case study 10,000% vmware application performance improvement
TRANSCRIPT
" AccelStor's All-Flash Array provides excellent performance. Its
high integration with VMware has significantly boosted the
deploy ment speed of beta virtual machines designated for the
university's academic information system by more than 10,000%,
and completely solved the ineffectiveness of the previous storage
system in the academic information system, allowing the system
to maintain a stable state with sufficient resources. "
Dr. Zhang Juntian, Technical Assistant in the Division of Academic
Information System at Tsing Hua University
Products Introduced
NeoSapphire™ P710 All-Flash Array
● 10,000% improvement in the development testing efficiency in VMware virtualization environment.
● 1,200% improvement in the backup and restoring speed for virtual machine of VMware vSphere Replication.
● Highly integrated with the VMware management interface to simplify management complexity.
● Speed up the database conversion time.
● Only 2U rack height is required, saving space and energy.
Accomplishments
Tsing Hua University
Case Study
Customer introduction
National Tsing Hua University
As a research-based university in Taiwan, National Tsing Hua University
(NTHU) is well-known worldwide and ranked No.161 in the QS World
University Ranking1. The Division of Academic Information System is set up
under the Computer and Communication Center. In addition to the
maintenance and operation of the campus network system, this division also
develops and tests various academic information systems, including among
others, those of course selection, admission, faculty, alumni and accounting.
Challenge
In connection with the development and operation of the NTHU Academic
Information System, the Division of Academic Information System It mainly
works under the virtualization architecture of VMware by means of two
traditional 15K SAS drives as the master storage devices, so as to provide
relevant services, including those of Sybase Database server, SMTP server,
and Web server. However, because of the increments in the amount of tasks
and the number of campus users, as of 2017, the academic information
system has been used by 16,664 students. If such a large number of students
logged on at the same time, the previous 15K SAS drives would be
overloaded, leading the respective stages of development, testing and
operation to face the following challenges:
1. Overly long cloning time of virtual machines seriously affected the
development and testing efficiency.
Regardless of the beta test of software functions that are still developing, or
the bug reproductions for software that have been launched, NTHU's
Division of Academic Information System has deployed the same and
independent testing environment through the Clone capability of VMware's
virtual machines. However, it took a few hours or even
longer for the previous storage devices to clone a virtual
machine. This problem has become a bottleneck for the
operation efficiency.
2. Virtual machine backup and restoring time took too
long.
The speeds of backing up and restoring the virtual
machine are related to RPO and RTO calculations.
Currently, virtual machine backup is performed by
VMware vSphere Replication. However, due to the low
performance of the current storage system, it is quite
time-consuming either to back up or to restore the virtual
machine. The virtual machine restoration took up to four
hours to complete.
3. System became ineffective when there is a sudden
overload of traffic from course selection result
queries.
The course selection information system is an
information service frequently used by students on
campus. There are more than 16,000 students in Tsing
Hua University. Its system faces heavy query traffic every
time the results of the course selection are released. The
previous storage device could hardly meet such a high
demand. When students were accessing the query
system, they would end up waiting for a long time, or the
system return an error. These problems gave rise to
student complaints.
4. Time for report output and query is lengthy.
Divisions and offices in the university often need to query
and analyze the relevant data of the Sybase database
through the academic information system according to
different criteria, and then output a report. The perfor-
mance of the previous storage device is obviously unable
to cope with the simultaneous and large amount of data
reading, resulting in a lengthy time to create reports.
In addition to actively seeking more efficient storage
equipment solutions, NTHU's Division of Academic
Information System also hopes to meet the following
requirements:
1. It is necessary to support VMware vSphere® Web
Client Plug-In in order to directly configure storage
devices on VMware's operational interface.
2. A high-speed database conversion is important. In the
future, NTHU will convert the Sybase database to the
PostgreSQL database to further integrate the data of
each division and office to realize the enterprise resource
planning (ERP) data storage and data mining technology.
