Date post: | 20-Aug-2015 |
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Use More, Pay Less – Delivering
Increased Storage Efficiency
without Compromising on SLAs
Adrian Groeneveld
Marketing Director, EMEA
Market Dynamics
Economic meltdown
Virtualisation is mainstream
Cloud computing on everyone’s discussion agenda
Unified everything
Companies forced to adopt a new approach
Storage at the centre of everything
The Storage Issues
Silo’d or fragmented storage through project driven
acquisition
Poor utilisation
Highly inefficient due to power, space and resource
overhead
Legacy storage scales poorly, creating bottlenecks
Sharing storage between applications creates contention
and missed SLAs
Building a Shared Infrastructure
Private Cloud
– Typically an internal shared compute environment to support
business units/divisions and internal applications
Public Cloud
– Typically an external organisation using their own infrastructure
to deliver services to multiple clients e.g. SalesForce.com
Cloud Benefits
– Efficiency of resource
– Flexible shared environment
– Simple resource allocation
– Simplified management
– Project based charge back
Obstacles to Successful Shared
Storage Infrastructure
How unified is unified?
Applications don’t like sharing
Issues around scalability
Who’s using what
Securing the Infrastructure
Allocation of resources
Resource prioritisation
“Pillar delivers an innovative next generation
data storage solution enabled by patented
Quality of Service technology and built on a
highly scalable modular architecture to
automatically regulate and manage
fulfillment of incoming application data
requests based on business importance.”
Pillar Quality of Service
Enabling Cloud Storage
Enabling the Virtual Datacentre
Enabling Faster Applications
Enabling More Usage with Less Costs
9
How Do We Do It?
One Platform: Axiom 600
Key Value: IO Prioritization
Virtual Server
Virtual Machine 2
Virtual Machine 1
Virtual Machine 3
1 3
9
4 5
8
10
7
2 6
Medium Priority Queue
high medium low
High Priority Queue
Low Priority Queue
Core Technology: QoS
Architecture Components
Storage Controllers - Slammer • Active-Active SAN or NAS control units
• 48GB Cache
• (8) GigE ports or (4) 4 or 8Gbps FC ports
• Complete High Availability
• Scales up to four Slammers (eight control units)
Storage Enclosure - Brick • Dual RAID controllers
• Embedded RAID-5 and RAID-10
• SATA, Fibre Channel and SSD drives
• Built in hot spare
• Hot-swappable drives and RAID Controllers
Management Controller - Pilot • Dual control units
• Active/Passive - High Availability
• (2) Hard drives for Config and Logging
• (6) 10/100/1000 Base-T Ethernet
One Platform: Axiom 600
4x SAN and/or NAS Slammers – SAN (FC, iSCSI)
4-16 4Gbps and/or 8Gbps FC ports
4-16 1Gbps Ethernet ports
– NAS (NFS or CIFS)
8-32 1Gbps Ethernet ports
– 48-192 GB of Cache
64x Bricks – 1.66 PB of Capacity
– Storage Classes
SATA: 500GB, 1TB and 2TB
FC: 300GB and 450GB
SSD: 50GB and 200GB
Guarantees – Performance guarantee with 80%
Utilization
Differentiating Technologies
Quality of Service (QoS) – Dynamic CPU, Cache, and Capacity Management
Unified Storage – Native SAN & Native NAS shared storage pool
Distributed RAID – Linear Scaling, Performance under fault, fast rebuild
Policy based Management & Application Aware Profiles – Storage services linked to application priority
Modular architecture – Scale with highest utilization rates in enterprise storage
Quality of Service
Problem: Traditional arrays still use a FIFO (First in First
Out) I/O queuing model
– No regard for the business importance of an application – first
come first served
Solution: Prioritize I/O’s by the business value of an
application
– Multiple I/O queues: Important I/O’s executed first regardless of
received order
Benefit: Aligns performance with business needs vs.
who got there first
Storage Domains – Extending QoS
Isolates specific bricks within the storage pool
Usage
– Database Environments - Create separate domains
for the logs and the data files for data protection and
comfort
– Hosting – Allocate specific bricks to specific
customers within the overall Axiom pool
– Private cloud – allow departmental charging for bricks
– Overcome project based storage acquisition
– Brick based data migration for brick upgrades
Extending QoS for Share Storage
Environments
Slammer acts as a type of Cloud Controller
Each domain has its own Bricks, Storage Classes and
RAID controllers
Storage Domains act as separate application containers
A separate storage domain can be created for every
Cloud user (application owner or external cloud
customer in a hosting example)
Users can acquire additional bricks to be added to their
own storage domain within the Cloud
Every Cloud user still has the benefits of Quality of
Service and storage classes
Canterbury City Council
“Our guys aren’t spending all their
time fire fighting...routine is
back to routine!”
Timo Bayford, Computer Services Manager
Delivering Shared Storage Services
700 full-time staff
25 sites to support
70 business units
Massive range of services
– Council tax calculation and collection
– Theatre and festival ticketing
– Car parks
– Benefits payments
– Many more
The Challenges Faced
Existing system was having constant performance
issues
Mixed drive types was creating contention
Needed a system to cope with multiple applications that
could cope with growth
Were faced with constant complaints from the business
units
Revenue generating systems were getting impacted
Need to be able to deliver shared services to
neighbouring councils
The Solution Deployed
Systems Deployed
– Axiom 600, dual Slammer
– Both with native SAN and NAS
– Fibre Channel and SATA drives
Applications Serviced – Exchange
– SQL
– Oracle
– ESX Server
– Data archive and back-up
– Finance, Web and Billing
– Other
The Benefits
Instant provisioning and dynamic change based on application
demand with Pillar’s Quality of Service
Supporting multiple applications on physical and virtual servers with
predictable and consistent performance managed with QoS
Virtually eliminating complaints from users due to poor response
from application requests
Ability to scale and deliver shared services architecture for reduced
TCO amongst a number of councils
Consolidation of all applications onto a single, unified storage
platform, without impacting the business