SAN Transparency and Performance From Reactive to Proactive Alex D’Anna

1. SAN Transparency and Performance From Reactive to Proactive Alex D’Anna Director, Solutions Consulting, EMEA November 9, 2010 Virtual Infrastructure Optimization

2. Agenda SAN & Virtualization Challenges Virtual Infrastructure Optimization Application Views and Risk Reduction Customer Examples and Deployment

3. About Virtual Instruments Focus on optimizing Fibre channel Leader in Virtual Infrastructure Optimization Private equity spinout from Finisar: June 2008 Virtual Instruments Leadership John Thompson, former CEO of Symantec and Director of IBM Americas Barry Cooks, Engineering of VMware Former Siebel Leadership Key Finisar Engineering Key partnerships: Brocade, HDS, VMware, IBM, LB Systems, MEN@NET Growing 2X Year over Year In EMEA: Nov. 2009 2  Dec. 2010 17 San Jose, CA Headquarters

4. About Virtual Instruments Where to find us? LB Systems and MEN@NET!!! Full lab, demo and offer the services and capabilities to deploy Where on the Web? LinkedIn Group: Virtual Instruments SAN Storage and Virtualization Forum Twitter: virtual_inst, virtual_wisdom, virtual_io YouTube: SNW Europe 2010 or http://www.youtube.com/user/sos4sans#p/a/u/0/1dnhEHKnWLE San Jose, CA Headquarters

5. The Industry Challenge… ...the “perfect storm”

6. The Virtualization Challenge The SAN has lacked any real I/O systems-level performance Original FC spec was designed for 32 “storage channels” Not designed as a “network” Lacks self-health, diagnostics and transparency to the I/O There’s a “perfect storm” happening in data management today… Servers & Virtual Machines I/O SAN Cloud FC Fabric I/O Storage Arrays

7. The SAN has lacked any real I/O systems-level performance Data growth at an unprecedented rate (average 30-60% CAGR) A 200TB shop in ‘05 growing 50% is now 1PB & will be about 8 PB in 5 years A net-new 7 PB of storage; how much will it cost, and where will it be deployed? The Virtualization Challenge There’s a “perfect storm” happening in data management today… Servers & Virtual Machines SAN Cloud

8. The SAN has been a “black box”, lacking any real I/O systems-level performance, so it’s heavily over-provisioned as a result Data growth at an unprecedented rate (average 30-60% CAGR) More “abstraction” being added Further limits I/O visibility Challenges performance Slows deployment of cloud infrastructures The Virtualization Challenge There’s a “perfect storm” happening in data management today… Virtual Server Cloud SAN Cloud Storage Virtualization Cloud

9. Common Large-scale SAN Challenges Explaining/avoiding application outages & slowdowns Identifying SAN problems Identifying physical layer problems Reducing vendor finger-pointing Tracking SLAs & compliance • Over-provisioning and consolidation • Storage tiering • Environmental costs (avoiding new data centers) • Capacity planning • Containing rising costs of storage/SAN w/ flat budget

10. Common Virtual Infrastructure Challenges • I/O subsystem troubleshooting • Deploying Tier 1 mission critical applications • Showing adherence to performance standards • Isolating workload peaks that cause resource conflicts and bottlenecks • Explaining/avoiding application outages & slowdowns • Increasing server consolidation ratios • Reducing vendor finger-pointing • Tracking SLAs & compliance

11. The primary virtual infrastructure challenge We have found greater than 90 percent of the VMware-related performance issues encountered by our customers are due to the storage tier. Scott Drummonds, Performance Specialist VMware

12. Virtual Server Market Share 2008-2012 ~ 10M vms ~ 55M vms

13. Phases of VMware Infrastructure • Process and Tech Standard Phase • “VM 1st” Policy Are You Here? • Heavy-Use Phase • Mission Critical • More than just Servers NUMBER OF VMs • Light-Use Phase • “Virtualization-Lite” • Pilot Phase • Play • Stuck due to: • Lack of “know-how” • Lack of Tier 1 app confidence • Lack of client virtualization maturity Why Do Customers STOP Here?? VISIBILITY….of I/O TIME

14. What is needed… • Create “Predictability” • Identify / fix physical & virtual infrastructure problems before they occur • Reduce Risk • Ensure no loss of revenue/ productivity • Reduce Costs • Optimize IT asset utilization and personnel • Improve Performance • Tier 1 apps meet performance SLAs

15. ProbeV Identifies low overall SAN utilization via real-time dashboard Identifies individual port utilization Enables verification of historical utilization trends to verify loads over time Enables intelligent load balancing to avoid expensive purchases Avoiding Over-provisioning of Links 90% of ports used less than 10%

16. Improving SAN Utilization and Mitigating Risk SAN utilization < 2% Some links hitting 100% Traffic on ISL’s causing contention SFP low-light levels & flopping HBA’s causing CRC issues ProbeV Software Audit

