Emulex 16Gb Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapter (HBA) and EMC XtremSF with XtremSW Cache—Delivering Application Performance with Protection

16Gb FC HBA and EMC XtremSF with XtremSW Cache

W H I T E P A P E R

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2 Emulex White Paper Emulex 16Gb Fibre Channel HBA and EMC XtremSF with XtremSW Cache

Introduction Networking traffic volume is exploding, driven by the proliferation of devices, online transaction growth and the delivery of rich-media user experiences. Concurrently, multicore processor platforms and 10Gb Ethernet (10GbE) are enabling pervasive implementation of server virtualization, driving both bandwidth growth and increasing the placement of multiple, enterprise-class application workloads in virtual machines (VMs).

Combined, these two trends are catalyzing growth in storage capacity and placing extraordinary demands on storage performance, both in terms of I/O operations per second (IOPS) and bandwidth. The pervasive IT challenge is delivering on all aspects of application performance by optimally balancing the compute, networking, and storage elements of data center performance.

Storage performance parameters vary in their impact on applications performance as seen in figure 1 below.

This paper focuses on accelerating application performance by increasing storage throughput and reducing storage latency. The recently announced partnership between Emulex and EMC is predicated on the immediate availability of a joint storage solution with the ability to enhance performance and increase the return on investment (ROI) from server capital expenditures (CAPEX).

Figure 1. Different application storage performance requirements.

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Business Impact of Application Performance Aberdeen Group reported that a one second delay in web site response reduces customer conversions by 7 percent, lowers page views by 11 percent, and decreases customer satisfaction by 16 percent.1 Similar statistical evidence, shown in Figure 2, underscores the business impact of delivering high levels of application performance.

Figure 2. Performance problems can impact a company’s bottom line.

Similarly, performance of other applications such as High Frequency Trading (HFT) and Cellular Usage Monitoring has a direct impact on customer satisfaction, and ultimately, business profitability.

This nexus between storage I/O performance, application performance and business outcome makes the optimization of storage a strategic imperative for IT management.

Storage I/O Performance Challenges and Flash Solutions Server CPU performance, over the past decade and into the foreseeable future, continues to scale exponentially. During the same period, the throughput and bandwidth performance of enterprise-class 15K RPM SAS drives has lagged, remaining essentially flat.2

Figure 3 highlights the relative performance characteristics of different storage technologies. Incorporating flash solid state disks (SSDs) in storage environments improves the throughput and latency performance of the overall solution.

Figure 3. Mapping storage technologies to latency and IOPS performance.

1 Performance of Web Applications – Customers are Won or Lost in One Second, Aberdeen Group, November 20082 FLASH 1st: The Storage Strategy for the Next Decade - Denis Vilfort, EMC

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4 Emulex White Paper Emulex 16Gb Fibre Channel HBA and EMC XtremSF with XtremSW Cache

Not surprisingly, as seen in figure 4, alleviating storage I/O bottlenecks was cited by 81% of respondents as a key motivator for deploying solid state storage.3

EMC® XtremSF™ with XtremSW Cache™ EMC XtremSW Cache is an intelligent caching software that leverages XtremSF, EMC’s server-based PCIe flash technology, to reduce latency and accelerate throughput for dramatic application performance improvement. XtremSF with XtremSW Cache accelerates read operations of frequently accessed application data – delivering latency as low as 30 microseconds and as much as 715,000 IOPS.

In addition to delivering blazing storage I/O performance, the XtremSF with XtremSW Cache solution avoids the “stranded storage” problem of other in-server flash solutions which merely serve as Direct Attached Storage (DAS) without the benefits of scalability and shareability.

Figure 4. I/O bottlenecks and enterprise flash deployment motivations.

3 Source: ESG Research Report, Solid-State Storage Market Trends, November 2011

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5 Emulex White Paper Emulex 16Gb Fibre Channel HBA and EMC XtremSF with XtremSW Cache

Extends SAN connectivity Instead, as shown in figure 5, when combined with Emulex’s LPe1600xB-E 16Gb Fibre Channel (16GFC) HBAs, XtremSF with XtremSW Cache transparently and seamlessly extend robust, enterprise-class Fibre Channel (FC) Storage Area Network (SAN) connectivity all the way to the server to deliver a shared networked storage solution.

Next, we examine the benefits of the high-performance XtremSF with XtremSW Cache solution coupled with Emulex’s high-performance and market-leading 16GFC HBA.

