vxrail hyper-converged appliances from dell emc · lab validation:vxrail hyper-converged appliances...

© 2017 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Easily deploying a scalable IT building block with enterprise-grade performance and reliability.

By Mike Leone, Senior ESG Lab Analyst January 2017 This ESG Lab Report was commissioned by Dell EMC and is distributed under license from ESG.

Enterprise Strategy Group | Getting to the bigger truth.™

ESG Lab Validation

VxRail Hyper-converged Appliances from Dell EMC

Lab Validation: VxRail Hyper-converged Appliances from Dell EMC 2


Contents

Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................................ 3

Background ......................................................................................................................................................................... 3

VxRail Hyper-converged Appliance ..................................................................................................................................... 4

ESG Lab Validation .................................................................................................................................................................. 5

Deployment and Scalability ................................................................................................................................................ 5

Performance ....................................................................................................................................................................... 8

High Availability and Reliability ......................................................................................................................................... 10

ESG Lab Validation Highlights ............................................................................................................................................... 12

Issues to Consider ................................................................................................................................................................. 12

The Bigger Truth .................................................................................................................................................................... 13

Appendix ............................................................................................................................................................................... 14

ESG Lab Reports

The goal of ESG Lab reports is to educate IT professionals about data center technology products for companies of all types and sizes. ESG Lab reports are not meant to replace the evaluation process that should be conducted before making purchasing decisions, but rather to provide insight into these emerging technologies. Our objective is to go over some of the more valuable feature/functions of products, show how they can be used to solve real customer problems and identify any areas needing improvement. ESG Lab's expert third-party perspective is based on our own hands-on testing as well as on interviews with customers who use these products in production environments.



Introduction

This ESG Lab Validation report documents the results of recent hands on testing of Dell EMC’s VxRail hyper-converged

appliance. Testing focused on deployment simplicity, manageability, simple scale-out functionality, performance, and

reliability.

Background

As organizations continue to virtualize their infrastructures to gain higher levels of operational efficiency, VM sprawl and

resource utilization are two key factors that can quickly create havoc for IT administrators. In resource-siloed

infrastructures, where multiple administrators are in charge of different pieces of the infrastructure, complexity continues

to grow as mission-critical data sets and organizations grow. This is especially true in dynamic, mission-critical

environments, where one wrong move or lack thereof could significantly impact an application, the end-user experience

or, worst case, company revenue.

The impact of hyper-converged infrastructures on IT has been profound. In fact, 85% of respondents to a recent ESG

survey already use or plan to use a hyper-converged solution in the coming months.1 Though that number appears high, it

is not all that surprising. ESG also asked organizations to identify which factors drove them to deploy or considering

deploying a hyper-converged technology solution. As shown in Figure 1, the list of responses covers pretty much every

aspect of the technology lifecycle. From improved service and support, improved scalability, and increased agility of VM

provisioning, to simplified managed and speed and ease of deployment, organizations are rapidly adopting hyper-

converged technologies, whether it be to house key business applications or to leverage a lower cost of entry for just

getting started with virtualization.

Figure 1. Top Ten Factors Driving the Deployment of Hyper-converged Technology Solutions

Source: Enterprise Strategy Group, 2017

1 Source: ESG Research Report, The Cloud Computing Spectrum, from Private to Hybrid, March 2016. All ESG research references and charts in this Lab Validation have been taken from this research report.

32%

33%

34%

34%

36%

36%

37%

37%

39%

41%

Ease of acquisition

Reduction in interoperability issues

Ease of deployment

Improved total cost of ownership (TCO)

Speed of deployment

Simplified management

More predictable costs when scaling

Increased agility of virtual machine provisioning

Improved scalability

Improved service and support

Which of the following factors drove your organization to deploy – or consider deploying – a hyper-converged technology solution(s)? (Percent of respondents, N=299)

http://research.esg-global.com/reportaction/RR_PHCT03292016/Toc



VxRail Hyper-converged Appliance

The VxRail hyper-converged appliance is a clustered node architecture that brings together compute, storage, and

virtualization in a single infrastructure in a box. Serving as the entry-level offering, the VxRail appliance converges common

IT resources into a scale-out building block. Core to the appliance is simplicity, making acquisition, deployment,

management, scalability, and maintenance fast and easy. The underlying architecture leverages software-defined storage

across multiple nodes to provide low-cost entry points for organizations looking to start small and grow, while also

handling mission-critical appliances in production environments.

