The virtualization layer is a key component of any server virtualization or private cloud solution. It decouples the application resource requirements from the underlying physical resources that serve them. This enables greater flexibility in the application layer by eliminating hardware downtime for maintenance, and allows the system to physically change without affecting the hosted applications. In a server virtualization or private cloud use case, it enables multiple independent virtual machines to share the same physical hardware, rather than being directly implemented on dedicated hardware.
VMware vSphere 5.5 transforms the physical resources of a computer by virtualizing the CPU, RAM, hard disk, and network controller. This transformation creates fully functional virtual machines that run isolated and encapsulated operating systems and applications like physical computers.
The high-availability features of VMware vSphere 5.5 such as vMotion and Storage vMotion enable seamless migration of virtual machines and stored files from one vSphere server to another, or from one data storage area to another, with minimal or no performance impact. Coupled with vSphere DRS and Storage DRS, virtual
machines have access to the appropriate resources at any point in time through load balancing of compute and storage resources.
VMware vSphere 5.5 includes an expansive list of new and improved features that enhance performance, reliability, availability, and recovery of virtualized
environments. Of those features, several have significant impacts upon VSPEX Private Cloud deployments, which include:
Expanded maximum memory and CPU limits for ESX hosts. Logical and virtual CPU counts have doubled in this version, as have NUMA node counts and maximum memory. This means host servers can support larger workloads. 62 TB VMDK file support including RDM. Datastores can hold more data from
more virtual machines, which simplifies storage management and leverages larger capacity NL-SAS drives
Enhanced VAAI UNMAP support that includes a new esxcli storage vmfs unmap command with multiple reclamation methods
Enhanced SR-IOV support that simplifies configuration via workflows, and surfaces more properties into the virtual functions
16 Gb end-to-end support for FC environments
Enhanced LACP functions offering additional hash algorithms and up to 64 link access groups (LAGs)
vSphere Data Protection (VDP), which can now replicate backup data directly to EMC Avamar
40 Gb Mellanox NIC support Overview VMware vSphere 5.5 New VMware vSphere 5.5 features
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VMFS heap improvements, which reduce memory requirements while allowing access to full 64 TB VMFS address space
VMware vSphere with Operations Management delivers customers with a core virtualization solution and is fully-supported within VSPEX.
This solution includes vSphere, the industry’s most trusted virtualization platform, and the critical operational enhancements of performance monitoring and capacity management (also offered through vCenter Operations Management Suite Standard). As virtualization is deployed, it is critical to have visibility into an IT environment’s operating performance to ensure service levels. For example, the ability to monitor any degradation in health and performance allows customers to identify and troubleshoot system issues before they affect end users.
vSphere with Operations Management enables advanced virtualization management capabilities:
Capacity Management helps identify idle and over-provisioned virtual machiness to reclaim excess capacity and increase virtual machine density without impacting performance.
Predictive Analytics analyzes vCenter Server performance data, establishes dynamic thresholds that adapt to the environment, and provides Smart Alerts about health degradations and performance bottlenecks to drive proactive action and policy-based automation.
Operations Console displays key performance indicators in easily identifiable colored badges and provides a comprehensive view into what is driving current and potential future performance and capacity management issues in one place.
VMware vSphere with Operations Management (vSOM)
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Figure 5. vSphere with Operations Management
vSphere with Operations Management enables the most demanding business critical applications to operate on the most advanced virtualization platform. This
functionality delivers agility, efficiency, and resiliency for customer IT environments. This strengthens the ability to run business critical applications at high service levels, with improvements in three main categories:
1. Availability and Performance – Deliver enhanced availability and performance for business critical applications and next-gen applications, such as Hadoop
35 EMC VSPEX Private Cloud: VMware vSphere 5.5 for up to 1,000 Virtual Machines Enabled by Mircosoft Windows Server 2012 R2, EMc VNX Series, and EMc Powered Backup-Proven Infrastructure Guide 2. Storage – Leverage server-side caching for enhanced performance of
applications
3. Scalability – Doubling configuration maximums in several key areas to support the largest workloads possible
VMwarevCenter is a centralized management platform for the VMware virtual infrastructure. This platform provides administrators with a single interface for all aspects of monitoring, managing, and maintaining the virtual infrastructure, accessed from multiple devices.
VMware vCenter also manages some advanced features of the VMware virtual
infrastructure such as VMware vSphere High Availability and DRS, along with vMotion and Update Manager.
The VMware vSphere High-Availability feature enables the virtualization layer to automatically restart virtual machines in various failure conditions.
If the virtual machine operating system has an error, the virtual machine can automatically restart on the same hardware.
If the physical hardware has an error, the impacted virtual machines can automatically restart on other servers in the cluster.
Note: To restart virtual machines on different hardware, the servers must have available resources. The Compute section provides detailed information to enable this function.
With VMware vSphere High-Availability, you can configure policies to determine which machines automatically restart, and under what conditions to attempt these operations.
EMC Virtual Storage Integrator (VSI) for VMware vSphere is a plug-in for the vSphere client that provides a single management interface for EMC storage within the vSphere environment. Add and remove features to VSI independently; this provides flexibility for customizing VSI user environments. Features are managed by using the VSI Feature Manager. VSI provides a unified user experience, which enables new features to be introduced rapidly in response to customer requirements.
