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Future-proof Your Enterprise
Application Deployments
NetApp FlexPod Select with Veritas
InfoScale Enterprise Delivers State of
the Art Technology
Customer benefits from cost, function, feature
synergies through converged infrastructure solution
This report was developed by Edison Group, Inc. with NetApp/Veritas assistance and
funding. This report may utilize information, including publicly available data,
provided by various companies and sources, including NetApp/Veritas. The opinions
are those of Edison Group, Inc. and do not necessarily represent NetApp/Veritas’s
position.
Printed in the United States of America.
Edison Group, Inc. New York. Edison Group offers no warranty either
expressed or implied on the information contained herein and shall be held harmless for
errors resulting from its use.
All products are trademarks of their respective owners.
First Publication: August, 2016
Produced by: Harold Kreitzman, Analyst; Barry Cohen, Chief Analyst and Editor-in-
Chief; Manny Frishberg, Editor
Table of Contents
Executive Summary ..................................................................................................................... 1
NetApp FlexPod Select with Veritas InfoScale Enterprise ............................................. 1
Emerging Business Market Impact ........................................................................................... 2
3rd Platform ................................................................................................................................. 2
Business/IT Drivers ................................................................................................................... 2
More Complex Application Stack ....................................................................................... 2
Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery ............................................................................. 3
Greater Need for Increased Performance .......................................................................... 3
Single-Pane-of-Glass ............................................................................................................. 4
Automated Operations ......................................................................................................... 4
Decreased Data Center Space Requirement ...................................................................... 4
Converged System Architecture ................................................................................................ 5
Business/IT Key Performance Indicators ................................................................................ 6
Ability to React Quickly to Changing Market Conditions .................................................. 6
Future Proof IT Investment ..................................................................................................... 6
Maintain Service Levels ........................................................................................................... 7
Reduced Infrastructure Costs .................................................................................................. 7
Reduces OPEX ....................................................................................................................... 7
Reduces CAPEX .................................................................................................................... 8
Functions and Features ............................................................................................................... 9
Enterprise Grade Storage System ........................................................................................... 9
SANtricity ................................................................................................................................ 11
NetApp SANtricity DDP ....................................................................................................... 11
Auto Support (ASUP) ............................................................................................................. 12
Veritas InfoScale Enterprise ................................................................................................... 12
Veritas Volume Replicator ................................................................................................. 12
Flexible Storage Sharing ..................................................................................................... 13
Dynamic Multi-Pathing (DMP) ......................................................................................... 13
Smart Tier ............................................................................................................................. 13
Oracle Disk Manager (ODM) ............................................................................................ 14
Deduplication/Compression/Thin Provisioning ............................................................ 14
Cluster File System (CFS) ................................................................................................... 14
InfoScale Availability ......................................................................................................... 15
Veritas InfoScale Operations Manager (VIOM) .............................................................. 15
Cisco Unified Computing System ........................................................................................ 15
Cisco Nexus 5000 .................................................................................................................... 16
Conclusions ................................................................................................................................. 17
Executive Summary
This paper focuses on how combining NetApp's FlexPod Select Converged solutions
with Veritas' InfoScale Enterprise produces an
infrastructure solution to address these key
business concerns:
Ability to React Quickly to Changing Market
Conditions
Future Proof IT Investment
Maintain Service Levels
Reduced Infrastructure Costs
By offering the customer the NetApp/Veritas combined solution, they realize the full
benefits of one of the most technologically advanced Converged Infrastructure systems
available in the market today.
NetApp FlexPod Select with
Veritas InfoScale Enterprise
Customers receive the full
benefits of one of the most
technologically advanced
Converged Infrastructure
systems in the market today.
Edison: NetApp FlexPod Select w/Veritas InfoScale Enterprise 2
Emerging Business Market Impact
First, review the emerging market conditions that are the drivers setting the direction for
design and performance.
Second, see the business impact of the combined NetApp FlexPod Select Converged
Infrastructure with Veritas' InfoScale Enterprise Storage system offering.
3rd Platform
In 2014, IDC presented their view of the evolution of the IT industry, from the “second
platform” representing PC and client-server based infrastructure, to the “third platform”
of innovations driven by emerging big data/analytics, cloud, mobile and social business
applications1.