Each VxRail appliance contains four server nodes, each with direct-attached storage and ready-to-attach 10GB

interconnects. A distributed system architecture serves as the foundation of the appliance, which uses VMware technology

to virtualize compute, storage, and networking with each of the nodes getting configured as an ESXi host. Specifically, for

storage, VMware Virtual SAN software is leveraged to pool the storage from each node. Starting with a single 2U appliance,

deployments can scale to as many as 16 appliances (64 nodes), with each appliance offering flexibility in the available

compute, memory, and storage configuration to match customer needs. Hybrid models consist of both SSD and HDD to

balance of performance and capacity, while all-flash configurations are available to maximize performance and data

efficiency capabilities like erasure coding, deduplication and compression.

Figure 2. VxRail Hyper-converged Appliance


For management, VxRail comes bundled with a platform to simplify common tasks, while providing management

granularity when needed. Aside from the familiar management interface of VMware vCenter, two additional interfaces are

available: VxRail Manager and VxRail Manager Extension, both of which connect to vCenter to display similar VM-related

information. VxRail Manager helps to automate the configuration of VMs, while also helping manage and monitor the

VMware environment, with capabilities like displaying metrics of the live environment related to resource utilization. VxRail

Manager Extension provides a more granular view into the appliance itself, including component visualizations and health

monitoring. Also available in the extension is an online software marketplace for easy access to Dell EMC software.



ESG Lab Validation

ESG Lab performed hands-on evaluation and testing of the VxRail at Dell EMC’s facilities, in Hopkinton, Massachusetts.

Testing was designed to demonstrate the ease of deployment, scalability, performance, and reliability using industry-

standard tools and methodologies.

Deployment and Scalability

ESG Lab validated how the VxRail simplified infrastructure lifecycle management. For this phase of testing, ESG Lab focused

on ease of deployment, reduced management complexity, and simplified scalability, all of which help to improve the

operational efficiency of IT organizations.

Starting with a single VxRail appliance that had already been racked and cabled, ESG Lab walked through the deployment

process. With the appliance coming prepackaged with software, once connected to the network and powered on, ESG Lab

simply navigated to the IP address in the Dell EMC-provided deployment guide. A view of the GUI when first logging into

the appliance is shown in Figure 3. It was assumed that all external networking, including switches and VLAN management,

was already configured, which is represented by the blue checkboxes.

Figure 3. First Time Navigating to Appliance


Clicking the next button led to the beginning of the appliance deployment process. Two options are presented: step by

step or configuration file. The step by step process walks through a series of guided steps to deploy the appliance, while

the configuration file leverages an automatically generated JSON file based on customer information entered into an Excel

spreadsheet. The Excel sheet is sent to customers prior to receiving the physical appliance, giving them time to allocate IP

addresses and configure other network information.

ESG Lab selected the step by step option and proceeded to walk through the seven-step deployment process. First, general

system information was entered, including global settings related to the time zone and DNS server. Additional information

can optionally be entered to include Active Directory or HTTP proxy settings. Next, management settings were configured.

This included specifying the ESXi, vCenter Server, and VxRail Manager hostnames, as well as providing IP addresses for

each. It should be noted that error checking during this entire process is happening in the background to ensure that

correct information has been entered. A view of the configuration steps is shown in Figure 4.