XtremSF with XtremSW Cache and Emulex 16GFC HBA Equals Accelerated Shared Storage A typical architectural topology of this combined EMC/Emulex solution is shown in Figure 6. A storage array such as an EMC VMAX® or VNX® is connected to the server with Emulex LPe1600xB-E 16GFC HBAs. This architecture delivers both the performance of a write-through caching solution and the protection of enterprise-class FC SAN shared storage.

Figure 5. EMC and Emulex solution architecture.

Figure 6. XtremSF with XtremSW Cache and 16GFC solutions topology.

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6 Emulex White Paper Emulex 16Gb Fibre Channel HBA and EMC XtremSF with XtremSW Cache

Performance Accelerated read operations—With write-through caching, all writes are sent through to the EMC SAN Storage Array (traditional spinning disk) and simultaneously written to the XtremSF server-based PCIe flash cache. Whenever a subsequent read operation needs that same data, accessing it from the high-speed cache accelerates read performance.

Increased performance is realized from placing the required data closest to the processor, reducing latency and maximizing throughput by minimizing networked data access to the array.

Faster write operations—Completing the read operation from the XtremSF flash cache also reduces the I/O load on the array, freeing it to focus on write operations. This in turn speeds up writes. Using Emulex’s LPe1600xB-E, the world’s fastest 16GFC HBA, ensures low-latency, high-throughput write operations, speeding up overall write performance.

Protection Writes to the array have to be acknowledged to ensure their safety and persistence. Since XtremSW Cache does not cache any writes in the XtremSF flash cache before committing them to the storage array, no application data is ever at risk.

Enterprise-class data protection is also guaranteed by the advanced data services that EMC’s trusted networked storage such as VMAX and VNX provide, including high availability and disaster recovery.

Best of breed solution Leveraging state of the art technology and innovative optimizations, the XtremSF with XtremSW Cache and Emulex 16GFC HBA solution offers unmatched performance to support the demands of high IOPS storage arrays, as well as the ability to scale with the dynamics of performance hungry applications.

The EMC and Emulex collaboration focused on creating a solution that would address the needs of today’s flash arrays and applications, while allowing caching and I/O capabilities to be scaled independently. Some competitive solutions are built on technology that is two generations old, locks consumers into a proprietary solution, and imposes potential reliability issues by incorporating active cooling fans, and multiple physical link cables to offer only a fraction of the performance that can be achieved from EMC and Emulex.

Additional shared storage benefits A shared SAN delivers additional benefits including:

n Performing a live migration of a VM across host servers sharing SAN storage

n Migration of storage across arrays

n Providing multiple paths from server to storage, eliminating a single point of failure

n Utilization of lower cost diskless servers and non-disruptive replacement of defective servers with boot-from-SAN capability

n Replication of VMs on multiple host servers for fault tolerance

n Enabling elastic addition of storage capacity as dictated by demand

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7 Emulex White Paper Emulex 16Gb Fibre Channel HBA and EMC XtremSF with XtremSW Cache

Target Applications for Maximum Performance Acceleration Microsoft SQL Server is targeted as an ideal application for the EMC XtremSF with XtremSW Cache and Emulex 16GFC HBA solution, showing traction in early deployments.

Other application workloads that can be targeted include:

n Oracle, DB2 or MySQL database

n OLTP applications (e.g. e-commerce)

n HFT

n Web applications

Characteristics of SQL Server and other target applications making them suitable for the XtremSF with XtremSW Cache and 16GFC solution include:

n High read/write ratio—Since reads are accelerated, a higher read/write ratio application maximizes performance benefits.

n Smaller I/O size—Applications with I/O sizes of 8KB or less are typically best suited for maximum performance benefits.

n Random workload—Mechanical disk drives are inherently limited in reads for random workloads, mainly due to seek latencies. Thus, performance benefits for such workloads are maximized with the XtremSF with XtremSW Cache and 16GFC solution.

n Latency-sensitive workload—Applications with low IOPS but with very low response time requirements are maximized with the XtremSF with XtremSW Cache and 16GFC solution.

Emulex 16GFC HBA – The Right Choice Emulex’s market leading LightPulse® LPe1600xB-E 16GFC HBA builds on nine previous generations of development experience to deliver a standards-compliant, high-performance and operationally stable connectivity solution. Addressing the need for high performance SANs, the LPe1600xB-E HBA delivers:

n Performance

- Throughput of 1.2 million IOPS per port

- More than 50% lower latency compared to its previous generation

n Stability of the FC driver software stack

Data centers can include a vast mix of storage and server infrastructure of varied vintage. Nominally, all products are “standards based,” but operational “quirks” can create a headache for the storage administrator.

