VM /ETC

Archive for the ‘storage’ Category

Now that HP Storage Tech Day is a few days removed and all the attendees have had more time to digest what we experienced during our day and a half in Colorado Springs, several blog posts have been published worth reading. The event also picked up some mainstream coverage from sites like The Register, TechVirtuoso.com, ITKnowledgeExchange.com, and Tech Republic.

This post lists links some of the blogs from other HPTechDay attendees that I think make some great points or cover pieces I missed regarding what we saw about storage virtualization at HP. I’m adding some of my own opinions to expand on these ideas from a server virtualization perspective.

I’ve also archived 500 of the #HPTechDay tweets into a .pdf report created by Tweetdoc.org. Check the end of this post for that document complete with working links to photos and urls.

First of all, HP’s Calvin Zito (@HPStorageGuy on Twitter) has a master index of all posts and articles from HPTechDay in his post StorageWorks Tech Day – in their words so far…. Check it out for just about everything written on the event.

HP StorageWorks TechDay & SMB Announcements
Simon Seagrave (@kiwi_si)
Read the rest of this entry »

I’m not a fortune teller and I don’t have a crystal ball, but during my attendance at HP Storage Tech Day I definitely received an impression that the acquisition of Left Hand Networks now plays a key role in future storage offerings at HP. Based on the discussions, presentations, and hands-on-labs I participated in, Left Hand’s storage virtualization model is obviously common strategy among other HP storage products moving forward. I predict a win/win storage scenario is “in the cards” for both HP and it’s customers.

The Left Hand Model
Left Hand Networks established itself with SMB and Mid Market customers by combining storage controllers and disk shelves into one x86 based appliance that serves iSCSI storage to ESX hosts. Linking multiple storage appliances together in a cluster, Left Hand replicates iSCSI volumes across all nodes creating a highly available SAN for virtual hosts. If one node is no longer available the remaining ones seamlessly continue to provide shared storage via the replicated data. Add to this the capability to non disruptively add additional Left Hand appliances, which then enables companies to take advantage of a pay-as-you-grow SAN. Performance improvements and tuning can also be achieved as existing volumes are automatically spread across additional disks provided with each new Left Hand appliance joining the cluster.

The acquisition press release (linked above) provides further insight into HP’s business strategy incorporating Left Hand’s products in it’s portfolio.

“With the addition of LeftHand Networks, HP will add midrange offerings to its suite of iSCSI solutions. Customer needs at the low end of the market will be met with the HP StorageWorks All-in-One Storage System (AiO) and HP StorageWorks Modular Smart Array (MSA) product lines. The high end will be addressed by the HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array (EVA) line. Customers will further benefit since LeftHand Networks’ solutions are already certified to work with a wide range of HP products, including HP ProLiant servers, HP BladeSystem infrastructure, HP ProCurve Networking and HP Insight Control management software.”

Today HP offers P4000 SAN Solutions with Left Hand technologies.

Server and Storage Convergence
HP’s message from the very beginning of Storage Tech Day was that they intended to converge their server and storage infrastructure offerings. This seems to me to be creating products that by design offer similar scale out capabilities as Read the rest of this entry »

Today I am in Colorado Springs, CO attending Storageworks Tech Day also being referred to as HP Storage Tech Day. It is a day and a half storage virtualization event hosted by HP, and I have the privilege of attending along with several other storage and virtualization bloggers.

The line up includes (with twitternames):

• Nina Buik (@NinaBuik)  Connect Community
• Stephen Foskett (@sfoskett)  http://blog.fosketts.net
• Robin Harris  (@StorageMojo) http://storagemojo.com
• Greg Knieriemen (@Knieriemen)  http://www.storagemonkeys.com
• Ray Lucchesi (@RayLucchesi) http://silvertonconsulting.com/blog/
• John Obeto (@JohnObeto) http://absolutevista.com
• Frank Owen (@fowen)  http://techvirtuoso.com
• Devang Panchigar  (@StorageNerve)  http://storagenerve.com
• Nigel Poulton (@nigelpoulton)  http://blogs.rupturedmonkey.com
• Simon Seagrave (@kiwi_Si) http://www.techhead.co.uk

Calvin Zitto (@HPStorageGuy) is one of the leaders of the event, and he explains our agenda in his Around the Storage Block blog post titled Storageworks Tech Day Starting Now.

“The topics we’ll cover include:

• Storage virtualization for enterprise customers – virtualize infrastructure, not just servers
• Shared storage for virtual servers (SMB-focused)
• Unified storage
• Deduplication
• Converged Infrastructure”

Other attendees have already posted about the event. Be sure to check these posts (along with Calvin’s above):

• StorageMojo off to HP’s Storage Tech Day
• HPTechDay 2009 Day 0: Colorado Springs
• HP Storage Tech Day 2009

The official Twitter hashtag is #HPTechDay, and I’ve created a Tweetgrid after the post break if you would like to watch all tweets using the hashtage roll in live. Another option is a 3 columned Tweetgrid I’ve created for the event available here.