3. Excellent price-performance ratio.
4. High-density storage device saves space and power.
Solution
In order to solve the problems above and meet the
demand for new storage solutions, NTHU's Division of
Academic Information System has carefully evaluated the
performance, price-performance ratios and VMware
integration of multiple storage solutions from various
vendors, and finally chose the AccelStor NeoSapphire™
P710 All-Flash Array solution, meeting all their criteria
and making a huge leap in the performance of software
development, testing and operations. The AccelStor
NeoSapphire™ P710 All-Flash Array comes with the
built-in FlexiRemap® algorithm for flash memory,
delivering up to 700,000 IOPS at 4KB random write and
integrates VMware vSphere® Storage APIs Array
Integration (VAAI) in the block-level storage system, so as
to fully utilize the virtual machine's operational
performance. In addition, it supports the VMware
vSphere® Web Client Plug-In, enabling the Division of
Academic Information System to directly configure the
NeoSapphire™ P710 through VMware's operational
interface. NTHU's Division of Academic Information
System currently sets up seven VMware ESXi servers and
connects to the NeoSapphire™ P710 via a fiber switch in
order to transfer the Sybase database virtual server,
SMTP virtual server, and Web virtual server, and all
related academic information systems to the high-speed
storage space provided by the NeoSapphire™ P710.
The development and testing environment also works
well under the new storage architecture.
Benefits of introduction
Dr. Zhang Juntian from NTHU's Division of Academic
Information System said: "The AccelStor's All-Flash Array
offers the best price, excellent performance and high
integration with the VMware virtualization architecture,
greatly improving the development, testing and
operational efficiency of the academic information
systems. We are more confident to further introduce
PostgreSQL to integrate campus information and bring
enterprise resource planning (ERP) concepts to the
campus to provide the most complete and instant
information services for the entire school."
After the introduction of NeoSapphire™ P710 by NTHU's
Division of Academic Information System. The observed
benefits are as follows:
1. Increased efficiency of the virtualization platform:
Extremely fast storage performance and support for
VMware vSphere® Storage APIs Array Integration (VAAI)
in a block-level storage system can instantly reduce the
cloning time of VMware virtual machines by more
10,000%, taking it from hours, down to one minute,
greatly improving development testing efficiency.
2. Greatly improved backup and restoring speed for
virtual machines from VMware vSphere Replication
by 1,200%. Time for completing the restoring operation
of virtual machine is reduced from four hours to only 20
minutes.
3. Simplify management: Simplify management
complexity by directly administering the AccelStor's
NeoSapphire™ P710 via VMware vSphere® Web Client.
4. Solving the problem of instantaneous traffic
overload: Completely solve the storage system overload
that arises when a large amount of students access the
query system after the release of course selection results
by improving the random read performance
substantially.
5. Improve the report output speed: Significantly
improve the report output rate for each division and
office with significant read performance enhancements.
6. Accelerate database conversion: Speed up the
conversion from Sybase database to PostgreSQL.
7. Increase space utilization of the data floor: Only 2U
rack space is needed, which greatly reduces space.
Conclusion
As the concept of DevOps becomes more and more
emphasized, how to make software development and
operation more efficient has become an important issue.
NTHU's Division of Academic Information System uses
VMware's virtualization technology to develop, test and
operate academic information systems. However, the
previous storage solution was not capable of rapid virtual
machine cloning required for development testing, and
bulk storage required for academic information systems
such as the course selection and report query by each
division and office. Therefore, the AccelStor's
NeoSapphire™ P710 All-Flash Array with up to 700,000
IOPS offering high-performance and high integration with
VMware was introduced and finally succeeded in creating
a highly smooth process of system development, testing
and operating with no more storage bottlenecks for the
entire academic information system. Tsing Hua University
has since become more confident in further integrating
campus information, introducing enterprise resource
planning (ERP) concepts into the campus, and providing
the most complete and instant information services for
the entire school.
10,000% VMware application performance improvement: Tsing Hua University adopts AccelStor's NeoSapphire™ All Flash Array to comprehensively power up the efficiency of academic information system development and operation.
NeoSapphire H710
NTHU Academic Information Systems
Sybase Server
Web Server Development & Test Environment
Mail Server
Fibre Channel Switch
VAAI (VMware vSphere Storage APIs Array Integration)VMware vSphere® Web Client Plug-in
VMware ESXi
Resource Pool
VM VM VMVM VM VMVM VM VM VMVMVM VM VMVM
All-Flash Storage Array
vCenter Server
NeoSapphire™
Customer introduction
National Tsing Hua University
As a research-based university in Taiwan, National Tsing Hua University
(NTHU) is well-known worldwide and ranked No.161 in the QS World
University Ranking1. The Division of Academic Information System is set up
under the Computer and Communication Center. In addition to the
maintenance and operation of the campus network system, this division also
develops and tests various academic information systems, including among
others, those of course selection, admission, faculty, alumni and accounting.