Figure 4. Step by Step Deployment


The next series of configuration steps focused strictly on VMware configuration information. VMware vMotion

information was entered, including the starting and ending IP addresses, netmask, and VLAN ID. This ensures that virtual

machines remain online and fully operational during planned or unplanned downtime. Virtual SAN IP address

information was entered to enable software-defined storage functionality on the appliance. VM network information

was added to enable the configuration of VMs without contending on the same network. The last step prior to validation

focuses on configuring logging information and VxRail Manager Extension. ESG Lab selected vRealize Log Insight as the

platform to provide log management and analysis of everything running on the VxRail appliance. ESG Lab also configured

the VxRail Manager Extension, which leverages vRealize to capture and visualize real-time events in an intuitive

interface. Finally, ESG Lab clicked Validate to automatically review and validate all the entered deployment information

to ensure no duplicates IP addresses existed. A log file can also be viewed during the validation process.

Once the validation completed, a new option to build the VxRail is available. The build process consists of building the

four service VMs used to manage and maintain the VxRail: vCenter, VxRail manager, VxRail Manager extension, and

vRealize Log Insight. During the build process, a percentage complete bar is displayed, as well as information about what

is currently being built. A view of the progress is shown in Figure 5, which shows that the build process was 3% complete

and deploying vCenter Server at the time. ESG Lab was impressed with the overall deployment process. From initial login

and information entry to validation and building of the VxRail, everything was completed in just 20 minutes.

Figure 5. Building the VxRail Appliance




ESG Lab logged into vCenter when the system completed the build process and validated that everything was built

correctly, including the physical nodes and four service VMs. The storage was also viewed, which displayed the VSAN

datastore consisting of four disk groups for each physical node that when combined, presented over 20 TBs of available

capacity. The VxRail Manager interface was also viewed, which displayed health-related information for each node, with

health timelines displaying historical and real-time information related to key performance metrics such as IOPS, CPU

utilization, and memory utilization. In addition, customers can leverage vRealize Log Insight to display a full audit of the

appliance, including important health information and performance metrics. At this stage, ESG Lab also logged into the

VxRail Manager Extension to provide details about vCenter. A more granular view of the appliance was available, including

visualizations of each node and its components. Also available, the Extension is a marketplace to allow customers to

download specific applications for their cluster, such as Dell EMC RecoverPoint for VMs, CloudArray Virtual Edition, and

vSphere Data Protection.

The last piece of testing during this

phase was to validate the ability of

the appliance to scale out quickly and

simply. After mounting and

connecting the VxRail appliance to

the network, it was powered on. The

VxRail Manager interface quickly

displayed a notification in the bottom

right corner of the interface alerting

ESG Lab that a new appliance had

been detected. Over the course of a

couple of minutes, four green

checkmarks displayed, verifying that each node in the new appliance was valid. By simply clicking on Add VxRail Appliance,

the process to add a new appliance began, which only entailed supplying the ESXi password. It should be noted that during

the initial deployment of the first appliance, a large range of IP addresses were allocated to the appliance. When adding a

new appliance, this range of IP addresses is used as a pool to be provided to newly added appliances. In cases where a

range is not large enough, a configuration box allows IT administrators to specify IP addresses for each node in the new

appliance. ESG Lab was impressed with the fact that adding a new appliance took just five minutes. This was verified

through the management interfaces, which displayed the new physical nodes and double the amount of available capacity.

A view of the checkboxes, configuration screen, and validation of the newly added appliance are shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6. VxRail Appliance Scalability

Why This Matters Both ease and speed of deployment appeared on the list of the ten most-cited factors driving organizations to deploy hyper-converge technology solutions. The reason is that deploying a traditional virtualized infrastructure can be quite complex, requiring coordination between multiple IT administrators with different roles and responsibilities. And that is just the initial deployment. Once existing applications and data sets outgrow their initially provisioned resources, scalability becomes a concern as IT administrators need to be extremely careful to not negatively impact the entire infrastructure while addressing the scalability concerns for particular workloads.