17. Faster Troubleshooting & Root Cause Analysis ProbeFCX Continuously monitors and filters in real-time Calculates statistics based on measuring all fibre channel frame traffic Automatically notifies staff based on exceeded policy thresholds Real-time root-cause analysis Record and play back metric recordings of intermittent problems before they build up and disrupt the SAN

18. Avoiding Performance Problems ProbeFCX Identifies potential application slow-down causes Recommends corrective action before the slowdown Enables fixes before application owner is aware of the problem Provides visibility into Queue depths, CRC errors, physical link errors, protocol errors, code violations, etc

19. Optimizing Application Performance ProbeFCX Measures all network statistics Proactively alerts administrator based on policies Enables real-time tuning for maximum performance

20. Expanding VMware to Mission-critical Applications ProbeVM Monitors CPU, memory & SAN utilization and I/O response time Identifies performance bottlenecks & recommends vMotion transfers Enables “what if” load balancing simulations Proves consolidation ratios can be improved w/out performance degradation APP APP APP APP APP APP APP APP APP APP APP APP APP APP APP APP OS OS OS OS OS OS OS OS OS OS OS OS OS OS OS OS

21. Solution Example: Virtual Instruments VirtualWisdom Deployment ProbeV (software) ProbeVM (software) TAPs Probe FCX Guests ProbeVM (VMware vCenter) & Hosts APP APP APP APP APP APP Server, GUI, Dashboards FC Switches OS OS OS OS OS OS ProbeV (SNMP data) ProbeFCX: (Real-time latency via FC headers) Traffic Access Point (TAP) Patch Panel (Out-of-band copy of FC traffic) Storage Arrays

22. Comprehensive I/O Visibility is Essential Solution Deployment Representative infrastructure Guests & Hosts APP APP APP APP APP APP SAN switches OS OS OS OS OS OS FC TAPs Storage Arrays

23. Phase 1: Virtual Server Monitoring Solution Deployment Extract CPU, Memory data from vCenter Guests & Hosts APP APP APP APP APP APP SAN switches OS OS OS OS OS OS FC TAPs Storage Arrays

24. Phase 2: SAN Switch Monitoring Solution Deployment Extract CPU, memory data from vCenter Extract data from FC switches Guests & Hosts APP APP APP APP APP APP SAN switches OS OS OS OS OS OS FC TAPs Storage Arrays

25. Phase 3: Fibre Channel Link Monitoring VirtualWisdom Deployment Extract CPU, memory data from vCenter Extract data from FC switches Extract data from FC frames Guests & Hosts APP APP APP APP APP APP SAN switches OS OS OS OS OS OS FC TAPs Storage Arrays

26. Everyone will TAP at Some Point Traffic Access Points (TAPs): • Have been widely deployed in IP networks (LANs, WANs) for 20+ years • Provide direct access to all levels of fiber traffic data on SAN/storage performance, utilization, and transmission errors • “If I could make 1 Recommendation, it’s TAP every Storage Array you deploy” • IBM Global Escalation Engineer • Faster problem identification & resolution • Proactively find problems before users • Maximize application performance

27. Other Options for TAPping

28. TAPping Integrated into the Cabling

29. Comprehensive I/O Visibility: VM to the LUN Solution Deployment Virtual Server Monitoring SAN Switch Monitoring FC Physical Layer Monitoring Consolidated View Guests & Hosts APP APP APP APP APP APP SAN switches OS OS OS OS OS OS FC TAPs Storage Arrays VM to LUN Correlation

30. Customer Example SAN & Virtualization Challenges Virtual Infrastructure Optimization Application Views and Risk Reduction Customer Examples and Deployment

31. Installed in 1.5 hours… on March 15, 2010

32. Multipath Verification • Verification including all Nicknames. The single HBA should be investigated.

33. Multipath Verification • MP after removing nicknames including the word TAPE . The single HBAs should be investigated.

34. Increasing production virtual server deployments Application performance degradation Inability to agree on root causes between storage/server admins & vendors Additional storage capacity/bandwidth failed to resolve problems Customer Success Story Medium Bank 250 VM’s on 24 ESX Servers • Implemented VIO solution across server & storage tiers • Detection of VMware configuration problems • Diagnosis of storage I/O latency • Identification of overloaded “hot” ports • Correlation between VMware vMotion and performance degradation Solutions Results Challenge Challenge Solutions Results

35. Summary Comprehensive I/O visibility enables Real-time performance optimization Proactive re-balancing of applications/VMs Faster troubleshooting Higher infrastructure availability Confidence to deploy VMware with I/O-intensive Tier 1 business-critical applications

36. The Leader In SAN & Virtual Infrastructure Optimization THANK YOU