I’m looking forward to meeting the other bloggers and learning about HP’s storage virtualization offerings. Look for more posts on the event on VM /ETC throughout the week.

Read the rest of this entry »

vSphere has introduced several new features for storage performance enhancement. Most of the new features build on already accepted vSwitch standards and designs. An important example is the new Round Robin MPIO path policy for VMFS LUNs. However, based on what is the common vSwitch design today, the new iSCSI configuration needed for Round Robin multi-pathing may cause some admins to look twice.

I was motivated to write this post by 2 recently published storage vendor documents that both recommend the same basic iSCSI vSwitch with Round Robin MPIO configuration: create a single iSCSI vSwitch, assign 2 physical NICs, and then create as many as 8 VMKernel Portgroups each with their own ip address. The documents I am referring to are:

• NetApp TR-3749 – NetApp and VMware vSphere Storage Best Practices http://media.netapp.com/documents/tr-3749.pdf
• Dell Equallogic CONFIGURING VMWARE VSPHERE SOFTWARE ISCSI WITH DELL EQUALLOGIC PS SERIES STORAGE – http://www.equallogic.com/resourcecenter/assetview.aspx?id=8453

To give a visual of the recommended configuration (in case you are still doing a double take) here are screen shots of the configured vSwitch from: Read the rest of this entry »

One of the most interesting new vSphere storage features in my opinion is the new virtual disk paravirtualized SCSI (PVSCSI) controller. It has been reported that improved I/O with as much as 18% reduction in ESX 4 host CPU usage can be achieved by switching to PVSCSI. The benefits of PVSCSI performance are twofold:

• Reduced data center power and cooling costs to when you consider the impact of tens of hosts not having to work as hard
• A potential higher VM to host consolidation ratio when more CPU cycles are available

For reference, EMC virtualization guru Chad Sakac provided a post that explains the PVSCSI performance benefits:

http://virtualgeek.typepad.com/virtual_geek/2009/05/update-on-the-io-vsphere-performance-test.html

However, to take advantage of PVSCSI a VM virtual disk configuration might need to change. Because VMware does not support PVSCSI on the operating system boot partition, VMs will need to be configured with separate virtual disks(.vmdk) for the boot drive and the data drive(s). Note that all the posts and articles referenced mention that PVSCSI works on a .vmdk containing the boot partition. It’s just that VMware officially does not support it.

So, the challenge for using PVSCSI then is to migrate services and applications that exist on VMs that contain both the boot partition and the data on a single .vmdk. Although separate boot and data partitions are the defacto standard for physical servers, the convenience of VMs has lead to a single .vmdk configuration in a lot of IT shops.

Incentive to use PVSCSI therefore actually overlaps with a shift in VM deployment strategy and ultimately supports and provides performance reasons to adopt smaller, dedicated .vmdks for boot partitions. This multi .vmdk design change also has other benefits including optimization of deduplication and DR site replication technologies.

Here are some quick thoughts on deploying and migrating VMs to a multiple .vmdk configuration. Read the rest of this entry »

Surprisingly, Iomega can provide VMware certified low cost shared storage. I’ve heard mixed reports about actual performance, but none the less the filers provide cost effective options for VMware labs or small virtual environments.

The image to the right shows recent pricing on Amazon.com.

Fellow GestaltIT.com author and Microsoft Storage MVP Stephen Foskett has a great post with positive things to say on the Iomega models.

Iomega Grows Up and Moves Out of the House – Stephen Foskett

“…it was a surprise to find that the ix4-200r is certified compatible with ESX using both iSCSI and NFS right out of the gate. This is the only inexpensive storage system to wear a VMware badge, and this alone will likely make it a fixture in small offices and VMware labs. The desktop StorCenter ix4-100 and StorCenter ix2 are already widely used in these environments even without iSCSI, after all. The ix4-200r provides a complete SAN-in-a-box, supporting multiple NAS and iSCSI shares with dynamic allocation of the internal RAID-5 protected storage.”

Here is a screen shot from the on line VMware HCL showing the certified Iomega models.

A lot of companies are using NFS as the preferred protocol to shared storage for VMware Virtual Infrastructure. In my personal experience, The administrative options and convenience of NFS is unmatched, and the virtual machine (VM) performance is surprising.

For example, I recently helped migrate a company from ESX 2.X to new a installation of VI 3.5. Since the client did not have any additional space available on their fiber channel (FC) SAN for a new VMFS3 volume, we temporarily used a Windows Server 2003 R2 NFS share to host 2 dozen VMs until the existing FC volumes could be rebuilt and reconnected. The customer actually ran their production environment for 2 weeks in this configuration and was experiencing better performance. Newer hardware for the ESX hosts also contributed to this increase, but the point is that the NFS storage was not a bottleneck.

For those that are considering NFS, I was recently forwarded a list of links that provide sound arguments and testimonials on the unique advantages of using NFS with VMware. Although the published date of some of the posts that are referenced might be a bit dated, the content is still valid. Here is the list with quotes from some of the posts, but be sure to read the all in full for more information. Read the rest of this entry »