Delivering SDS simplicity and extreme performance

Real-World SDS implementation of getting most out of limited hardware

Murat KarsliogluDirector Storage Systems – Nexenta Systems

Santa Clara, CA USAOctober 2013 1

Agenda

• Key Takeaways• Introduction • Performance Results • Conclusion• Q & A

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Key Takeaways

• VDI as a case study of SDS delivering multi-tenancy and on-demand provisioning

• Remove storage from the VDI admin's plate• Get higher VDI density and better

performance out of the limited hardware resources

Santa Clara, CA USAOctober 2013 3

Consolidate. Simplify. Virtualize. Monitor

• We picked an affordable branch office server:• Limited resources, NOT a great fit for VDI

• Intel® Xeon® E5-2400 series 6 core processor • 48 Gigabytes of RAM • Three 2.5” size HDDs (No SSDs)

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Challanges

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HIGH STORAGE COST

VDI (storage) PERFORMANCE IS BAD

LIMITED RESOURCES

TOO COMPLEX

BAD END USER EXPERIENCE

FAILED POCs

The storage guessing game

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Hypervisor

Management Server

Connection Broker

Connection Agent

Connection Agent

Connection Agent

Connection Agent

Connection Agent

Physical Servers Shared Storage

How does NV4V Remove the storage guessing game?

In depth integration between NexentaVSA and VMware Horizon View, vSphere, vCenter

New features to optimize storage A user friendly application to simplify and

automate NAS VAAI Integration Real-world concrete SDS implementation

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Integrate VDI and Storage

NV4V as software-defined-storage

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Deploy Measure Configure

Step function increments to meet performance requirements (Bandwidth, latency and IOPS)

NV4V High-level Architecture

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NV4V VDI Deployment Overview

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NexentaStor VSA

2. NV4V->vCenter: Provision VSA. (N/A with external NexentaStor)

ESXi Cluster

ESXi Host (VMKernel)

ESXi Host (VMKernel)

NFS netowrk (ESXi port group)

1. NV4V->vCenter: Provision NFS network (N/A with external NexentaStor)

View Connection Server

Nexenta Agent

NV4V Management Server

VMware SDK

vCenter Server

(NV4VCommunicateswith DesktopNexenta Agents For Benchmarkand Calibration)

VMDKs on ESXi

host disks

3. NV4V->vCenter: Create and attach VMDK datastores, Power on VSA. (N/A with external NexentaStor)

NFS Shares

zpools

4. NV4V->VSA: Create zpools and NFS shares. (Opt. with external NexentaStor)

VDI DesktopsVDI DesktopsVDI Desktops

NxAgent

NxAgent

NxAgent

VMDK’s for VDI VMs

5. NV4V->View: Deploy desktop pool.

NV4V VDI Deployment Overview

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Process Point of View

1 Create VMDK(s) for VSA syspool (resilver if mirrored)

ClusterT&E

2 Create resource pool for VSA

ClusterT&E

3 Clone NexentaStor VSA template

ClusterT&E

4 Reconfigure VSA - Set resources, reservations and limits

Event

5 Power on VSA ClusterT&E

6 Confirm VMware Tools on VSA

ActivityEvent

7 Assign DHCP address to VSA Network interface

VSA

8 Verify DHCP and Reverse mapping

Event

Process Point of View

9 Create VMDK datastores for data

ClusterT&E

10 Attach datastores to the VSA, one by one

ClusterT&E

11 Create Port Group or use existing one for NFS network

ClusterT&E

12 Configure port group - set MTU to 9000 for NFS network

ClusterT&E

13 Configure ZFS tunables and reboot

ZpoolHistory, Event

14 Linked-clones only: Create and configure zpools , by default two zpools, Replica and Desktop; Only one for all SSD desktop pool

ZpoolHistory, Event

15 Share NFS filesystems ZpoolHistory, Event

16 Mount NFS datastores to all hypervisors

ClusterT&E

Process Point of View

17 Start deployment through VMware View

ActivityEvent

18 Linked-clones only: Copy Replica image from snapshot to NFS Replica filesystem

ClusterT&E

19 Linked-clones only: Create VMs, store linked clones in NFS Desktop fielsystem

ClusterT&E

20 Full-clones only: Clone desktop image from template to NFS Desktop filesystem once for every desktop

ActivityClusterT&E

21 Customize desktops ActivityEvent, VDI

22 Finish when target number of desktop pool size is hit

ClusterT&E

23 Entitlements ActivityEvent

NV4V VDI Deployment Overview

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VSA VMDK’s and NFS Shares

Improving performance with NV4V

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Nexenta NV4V + Server + VMware View =