IDC projected that this third platform will drive business growth and IT responses for
the next 20 years. Two years later, it is quite evident that this prediction is being borne
out, with a significant effect on business and IT decisions.
Strategically minded technology manufacturers are recognizing this change in the
marketplace as defined by the IT and business drivers listed below.
This report demonstrates that NetApp’s FlexPod Select with Veritas InfoScale Enterprise
is a powerful datacenter solution addressing the business drivers for new and emerging
business requirements.
Business/IT Drivers
There are a number of market drivers which have influenced the NetApp FlexPod
Select/Veritas InfoScale Enterprise roadmap.
More Complex Application Stack
Emerging applications like OpenStack, big data, analytics, and hybrid cloud are
increasing application stack management complexity. While there is no such thing as
one-size-fits-all, technology manufacturers must factor the varied workload
requirements into their datacenter solutions.
1 https://www.idc.com/IDC_50anniversary/download/IDC50thAnniversary.pdf
Edison: NetApp FlexPod Select w/Veritas InfoScale Enterprise 3
NetApp FlexPod Select with Veritas InfoScale Enterprise solution:
Accommodates Oracle and other leading DB integration, providing strong
performance and availability.
Provides a flexible infrastructure via implementation and management of highly
available, real application clusters (RAC), databases with Veritas InfoScale
Enterprise cluster management for increased flexibility, scalability, and performance.
Enhances ability to react quickly to changing business demands, as it is able to
support changing application workload stacks. Currently supports a large number of
application stacks.
Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery
Competitive pressures and customer expectations for continuous business operations
are at their highest. That translates in the need to design infrastructure and acquire
system components that minimize or eliminate disruptions. In addition, the
safeguarding of data, and the ability to recover business operations quickly when
outages occur, are critical to the health of the business.
NetApp FlexPod Select with Veritas InfoScale Enterprise solution:
Provides business data protection by encrypting data and supporting business
continuity/high availability by it remote mirroring capability.
Greater Need for Increased Performance
Emerging business practices, like big data and data analytics, are aggressively pushing
the performance capabilities of existing infrastructure and the systems. Technology
manufacturers must plan for the future by designing systems and components that can
scale without performance degradation. In addition, new methodologies are needed to
extend the processing, storage and communication capabilities.
NetApp FlexPod Select with Veritas InfoScale Enterprise solution:
Achieves performance service levels through improved database performance via
enhanced file management and disk I/O.
Fully Redundant OLTP 4x Performance, 20 Percent Cost of Tier1 SAN2.
2
https://www.carahsoft.com/application/files/7714/4734/3054/Data_Flexibility_Storage_Sharing_Data_Sheet.p
df
Edison: NetApp FlexPod Select w/Veritas InfoScale Enterprise 4
Fully Redundant DW Reduces Query Times by 50 Percent, Completes 5x Queries Per
Hour at 11 Percent Cost of Tier1 SAN.
Single-Pane-of-Glass
One of the most critical technology selection criteria is simplicity as reflected in the
single-pane-of-glass technology resource management. Centralized management is a
must have operations management feature. Technology manufacturers must design
their system components to integrate seamlessly with other manufacturer components,
enabling centralized management.
NetApp FlexPod Select with Veritas InfoScale Enterprise solution:
Centralizes operation management providing automation, orchestration,
monitoring, analytics and configuration management.
Automated Operations
As the systems become more complex and the administrative and operational support
requirements increase, it is necessary to automate manual tasks to promote effective and
efficient system resource management. To put it simply, the time and personnel to
manage the systems at the appropriate level manually is cost prohibitive.
NetApp FlexPod Select with Veritas InfoScale Enterprise solution:
Maintains high service levels through its Auto Support feature which reduces
manual support efforts by automatically providing NetApp technical support with
periodic and as needed actionable reports.
Decreased Data Center Space Requirement
As the cost of infrastructure, i.e., facility, power, and AC continues to increase, the need
to reduce the system infrastructure footprint and environmental impact are key drivers
of manufacturer design and customer selection.