Emulex’s broadly deployed FC HBA driver stack with more than 12 million installed ports ensures the reliability needed to avoid performance and interoperability issues that can sap IT staff productivity.

n Breadth of operating system support

Comprehensive OS support is vital to ensure usability across heterogeneous workloads. Emulex 16GFC HBAs not only support the major OS platforms such as VMware,® Linux® and Windows Server,® but also the multiple releases that accompany them.

n Breadth of hardware support

The selected HBA should provide broad support for CPU platforms including x86, x64, Intel Itanium-64 bit, IBM PowerPC and Oracle SPARC.

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Automated Tiering with EMC FAST In addition to performance acceleration, automated storage tiering is a core benefit of the XtremSF with XtremSW Cache and 16GFC solution.

Tiered storage focuses on putting the right data on the right storage at the right time based on an application’s performance, availability and recovery requirements.

EMC’s Fully Automated Storage Tiering (FAST) software automates the movement and placement of data across storage resources as needs change over time, enabling continuous optimization of applications by eliminating trade-offs between performance and capacity, while lowering cost and delivering higher service levels at the same time.

FAST is better understood from Figure 7 below.

Figure 7. Tiered storage performance for data activity and age.

The hottest (most frequently accessed) data resides on the XtremSF server-based PCIe flash card, closer to the application, delivering minimum latency and maximum IOPS. Hot data resides on flash drives in the array enabling reduced storage costs per I/O. As the data cools (it is less frequently accessed), it sits on Fibre Channel or SAS spinning disk drives. Lastly, the coldest data lives on high-capacity SATA or nearline SAS drives to further drive down costs.

Managing Application I/O Performance Storage is a mission-critical element of IT infrastructure and measuring end-to-end storage performance is an invaluable capability. Emulex’s OneCommand® Vision is a unique, non-intrusive software used by administrators to pro-actively manage application I/O performance and health across thousands of servers, providing an end-to-end “Application View” of I/O performance and path availability.

This unique perspective exposes I/O blind-spots, providing insight that is often missed by domain-specific solutions already in use today, providing an unmatched end-to-end application view of I/O, enabling organizations to:

n Automate I/O performance monitoring

n Dramatically reduce application downtime

n Pro-actively report when application I/O expectations are violated

n Reduce time to resolution on hard to solve infrastructure issues

Figure 8 provides a high-level view of OneCommand Vision solution architecture.

MONITOR

ELX14-5067 · 5/14

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©2014 Emulex, Inc. All rights reserved. This document refers to various companies and products by their trade names. In most, if not all cases, their respective companies claim these designations as trademarks or registered trademarks. This information is provided for reference only. Although this information is believed to be accurate and reliable at the time of publication, Emulex assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions. Emulex reserves the right to make changes or corrections without notice. This report is the property of Emulex and may not be duplicated without permission from the Company.

Figure 8. Application performance monitoring with OneCommand Vision.

OneCommand Vision adds value to the EMC XtremSF with XtremSW Cache and Emulex 16GFC solution, reporting I/O performance gains seen by the applications using this solution, providing cache hit ratios of the applications, as well as automating the detection of application I/O slowdowns, alerting administrators, and aiding in the identification of suspect infrastructure components and helping organizations stay ahead of costly outages.

Summary and Call to Action Application performance is a critical success factor for virtually any enterprise. Storage performance is a key determinant of application performance.

EMC XtremSF with XtremSW Cache paired with the Emulex LPe1600xB-E 16GFC HBA is an application acceleration solution available today. Combining accelerated reads with write-through caching that maintains the safety, scalability and shareability of an FC SAN, this solution delivers both performance and protection.

Microsoft SQL Server is an ideal application for this combination solution. Other database products, OLTP applications, HFT and Web applications are ideal targets as well.

EMC’s FAST auto-tiering software ensures optimum placement of data in the storage device and Emulex’s OneCommand Vision software enables ongoing application performance monitoring for optimum performance.

The solution is available today. Contact your Emulex or EMC sales representative to get the best of both worlds – performance and protection—from a world-class partnership.

© Copyright 2013 Emulex Corporation. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for Emulex products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Emulex shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.

LightPulse and OneCommand are registered trademarks of Emulex Corporation.