Challenge
In connection with the development and operation of the NTHU Academic
Information System, the Division of Academic Information System It mainly
works under the virtualization architecture of VMware by means of two
traditional 15K SAS drives as the master storage devices, so as to provide
relevant services, including those of Sybase Database server, SMTP server,
and Web server. However, because of the increments in the amount of tasks
and the number of campus users, as of 2017, the academic information
system has been used by 16,664 students. If such a large number of students
logged on at the same time, the previous 15K SAS drives would be
overloaded, leading the respective stages of development, testing and
operation to face the following challenges:
1. Overly long cloning time of virtual machines seriously affected the
development and testing efficiency.
Regardless of the beta test of software functions that are still developing, or
the bug reproductions for software that have been launched, NTHU's
Division of Academic Information System has deployed the same and
independent testing environment through the Clone capability of VMware's
virtual machines. However, it took a few hours or even
longer for the previous storage devices to clone a virtual
machine. This problem has become a bottleneck for the
operation efficiency.
2. Virtual machine backup and restoring time took too
long.
The speeds of backing up and restoring the virtual
machine are related to RPO and RTO calculations.
Currently, virtual machine backup is performed by
VMware vSphere Replication. However, due to the low
performance of the current storage system, it is quite
time-consuming either to back up or to restore the virtual
machine. The virtual machine restoration took up to four
hours to complete.
3. System became ineffective when there is a sudden
overload of traffic from course selection result
queries.
The course selection information system is an
information service frequently used by students on
campus. There are more than 16,000 students in Tsing
Hua University. Its system faces heavy query traffic every
time the results of the course selection are released. The
previous storage device could hardly meet such a high
demand. When students were accessing the query
system, they would end up waiting for a long time, or the
system return an error. These problems gave rise to
student complaints.
4. Time for report output and query is lengthy.
Divisions and offices in the university often need to query
and analyze the relevant data of the Sybase database
through the academic information system according to
different criteria, and then output a report. The perfor-
mance of the previous storage device is obviously unable
to cope with the simultaneous and large amount of data
reading, resulting in a lengthy time to create reports.
In addition to actively seeking more efficient storage
equipment solutions, NTHU's Division of Academic
Information System also hopes to meet the following
requirements:
1. It is necessary to support VMware vSphere® Web
Client Plug-In in order to directly configure storage
devices on VMware's operational interface.
2. A high-speed database conversion is important. In the
future, NTHU will convert the Sybase database to the
PostgreSQL database to further integrate the data of
each division and office to realize the enterprise resource
planning (ERP) data storage and data mining technology.
3. Excellent price-performance ratio.
4. High-density storage device saves space and power.
Solution
In order to solve the problems above and meet the
demand for new storage solutions, NTHU's Division of
Academic Information System has carefully evaluated the
performance, price-performance ratios and VMware
integration of multiple storage solutions from various
vendors, and finally chose the AccelStor NeoSapphire™
P710 All-Flash Array solution, meeting all their criteria
and making a huge leap in the performance of software
development, testing and operations. The AccelStor
NeoSapphire™ P710 All-Flash Array comes with the
built-in FlexiRemap® algorithm for flash memory,
delivering up to 700,000 IOPS at 4KB random write and
integrates VMware vSphere® Storage APIs Array
Integration (VAAI) in the block-level storage system, so as
to fully utilize the virtual machine's operational
performance. In addition, it supports the VMware
vSphere® Web Client Plug-In, enabling the Division of
Academic Information System to directly configure the
NeoSapphire™ P710 through VMware's operational
interface. NTHU's Division of Academic Information
System currently sets up seven VMware ESXi servers and
connects to the NeoSapphire™ P710 via a fiber switch in
order to transfer the Sybase database virtual server,
SMTP virtual server, and Web virtual server, and all
related academic information systems to the high-speed
storage space provided by the NeoSapphire™ P710.
The development and testing environment also works
well under the new storage architecture.
Benefits of introduction
Dr. Zhang Juntian from NTHU's Division of Academic
Information System said: "The AccelStor's All-Flash Array
offers the best price, excellent performance and high
integration with the VMware virtualization architecture,
greatly improving the development, testing and
operational efficiency of the academic information
systems. We are more confident to further introduce
PostgreSQL to integrate campus information and bring
enterprise resource planning (ERP) concepts to the
campus to provide the most complete and instant
information services for the entire school."
After the introduction of NeoSapphire™ P710 by NTHU's
Division of Academic Information System. The observed
benefits are as follows:
1. Increased efficiency of the virtualization platform:
Extremely fast storage performance and support for
VMware vSphere® Storage APIs Array Integration (VAAI)
in a block-level storage system can instantly reduce the
cloning time of VMware virtual machines by more
10,000%, taking it from hours, down to one minute,
greatly improving development testing efficiency.