NetApp FlexPod Select with Veritas InfoScale Enterprise solution:
Reduces space requirement due to sophisticated storage reduction methodologies
and a converged architecture footprint designed to reduce space, as well as other
facility-related resources.
Edison: NetApp FlexPod Select w/Veritas InfoScale Enterprise 5
Converged System Architecture
The following table delineates the hardware, software, network and storage components
that make up NetApp FlexPod Select with Veritas InfoScale Enterprise validated
converged architecture. NetApp has verified that Veritas InfoScale Enterprise with
NetApp FlexPod Select delivers essential functionality and a variety of management
capabilities, including automation and orchestration, monitoring and analytics, and
configuration management.
The following NetApp FlexPod Select architecture with Veritas InfoScale Enterprise
software was jointly tested by NetApp and Veritas in NetApp’s labs. This test verified
business advantages of converged hardware, software, network, and management
components. The importance from a business perspective is that all components are
fully integrated and tested to take advantage of the best characteristics of each, thus
enabling synergies that result in improved performance and faster delivery.
NetApp FlexPod Select with
Veritas InfoScale Enterprise Description
Chassis Cisco 5108 B-series Blade Chassis
Desktop Servers Cisco B200 M3 blades - 2 Intel Xeon E5-2650 v2 processors and 128GB RAM
NW Switches Cisco Nexus 5548UP; Cisco 8Gb Fibre Channel SFP
NW Cards/Connectors Cisco Fabric Interconnect 6248UP
OS Oracle Linux
Compute Cisco UCS Manager
Network Cisco Nexus NX-OS
Application SW Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC)
Database Oracle Database 12c Enterprise Edition
Storage NetApp EF560 dual controller array
NetApp 16Gb Fibre Channel host interface card
NetApp 400GB SSD
System/NW/Storage Mgt Veritas™ InfoScale Enterprise 7.1
Table 1 – NetApp/Veritas Configuration
The test validated key performance indicators (KPI) that are significant to IT operations
servicing key business demands within SLA requirements.
Edison: NetApp FlexPod Select w/Veritas InfoScale Enterprise 6
Business/IT Key Performance Indicators
Strategically driven business/IT executives monitor business success through a series of
KPIs that are linked directly to their short-term, mid-term, and long-term
business/operational objectives. The following summarizes how NetApp FlexPod
Select/Veritas InfoScale Enterprise Solution links to the most common KPIs:
Ability to React Quickly to Changing Market Conditions
Future Proof IT Investment
Maintain Service Levels
Reduced Infrastructure Costs
Ability to React Quickly to Changing Market Conditions
It has been demonstrated that a converged architecture improves performance,
flexibility, and agility providing an infrastructure that can easily accommodate changing
business requirements.
As presented in more detail below, this solution supports a broad array of workloads,
assuring that as business requirements change it is more than likely that the existing
platform can support changing workload mix.
Future Proof IT Investment
Some of the functions and features protect customer investments by easily integrating
SAN and NAS together using virtualized pooling. This protects existing investments
while making it possible to add new technology to take advantage of performance
advancements.
As needed, the NetApp FlexPod Select with Veritas InfoScale Enterprise solution scales
up and out independently providing maximum growth potential. It also integrates
easily with industry leading IT vendor system components. For example, Oracle EM
plug-in makes it easy to integrate with industry leading databases.
Functional design enables the transparent introduction of emerging technology without
significant retooling or business disruption.
Edison: NetApp FlexPod Select w/Veritas InfoScale Enterprise 7
Flexible architecture non-disruptively extensible to new compute and capacity demands.
Leading edge cluster software is also present to enable system growth without need for
replacement.
The system was designed to anticipate storage growth, as it can support large capacity
flash drives.
Maintain Service Levels
Several functions take advantage of the various storage technologies and uniquely
designed storage resource management methodologies to maintain high performance
levels regardless of workload type or storage footprint size.
A recent SPC Benchmark (SPC-2) Study3, April 29, 2016, was conducted where NetApp
EF560 All-Flash Array was determined to be Number One in terms of Price-Performance
relative to many of their competitors.