ESG Lab validated that the deployment process of a VxRail appliance was simple. After powering on the appliance and walking through the guided deployment steps, a VxRail was fully operational in just 20 minutes. The intuitive interface of the VxRail Manager served as a go-to dashboard for high-level health and performance monitoring, while the VxRail Manager Extension not only provided granular details about the hardware, but also offered an online marketplace to download additional supporting Dell EMC software. ESG Lab was impressed with the simplicity of scaling out the hyper-converged solution. In just five minutes, ESG Lab had powered on and deployed an additional appliance and the newly added resources were available to be consumed.



Performance

ESG Lab validated the flexibility of the VxRail to deliver high levels of sustainable performance. VMware’s HCIBench (hyper-

converged infrastructure benchmark) tool was used to test multiple workloads common to any sized organization.

HCIBench leverages the industry-proven Vdbench benchmarking tool as the underlying workload generator, with added

functionality and automation to easily run against a VMware Virtual SAN datastore. The tool is delivered as an Open

Virtualization Appliance (OVA) that includes a number of components required for testing. A Controller VM and a Linux test

VM template get installed. The Controller VM comes with the Ruby vSphere Console (RVC), Virtual SAN Observer, an

automation bundle, and configuration files and has eight vCPUs, 8 GB of RAM, 20 GB for an OS VMDK running CentOS 6.4

64bit, and 200 GB for a log VMDK. It should be noted that the Controller VM is deployed on an ESXi instance outside of the

appliance and therefore requires full communication with the VxRail ESXi instances, as well as the test VMs. Each Vdbench

test VM template contains four vCPUs, 4 GB of RAM, 2GB OS VMDK running Ubunto 12.04.3 LTS 32 bit, and a data VMDK

that is defined by the user.

The workflow for running the tests begins with deploying the Vdbench guest VMs. Once deployed, the VMDK storage gets

initialized and Vdbench gets run to transfer the Vdbench parameters file to each VM under test. Next, Virtual SAN observer

gets started prior to starting the test and once the test is started, Virtual SAN observer collects performance metrics such

as IOPS, throughput, and response times, and aggregates the results for analysis, whether it be to benchmark the solution

or troubleshoot.

ESG Lab audited performance results run by Dell EMC. A VxRail 160 was used for testing, which contained four nodes, each

with two Intel Xeon CPU E5-2630 v3 @ 2.40 GHz, 256 GB of RAM, one 800GB SSD, five 1.2TB HDDs, the GA build of the

VxRail Golden Image, and VMware ESXi 6.0 U1a. There was a total of 2,980 GB of cache, with 2,086 GB allocated to read

cache, and the remaining 894 allocated to write buffering. Eight test VMs with four VMDKs each, totaling 32 test VMs for

the appliance were deployed across each physical node. A view of the test bed is shown in Figure 7.

Figure 7. Performance Test Bed


The workload consisted of a mix of random read and write I/Os, starting with pure reads and adjusting the read:write ratio

until eventually a pure write workload was attained. This methodology served as a way to baseline the appliance with a

goal of understanding initial performance characteristics. These tests in no way represent hero numbers and it is highly

likely that customization could achieve even higher levels of performance depending on workload and configuration. One

way to achieve a higher level of performance is by adjusting the number of outstanding requests. For the purpose of this

testing, eight outstanding requests were used.



For each test, IOPS and response times were monitored. IOPS represent the amount of I/O that can be processed by the

underlying storage, while response time serves as a measurement for how quickly an I/O can be serviced. Response time or

latency is a key measurement when attempting to characterize the end-user experience due to the fact that the longer an

I/O takes to complete, the longer an end-user or application is waiting to move to the next one. A view of the results is

shown in Figure 8 and Table 1.

Figure 8. I/O Characterization of the VxRail


Table 1. I/O Characterization of VxRail

Read/Write Ratio 100:0 90:10 80:20 70:30

IOPS/Node 62,619 42,771 39,434 34,223

IOPS/Appliance 250,475 171,083 157,737 136,891

Latency (ms) 1 3 3 3


0

5

10

15

20

25

30

0

50,000

100,000

150,000

200,000

250,000

300,000

100:0 90:10 80:20 70:30

Late

ncy

(m

s)

IOP

S

Read:Write I/O Ratio

I/O Characterization of the VxRail with Mixed Read:Write Ratios

IOPS/Node IOPS/Appliance Latency

Why This Matters

Performance issues remain a key concern preventing organizations from virtualizing their applications. This hesitation is due to the perception that virtualization not only adds overhead, but will also prevent performance scalability. ESG research shows that performance concerns around data locality was the top response when asked about organizational concerns around deploying hyper-converged technology solutions, with lack of flexibility when scaling being the second most-cited response.