2. Greatly improved backup and restoring speed for
virtual machines from VMware vSphere Replication
by 1,200%. Time for completing the restoring operation
of virtual machine is reduced from four hours to only 20
minutes.
3. Simplify management: Simplify management
complexity by directly administering the AccelStor's
NeoSapphire™ P710 via VMware vSphere® Web Client.
4. Solving the problem of instantaneous traffic
overload: Completely solve the storage system overload
that arises when a large amount of students access the
query system after the release of course selection results
by improving the random read performance
substantially.
5. Improve the report output speed: Significantly
improve the report output rate for each division and
office with significant read performance enhancements.
6. Accelerate database conversion: Speed up the
conversion from Sybase database to PostgreSQL.
7. Increase space utilization of the data floor: Only 2U
rack space is needed, which greatly reduces space.
Conclusion
As the concept of DevOps becomes more and more
emphasized, how to make software development and
operation more efficient has become an important issue.
NTHU's Division of Academic Information System uses
VMware's virtualization technology to develop, test and
operate academic information systems. However, the
previous storage solution was not capable of rapid virtual
machine cloning required for development testing, and
bulk storage required for academic information systems
such as the course selection and report query by each
division and office. Therefore, the AccelStor's
NeoSapphire™ P710 All-Flash Array with up to 700,000
IOPS offering high-performance and high integration with
VMware was introduced and finally succeeded in creating
a highly smooth process of system development, testing
and operating with no more storage bottlenecks for the
entire academic information system. Tsing Hua University
has since become more confident in further integrating
campus information, introducing enterprise resource
planning (ERP) concepts into the campus, and providing
the most complete and instant information services for
the entire school.
NeoSapphire™NeoSapphire™
Customer introduction
National Tsing Hua University
As a research-based university in Taiwan, National Tsing Hua University
(NTHU) is well-known worldwide and ranked No.161 in the QS World
University Ranking1. The Division of Academic Information System is set up
under the Computer and Communication Center. In addition to the
maintenance and operation of the campus network system, this division also
develops and tests various academic information systems, including among
others, those of course selection, admission, faculty, alumni and accounting.
Challenge
In connection with the development and operation of the NTHU Academic
Information System, the Division of Academic Information System It mainly
works under the virtualization architecture of VMware by means of two
traditional 15K SAS drives as the master storage devices, so as to provide
relevant services, including those of Sybase Database server, SMTP server,
and Web server. However, because of the increments in the amount of tasks
and the number of campus users, as of 2017, the academic information
system has been used by 16,664 students. If such a large number of students
logged on at the same time, the previous 15K SAS drives would be
overloaded, leading the respective stages of development, testing and
operation to face the following challenges:
1. Overly long cloning time of virtual machines seriously affected the
development and testing efficiency.
Regardless of the beta test of software functions that are still developing, or
the bug reproductions for software that have been launched, NTHU's
Division of Academic Information System has deployed the same and
independent testing environment through the Clone capability of VMware's
virtual machines. However, it took a few hours or even
longer for the previous storage devices to clone a virtual
machine. This problem has become a bottleneck for the
operation efficiency.
2. Virtual machine backup and restoring time took too
long.
The speeds of backing up and restoring the virtual
machine are related to RPO and RTO calculations.
Currently, virtual machine backup is performed by
VMware vSphere Replication. However, due to the low
performance of the current storage system, it is quite
time-consuming either to back up or to restore the virtual
machine. The virtual machine restoration took up to four
hours to complete.
3. System became ineffective when there is a sudden
overload of traffic from course selection result
queries.
The course selection information system is an
information service frequently used by students on
campus. There are more than 16,000 students in Tsing
Hua University. Its system faces heavy query traffic every
time the results of the course selection are released. The
previous storage device could hardly meet such a high
demand. When students were accessing the query
system, they would end up waiting for a long time, or the
system return an error. These problems gave rise to
student complaints.
4. Time for report output and query is lengthy.
Divisions and offices in the university often need to query
and analyze the relevant data of the Sybase database
through the academic information system according to
different criteria, and then output a report. The perfor-
mance of the previous storage device is obviously unable
to cope with the simultaneous and large amount of data
reading, resulting in a lengthy time to create reports.
In addition to actively seeking more efficient storage
equipment solutions, NTHU's Division of Academic
Information System also hopes to meet the following
requirements:
1. It is necessary to support VMware vSphere® Web
Client Plug-In in order to directly configure storage
devices on VMware's operational interface.