Business continuity considerations are taken into account in many of the functions and
features of the storage system. For example, the likelihood of storage component failure
is factored into many of the methodologies to assure high performance without failure.
Highly Efficient/Effective Disaster Recovery: faster disk rebuild times than traditional
RAID methodologies shortens business outage timeframes.
Reduced Infrastructure Costs
High production volumes, efficient internal engineering and manufacturing, and the
decreasing technology prices have enabled NetApp's FlexPod Select converged solutions
with Veritas' InfoScale Enterprise to maintain a more than competitively priced offering.
Reduces OPEX
There are several functions including auto support that reduce the manual effort and
associated OPEX needed to support the storage system. Technical support is
automatically contacted when needed.
3 http://www.storageperformance.org/benchmark_results_files/SPC-2/NetApp/B00078_NetApp_EF560_All-
Flash-Array/b00078_NetApp_EF560_All-Flash-Array_SPC-1_executive-summary.pdf
Edison: NetApp FlexPod Select w/Veritas InfoScale Enterprise 8
Reduces CAPEX
Many of the storage resource functions designed to preserve, protect, and extend the life
of the storage system are automated.
Through a combination of traditional storage management techniques like
deduplication/compression/thin provisioning, and unique, patented methodologies, the
combination of NetApp/Veritas functions free up to 80 percent of the storage required
without these functions, reducing capital expenditures.
Edison: NetApp FlexPod Select w/Veritas InfoScale Enterprise 9
Functions and Features
The combination of NetApp FlexPod Select with Veritas InfoScale Enterprise and Cisco
functions and features are explored in detail. Not only do the traditional functions
support storage resource management, the addition of Veritas InfoScale Enterprise
creates system synergies that make this an easy-to-administer, and efficient semi-
automated storage management platform that delivers high value.
Enterprise Grade Storage System
When the EF series was first architected, backplane and throughput was engineered for
anticipated higher speeds. In one test, NetApp put in an older controller and did not
experience any degradation in performance.
According to one NetApp engineer, “EF series has been over designed for years. EF was
just waiting for flash.”
Over the years there have been a lot of improvements to the code. This makes it possible
to easily accommodate the storage media evolution and maximize performance.
Specific features include, but are not limited to:
Ability to React Quickly to Changing Market Conditions – Large Number of
Supported Workloads. E5600 was designed with NetApp® SANtricity® OS
adaptive caching algorithms, which address a large range of application workloads:
o Retail points of sale
o Web servers
o Billing systems
o Databases/data warehouses
o Collaboration environments
o Media applications
o Sporting events
o Surveillance
o Research
o Backup
o HPC
Future Proof IT Investment – Infrastructure Design Flexible – Direct attach or SAN
– all functions/features work under both scenarios
Designed to be Integrated with Industry Leading Databases – Oracle EM plug-in;
storage foundation; enterprise manager integration
Edison: NetApp FlexPod Select w/Veritas InfoScale Enterprise 11
Maintain Service Levels – as demonstrated by being able to sustain 12 GB/s to disk
and up to 825,000 IOPS. And >99.999 percent availability due to fully redundant I/O
paths, advanced data protection features, and extensive diagnostic capabilities.
Reduced Infrastructure Costs – EF Series Hardware is competitively priced. When
coupled with functions and features, it delivers high value when compared to like
storage systems.
SANtricity
NetApp SANtricity Storage Management Software is the foundation for the functions
and features included within the NetApp E Series:
Future Proof IT Investments – Modular flexibility through multiple form factors
and drive technology options. Flexible host and network interface options
Maintain Service Levels – SANtricity Remote Mirroring for proven data replication
and disaster recovery
Full-disk encryption; secure data at rest using FIPS 140-2 level-1–compliant
encryption
Reduced Infrastructure Costs – Maximum storage density.
Reduced Manual Operational Effort. Simplify storage and data management,
protection, and utilization
NetApp SANtricity DDP
Dynamic Disk Pools (DDP) balance storage resource usage by randomly spreading data
across all drives, balancing workload, and rebuilding if necessary. For example, taking a
pool of 10 RAID6 disks: they write 128k to 10 disks and then go to the next 10 when full.
