments and have data dependency on mul-

tiple storage LUNs Consistency groups keep all member storage components ully synchronized In a

disaster restart scenario, applications and databases can be brought back online with minimal down-

time In network-based replication, data can be transmitted in real time or on a scheduled basis

Figure 22: Illustration above shows the use o consistency groups in a heterogeneous/cross-platormenvironment to ensure data protection o a multi-application business process across a heterogeneousstorage inrastructure


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Network-based replication is semi-synchronous Once data is acknowledged by the remote appliance,

acknowledgement is sent back to the primary appliance This architecture has lower data loss expo-

sure than the asynchronous architecture While this type o replication has clear advantages over

server-based replication, even network-based replication does not have the scale and perormance o

native storage-based replication Network-based replication is a good solution or medium to some

enterprise environments

Storage-based Remote Replication ProtectionStorage-based replication is the most robust, scalable, and eective way to perorm remote data

replication Storage-based replication is ideal or large commercial and enterprise customers with

aggressive remote replication perormance, availability, and scalability requirements In addition

to advanced unctions such as consistency groups and dynamic network bandwidth throttling, this

architecture allows or many other enterprise-class advanced unctions These include multiple-site

replication, simultaneous replication rom one device to multiple devices at multiple remote sites

and vice versa, and the ability to perorm cascading replication between multiple sites using synchro-

nous and asynchronous replication methods simultaneously While replication at this level is typi-

cally perormed between similar storage devices at both sites, there are solutions that allow special

scenarios such as data migration to replicate data among dierent storage subsystem types

Figure 23: An illustration o a number o dierent storage-based SAN and NAS remote data protectionsolutions available to protect organizations and environments o all sizes and types

Automating Remote Replication and Disaster Restart Orchestration

Implementing and operating remote replication or disaster recovery is a complex mixture o art

and science It involves an in-depth understanding and orchestration o a number o independent

unctional elements that must converge in the proper sequence or the environment to work Hence,

once set up and operational, it is important to perorm disaster r

the efficient green data center wp

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