ESG Lab confirmed that a VxRail hyper-converged appliance easily attained performance levels that were more than acceptable for handling common business applications. Baseline performance tests showed the appliance achieving over 250,000 IOPS on a single appliance for pure reads, while workloads that mimicked common OLTP databases (both reads and writes) averaged over 155,000 IOPS. Also important to mention is the latency measurements, which delivered consistently low response times that never exceeded 5 ms. This mix of high IOPS and low response times combine to appeal to organizations of all sizes that look to not only meet application performance requirements, but also deliver positive end-user experiences.



High Availability and Reliability

ESG Lab validated the reliability and high availability capabilities of the VxRail by ensuring a workload remained online

through multiple simulated component failures. A Windows 7 VM was leveraged for this phase of testing. The VxRail

Manager Extension was launched and upon clicking the Physical tab, a view of the two appliances was displayed, along

with green checkmarks next to both. This represented the health of systems. After logging into the VM, Windows Media

Player was launched and an HD video was played and set to repeat. ESG Lab viewed the front of the physical appliance and

witnessed disk activity on the node servicing the VM. A view of the VxRail Manager Extension interface and the video mid-

playback is shown in Figure 9.

Figure 9. Healthy Appliance through VxRail Manager Extension


Next, ESG Lab began failing components while playback was monitored with a goal of the video continuing to play

throughout all of the failures. Three components were failed during this phase of testing with a small break in between

each failure to allow for the interface to display the failed component. First, a node interconnect was disconnected. Next, a

power cable was pulled. Finally, a disk was pulled from the group of active disks. Video playback was monitored throughout

each failure, and as expected, the video continued to play throughout each failure. As shown in Figure 10, VxRail Manager

Extension displayed a red circled three on the Health tab, representing the amount of failures the appliance experienced. A

view of the front and back of the appliance was also shown, with red highlights over the failed or impacted components.



Figure 10. Component Failures in VxRail Manager Extension


To ensure proper functionality of the architecture, ESG Lab took the reliability testing a step further and deliberately broke

the appliance. This was done by pulling a second drive from the same node within the appliance. As expected, a double

drive failure from within the same node servicing the video playback resulted in stopped playback. Once the drives were

reinserted and the rebuilding process completed, ESG Lab could once again launch the VM and resume playback. It should

be noted that rebuild times are directly related to the size of the drives and the underlying configuration.

Why This Matters

When something goes wrong in a virtual environment, problems can quickly get out of hand. This is especially true in large, dynamic environments where a single failure can impact the entire infrastructure. Having peace of mind knowing components are redundant to ensure high availability, and having the common hyper-converged benefit of management simplicity, organizations can quickly diagnose and address any issues before the business is impacted or downtime is experienced.

ESG Lab confirmed the high availability and reliability capabilities of the VxRail hyper-converged appliance running VMware virtual SAN architecture. Redundant components and shared resources ensured that HD video playback on a four node appliance remained online while components were systematically failed. Also, a granular view of the system along with health alerts quickly displayed where the failures occurred on the physical components, enabling faster identification and eventual remediation of the failures.



ESG Lab Validation Highlights

ESG Lab deployed a hyper-converged appliance in just 20 minutes. An intuitive interface served as an easy-to-follow guide, while deployment automation was handled by the Dell EMC and VMware software.

Detailed visualizations of the system and underlying components simplified management, while the intuitive interface delivered granular details to appeal to a wide range of IT administrator expertise levels.

Scaling-up the deployment was very fast, taking just five minutes. A new appliance was automatically detected, and in just a few clicks, the newly added resources were available for use.