Future Proof IT Investment – DDP effectiveness is not negatively affected by size of
data storage pool. It has been shown that it operates more effectively at larger data
pool levels. DDP can also accommodate current and emerging storage medium
technology.
Maintain Service Levels – DDP raises performance by three to four times over
HDD. Actual performance will vary based on your workload. For example,
streaming environments perform well in a spinning disk environment; flash a little
better. Performance is usually three times better when supporting database. Data
Analytics, 50 percent better. However, NetApp claims a typical performance
improvement of 10 times.
Edison: NetApp FlexPod Select w/Veritas InfoScale Enterprise 12
Transparently Responds to Anticipated Drive Failure
DDP is architected to anticipate a certain expected level of drive failure.
Decreases Mean Time to Recovery
Minimizes the impact of failure and has been shown to completely restore storage
system eight times faster than traditional RAID methodologies.
Protects data from media failure by distributing it, redundantly over a wide number
of physical media.
Auto Support (ASUP)
Storage System data is automatically sent to NetApp Technical Support when there is an
outage of any kind. NetApp remotely diagnoses the issues and the problems are
analyzed. They then work with the customer to resolve and correct the issues. There are
three types of messages sent:
1. Event Based – due to an actual outage
2. Daily Health Check – system event logs and performance data
3. Weekly Health Check – system configuration and system state information
Reduced Infrastructure Costs – Elimination of manual effort directly reduces OPEX.
Veritas InfoScale Enterprise
Veritas InfoScale Enterprise addresses enterprise IT service continuity needs. It provides
resiliency and software defined storage for critical services across customers’ datacenter
infrastructure.
Veritas Volume Replicator
Veritas Volume Replicator (VVR) is data-replication software to support business
continuity and disaster recovery initiatives. VVR maintains consistent copies of
application data at one or more remote locations.
Maintains Service Levels – Asynchronous data replication solution that can
replicate entire server volumes, file systems or single files across a WAN via IP.
Edison: NetApp FlexPod Select w/Veritas InfoScale Enterprise 13
Flexible Storage Sharing
This function enhances performance significantly vs. nonredundant Tier 1 storage
alternatives and, at the same time, lowers overall cost. For example, fully redundant
OLTP 4x performance, 20 percent cost of Tier1 SAN; fully redundant DW reduces query
times by 50 percent, completes 5x queries per hour at 11 percent cost of Tier1 SAN.
Ability to React Quickly to Changing Market Conditions – by allowing access to
both SAN and DAS, it expands infrastructure design/implementation options.
Maintain Service Levels – by enabling full replications and high availability it
strengthens the processing platform and lowers the risk of outages.
Reduced Infrastructure Costs – by increasing the performance of the existing
storage resource, it decreases the need to continually acquire new hardware.
Dynamic Multi-Pathing (DMP)
DMP enhances throughput performance by automatically rerouting data paths based on
traffic and load balancing algorithms.
Future Proof IT Investment – virtualized methodology separates the physical
storage medium from the system, thereby making it less hardware-dependent,
increasing its ability to accommodate emerging storage medium technology.
Maintain Service Levels – by continually monitoring and adjusting data paths, DMP
maintains services levels.
Reduced Infrastructure Costs – due to reduced manual operational efforts via
automation capabilities and its integration with the centralized storage management
within InfoScale Operations Manager, the impact on operations workloads are
minimized.
Smart Tier
Smart Tier, with its Intelligent Storage Tiering, is Veritas’s implementation of storage
tiering, in which the less frequently accessed data is placed on less expensive, slower
moving disk medium.
Maintain Service Levels – by directing more frequently accessed data to faster
storage medium, increases and maintains high performance levels.
Reduced Infrastructure Costs – maximizing the use of the varying speed and
performance of the storage disk pool extends the life of the storage resource.
Edison: NetApp FlexPod Select w/Veritas InfoScale Enterprise 14
Oracle Disk Manager (ODM)
Being able to interface with enterprise grade databases in a transparent and efficient
manner is one the key features of the Veritas InfoScale Enterprise suite. For example,
Veritas Extension for Oracle Disk Manager enhances file management and disk I/O
throughout and performance for Oracle databases.