Perfect Branch Office Solution11x Better End-user Experience

• Tested with IoMeter (75%Write)3x Higher Density

• Tested with LoginVSI

With NV4V Local Disk

Medium Workload 55 Desktops* 18 Desktops

Heavy Workload 37 Desktops 12 Desktops

• Simplified deployment• On-demand storage• Monitoring

• Backup/Restore• NAS VAAI• Software RAID

• Inline Compression• Caching on memory (ARC)• Other ZFS Benefits

With NV4V55 Desktops

With NV4V18 Desktops

Local Disk18 Desktops**

IoMeter Total IOPS 2343 IOPS 2160 IOPS 198 IOPSIoMeter IOPS/Desktop 42.6 IOPS 120 IOPS 11 IOPS

*VSImax not reached, 55 desktop is due to memory limitation on Cisco UCS E Series platform** VSImax 18 with local disk

Improving performance with NV4V

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Speed up full clone deployment First-time in world’s history NV4V utilizes NAS VAAI to provide ZFS to CoW-clone files to deploy persistent VM images much faster, while at the same time saving on the storage capacity

5.4x faster to deploy full clones• Comparison is for 24 full clone desktops

w/ NAS VAAI w/o NAS VAAI

Pure cloning time 2min 36sec 13min 36sec

Clone&custimization 4min 38sec 18min 10sec

Total deployment 2hours 38min 7hours 28min

8.5x saving on storage capacity• NAS VAAI utilizes enhanced Deduplication*

w/ NAS VAAI w/o NAS VAAI

Used Storage 48 GB 408 GB

Dedup ratio x22.82 x1

Conclusion

Desktop Pool running on local HDD take longer to login and start apps, causing increased CPU utilization,

Single drive cannot handle more than 15 desktops efficiently. High random disk I/O causes CPU spikes resulting in dropped or frozen sessions, Storage is the most important component of virtualization, can also reduce CPU utilization,

NV4V Benefit #1: SDS removes the storage guessing from admin’s plate NV4V Benefit #2: Inline compression reduces writes up to 4x NV4V Benefit #3: Striping two drives doubles disk performance NV4V Benefit #4: NAS VAAI reduces full-clone deployment time and saves disk

capacity NV4V Benefit #5: Reduced disk I/O and increased storage performance reduces

CPU utilization NV4V Benefit #6: NV4V provides faster storage than world’s fastest SSDs

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LogiNVSI Medium Workload

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55 linked-clone Desktops starting medium workload on local disk

Before NV4V

CPU Utilization10 Desktops – 66%15 Desktops – 81%18 Desktops – 88%20 Desktops – 90%25 Desktops – 100%>25 - Sessions dropped and desktops became unresponsive

LogiNVSI Medium Workload

Santa Clara, CA USAOctober 2013 17

55 linked-clone Desktops starting medium workload on NV4V

With NV4V

CPU Utilization10 Desktops – 45%25 Desktops – 75%30 Desktops – 78%35 Desktops – 80%40 Desktops – 81%45 Desktops – 82%50 Desktops – 84%55 Desktops – 88%

LogiNVSI Medium Workload

Santa Clara, CA USAOctober 2013 18

55 linked-clone Desktops running medium workload on NV4V

With NV4V

Recommended VSImax:VSImax not reached*Baseline = 220955 Desktops max88% CPU utilizationDesktops are highly responsive

LogiNVSI Heavy Workload

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50 linked-clone Desktops starting heavy workload on NV4V

With NV4V

CPU Utilization10 Desktops – 47%25 Desktops – 76%30 Desktops – 79%37 Desktops – 85%40 Desktops – 90%45 Desktops – 92%50 Desktops – 94%

LogiNVSI Heavy Workload

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CPU utilization during 1 hour IOMETER test (/w NAS VAAI with full-clones)

Threshold: < 90%

Average utilization running IOmeter is ~84%

DISK BENCHMARK

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SDS solution turned slow HDDs into fastest SSD speed