Baseline performance testing yielded more than acceptable levels of IOPS from a single appliance, while response times did not exceed 5 ms as random read:write ratios varied from pure reads to pure writes.

Reliability testing proved the high availability features of the VxRail appliance, with HD video playback remaining uninterrupted as multiple component failures were simulated.

Issues to Consider

All performance testing was done in a controlled environment. Performance of the VxRail appliance in a live production environment may vary. Further, results presented in this report represent baseline performance with no customization. ESG Lab is confident that even higher levels of performance can be achieved from the appliance when customized to a specific application or environment.

At the time of ESG Lab testing, VxRail Manager and VxRail Manager Extension required separate interface. In the current release, Dell EMC has combined the functionality and visibility of both management interfaces into a single, unified UI.

An interesting feature that ESG Lab found convenient was the ability to do a clean shutdown of the entire virtualized infrastructure directly through the VxRail Management interface, including all VMs and vCenter. With lab environments commonly going through planned maintenance shutdowns or a company or business unit moving locations, this feature would make IT administrators’ lives much easier.



The Bigger Truth

Hyper-converged infrastructures have drastically simplified the adoption of virtualization. Ease of deployment, simplified

management, scale-out functionality, and low cost of entry make for a compelling argument to start small and grow as

needed. A consolidated infrastructure in a box enables IT administrators to not worry about the mundane tasks related to

managing disparate resources responsible for driving their virtualized infrastructure and focus on more pressing matters.

And these benefits will keep improving as the technology continues to mature and get adopted across IT.

The VxRail hyper-converged appliance is a joint effort between two industry-leading technology vendors: Dell EMC and

VMware. The pre-integrated, preconfigured, and pretested hyper-converged solution leverages VMware’s hyper-

converged software, along with common management interfaces through VMware vCenter Server. This provides a

common and familiar VMware experience while enabling deployment and management flexibility. Customers gain peace of

mind knowing the VxRail comes standard with enterprise-grade features and functions extensively developed and

deployed by Dell EMC and VMware, such as compression, deduplication, replication, and backup services. This enables a

rock-solid, fully virtualized, software-defined data center environment that is ready to handle the strict service level

agreements common in organizations today.

ESG Lab validated the deployment simplicity, ease of management, quick scale-out capabilities, enterprise-class

performance and high availability of a VxRail appliance. Initial setup and deployment took just 20 minutes from power-on

to creating an accessible VM. Intuitive wizards guided ESG Lab through the entire process and multiple management

interfaces provided views of the deployment. Scale-out functionality was impressively simple, with the addition of a new

node taking just five minutes. A performance audit yielded more than acceptable IOPS and response time results, while

high availability testing proved workloads can sustain multiple failures without sacrificing performance.

With a traditional IT approach, the amount of time needed to plan, deploy, install, configure, and validate a virtualized

infrastructure can be months because of the disparate resources and management complexities. Dell EMC not only

reduces these complexities, but also completely eliminate them in some cases. While the software-defined data center has

seemed out of reach for many organizations, Dell EMC has developed a joint solution that provides the mechanism to

make it a reality: the VxRail hyper-converged appliance.



Appendix

Table 2. ESG Lab Test Bed

HCIBench Guest VM Details VxRail Details

Operating System: Ubuntu 12.04.3 LTS 32bit CPU: 4 vCPU RAM: 4 GB OS VMDK Size: 8 GB Number of VMs: 32 (8/node) VMDKs: 16 (4/node)

Model: VxRail 160 running 3.0 Processor/Node: 2 x Intel Xeon CPU E5-2630 v3 @ 2.4 GHz Memory/Node: 256 GB SSD/Node: 1 x 800 GB HDD/Node: 5 x 1.2 TB VxRail Golden Image: RTM / GA Build ESXi Version: VMware ESXi 6.0 U1a Total Cache Layer Size: 2,980 GB Read Cache: 2,086 GB (70% total) Write Buffer: 894 GB (30% total) FTT: 1

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