Maintain Service Levels – this is accomplished by enabling more efficient use of
system-level capabilities like asynchronous I/O reads and writes, elimination of
superfluous data copying during processing, simultaneous I/O request processing,
and data caching to improve database throughput and performance. This enables
high performance throughput.
Deduplication/Compression/Thin Provisioning
Enterprise-grade storage systems use these three methods to extend the physical
medium, increasing the effective storage available to the system. Deduplication and
compression eliminate redundant data and empty data spaces that occur due to data
segment movement. Thin Provisioning is a hardware feature that enables storage
capacity to be over allocated to applications and physical capacity to be consumed only
as applications write data. In addition, it reclaims the space when the application no
longer needs the disk space.
Reduced Infrastructure Costs – the use of these three methods lowers the amount of
physical storage resource needed, thus decreasing capital expenditures.
Cluster File System (CFS)
Enables multiple servers to share the same storage resources. Other aspects of CFS are
embedded in the following comments.
Ability to React Quickly to Changing Market Conditions – CFS allows data to be
moved non-disruptively to support changing business and/or operational
requirements.
Future Proof IT Investment – CFS allows the user to mix and match heterogeneous
storage resources.
Maintain Service Levels – enables parallel processing and scales performance
linearly up to 64 servers.
Edison: NetApp FlexPod Select w/Veritas InfoScale Enterprise 15
InfoScale Availability
Designed to provide high availability and disaster recovery for databases and
applications, both custom and multi-tier, across physical and virtual environments.
Maintain Service Levels – Through Virtual Business Services (VBS), it recovers the
failed applications, and automatically manages the connection to other computing
resources. Intelligent Monitoring Framework proactively polls the infrastructure to
seek out and report on failed resources.
Veritas InfoScale Operations Manager (VIOM)
Provides centralized, single pane of glass view and management. It also provides
detailed system environment reports on servers, storage, availability, and licenses.
Maintain Service Levels – via single-pane-of-glass and comprehensive operations
reporting system.
Cisco Unified Computing System
The Cisco Unified Computing System (Cisco UCS) is a next-generation solution for
blade and rack server computing. The system integrates a low-latency, lossless 10
Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) unified network fabric with enterprise-class, x86 architecture
servers. The system is an integrated, scalable, multi-chassis platform in which all
resources participate in a unified management domain.
Maintain Service Levels – Cisco UCS accelerates the delivery of new services
simply, reliably, and securely through end-to-end provisioning and migration
support for both virtualized and non-virtualized systems.
Edison: NetApp FlexPod Select w/Veritas InfoScale Enterprise 16
Cisco Nexus 5000
Cisco Nexus 5000 series switches are designed to deliver high-density, top-of-rack layer
2 and layer 3 10GbE with unified ports in compact 1RU and 2RU form factors. The Cisco
Nexus 5000 series includes Cisco Nexus 5500 and 5600 platforms as part of the Cisco
Unified Fabric portfolio.
The Cisco Nexus 5500 switches simplify convergence through broad connectivity
support. This makes them ideal top-of-rack access switches for traditional and
converged deployments.
Key Cisco Nexus 5500 series features include
1) Up to 1,152 ports in a single management domain that uses Cisco Fabric Extender
(FEX) architecture
2) Up to 96 unified ports
Future Proof IT Investment –The Cisco 5500 switches are designed to meet the
scalability demands of today’s data centers.
Edison: NetApp FlexPod Select w/Veritas InfoScale Enterprise 17
Conclusions
The data processing marketplace is significantly changed from just a few years ago,
which is expected to continue over the next 20 years, pressuring technology
manufacturers to properly address the business concerns in the marketplace quickly.
Technology manufacturers are responding to rapidly changing competitive business
pressures by planning for the long term.
This has been accomplished by both NetApp and Veritas; their solutions anticipate
technological changes in the future while being architected to provide the best
performance, now and tomorrow.
The specific features and functions of NetApp FlexPod Select and of Veritas InfoScale
Enterprise converged solution support enhance and supplement each other for a highly
valued, future-proofed storage solution. Organizations that are looking for converged
and/or cloud-based solutions should seriously consider this integrated platform.