2. A high-speed database conversion is important. In the
future, NTHU will convert the Sybase database to the
PostgreSQL database to further integrate the data of
each division and office to realize the enterprise resource
planning (ERP) data storage and data mining technology.
3. Excellent price-performance ratio.
4. High-density storage device saves space and power.
Solution
In order to solve the problems above and meet the
demand for new storage solutions, NTHU's Division of
Academic Information System has carefully evaluated the
performance, price-performance ratios and VMware
integration of multiple storage solutions from various
vendors, and finally chose the AccelStor NeoSapphire™
P710 All-Flash Array solution, meeting all their criteria
and making a huge leap in the performance of software
development, testing and operations. The AccelStor
NeoSapphire™ P710 All-Flash Array comes with the
built-in FlexiRemap® algorithm for flash memory,
delivering up to 700,000 IOPS at 4KB random write and
integrates VMware vSphere® Storage APIs Array
Integration (VAAI) in the block-level storage system, so as
to fully utilize the virtual machine's operational
performance. In addition, it supports the VMware
vSphere® Web Client Plug-In, enabling the Division of
Academic Information System to directly configure the
NeoSapphire™ P710 through VMware's operational
interface. NTHU's Division of Academic Information
System currently sets up seven VMware ESXi servers and
connects to the NeoSapphire™ P710 via a fiber switch in
order to transfer the Sybase database virtual server,
SMTP virtual server, and Web virtual server, and all
related academic information systems to the high-speed
storage space provided by the NeoSapphire™ P710.
The development and testing environment also works
well under the new storage architecture.
Benefits of introduction
Dr. Zhang Juntian from NTHU's Division of Academic
Information System said: "The AccelStor's All-Flash Array
offers the best price, excellent performance and high
integration with the VMware virtualization architecture,
greatly improving the development, testing and
operational efficiency of the academic information
systems. We are more confident to further introduce
PostgreSQL to integrate campus information and bring
enterprise resource planning (ERP) concepts to the
campus to provide the most complete and instant
information services for the entire school."
After the introduction of NeoSapphire™ P710 by NTHU's
Division of Academic Information System. The observed
benefits are as follows:
1. Increased efficiency of the virtualization platform:
Extremely fast storage performance and support for
VMware vSphere® Storage APIs Array Integration (VAAI)
in a block-level storage system can instantly reduce the
cloning time of VMware virtual machines by more
10,000%, taking it from hours, down to one minute,
greatly improving development testing efficiency.
2. Greatly improved backup and restoring speed for
virtual machines from VMware vSphere Replication
by 1,200%. Time for completing the restoring operation
of virtual machine is reduced from four hours to only 20
minutes.
3. Simplify management: Simplify management
complexity by directly administering the AccelStor's
NeoSapphire™ P710 via VMware vSphere® Web Client.
4. Solving the problem of instantaneous traffic
overload: Completely solve the storage system overload
that arises when a large amount of students access the
query system after the release of course selection results
by improving the random read performance
substantially.
5. Improve the report output speed: Significantly
improve the report output rate for each division and
office with significant read performance enhancements.
6. Accelerate database conversion: Speed up the
conversion from Sybase database to PostgreSQL.
7. Increase space utilization of the data floor: Only 2U
rack space is needed, which greatly reduces space.
Conclusion
As the concept of DevOps becomes more and more
emphasized, how to make software development and
operation more efficient has become an important issue.
NTHU's Division of Academic Information System uses
VMware's virtualization technology to develop, test and
operate academic information systems. However, the
previous storage solution was not capable of rapid virtual
machine cloning required for development testing, and
bulk storage required for academic information systems
such as the course selection and report query by each
division and office. Therefore, the AccelStor's
NeoSapphire™ P710 All-Flash Array with up to 700,000
IOPS offering high-performance and high integration with
VMware was introduced and finally succeeded in creating
a highly smooth process of system development, testing
and operating with no more storage bottlenecks for the
entire academic information system. Tsing Hua University
has since become more confident in further integrating
campus information, introducing enterprise resource
planning (ERP) concepts into the campus, and providing
the most complete and instant information services for
the entire school.
www.accelstor.com [email protected], FlexiRemap®, and NeoSapphire™ are trademarks or registered trademarks of AccelStor Ltd.
in the United States of America and/or other countries. Copyright © 2015-2018 AccelStor Ltd. All rights reserved. VP20190529