Validation testing uses the following features:
Storage Viewer (SV) — Extend the vSphere client to help discover and identify EMC VNX storage devices allocated to VMware vSphere hosts and virtual machines. SV presents the underlying storage details to the virtual data center administrator, merging the data of several different storage mapping tools into a few seamless vSphere client views.
Unified Storage Management — Simplified storage administration of the EMC VNX unified storage platform. It enables VMware administrators to provision Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) datastores, Raw Device Mapping (RDM) volumes, or network file system (NFS) seamlessly from within the vSphere client. VMware vCenter VMware vSphere High-Availability EMC Virtual Storage Integrator for VMware
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Refer to the EMC VSI for VMware vSphere product guides on EMC Online Support for more information.
Hardware acceleration with VMware vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI) is a storage enhancement in vSphere 5.5 that enables vSphere to offload specific storage operations to compatible storage hardware such as the VNX series platforms. With the assistance of storage hardware, vSphere performs these operations faster and consumes less CPU, memory, and storage fabric bandwidth.
Compute
The choice of a server platform for an EMC VSPEX infrastructure is not only based on the technical requirements of the environment, but on the supportability of the platform, existing relationships with the server provider, advanced performance, management features, and many other factors. For this reason, EMC VSPEX solutions are designed to run on a wide variety of server platforms. Instead of requiring a specific number of servers with a specific set of requirements, VSPEX documents minimum requirements for the number of processor cores, and the amount of RAM. This can be implemented with two or twenty servers, and still be considered the same VSPEX solution.
In the example shown in Figure 9, the compute layer requirements for a specific implementation are 25 processor cores, and 200 GB of RAM. One customer might want to implement this with white-box servers containing 16 processor cores, and 64 GB of RAM, while another customer chooses a higher-end server with 20 processor cores and 144 GB of RAM.
VNX VMware vStorage API for Array Integration support
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Figure 9. Compute layer flexibility
The first customer needs four of the chosen servers, while the other customer needs two.
Note: To enable high-availability at the compute layer, each customer needs one additional server to ensure that the system has enough capability to maintain business operations when a server fails.
Use the following best practices in the compute layer:
Use several identical, or at least compatible, servers. VSPEX implements hypervisor level high-availability technologies, which may require similar instruction sets on the underlying physical hardware. By implementing VSPEX on identical server units, you can minimize compatibility problems in this area.
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If you implement high-availability at the hypervisor layer, the largest virtual machine you can create is constrained by the smallest physical server in the environment.
Implement the available high-availability features in the virtualization layer, and ensure that the compute layer has sufficient resources to accommodate at least single server failures. This enables the implementation of minimal- downtime upgrades, and tolerance for single unit failures.
Within the boundaries of these recommendations and best practices, the compute layer for EMC VSPEX can be flexible to meet your specific needs. Ensure that there are sufficient processor cores and RAM per core to meet the needs of the target
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Network
The infrastructure network requires redundant network links for each vSphere host, the storage array, the switch interconnect ports, and the switch uplink ports. This configuration provides both redundancy and additional network bandwidth. This is a required configuration regardless of whether the network infrastructure for the solution already exists, or you are deploying it alongside other components of the solution. Figure 10 and Figure 11depict an example of this highly available network topology.
Figure 10. Example of highly available network design—for block
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Figure 11. Example of highly available network design—for file
This validated solution uses virtual local area networks (VLANs) to segregate network traffic of various types to improve throughput, manageability, application separation, high-availability, and security.
For block, EMC unified storage platforms provide network high-availability or redundancy by two ports per storage processor. If a link is lost on the storage processor front end port, the link fails over to another port. All network traffic is distributed across the active links.
For file, EMC unified storage platforms provide network high-availability or
redundancy by using link aggregation. Link aggregation enables multiple active (MAC) Ethernet connections to appear as a single link with a single MAC address, and potentially multiple IP addresses. In this solution, Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) is configured on the VNX, combining multiple Ethernet ports into a single virtual device. If a link is lost on the Ethernet port, the link fails over to another port. All network traffic is distributed across the active links.
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Storage
The storage layer is also a key component of any cloud infrastructure solution that serves data generated by applications and operating system in the data center storage processing systems. This increases storage efficiency, management flexibility, and reduces total cost of ownership. In this VSPEX solution, EMC VNX series arrays provide features and performance to enable and enhance any virtualization environment.
The EMC VNX family is optimized for virtual applications; and delivers industry- leading innovation and enterprise capabilities for file and block storage in a scalable, easy-to-use solution. This next-generation storage platform combines powerful and flexible hardware with advanced efficiency, management, and protection software to meet the demanding needs of today’s enterprises.
Intel Xeon processors power the VNX series for intelligent storage that automatically and efficiently scales in performance, while ensuring data integrity and security. It is designed to meet the high performance, high-scalability requirements of midsize and large enterprises.
Table 1 shows the customer benefits that are provided by VNX series.
Table 1. VNX customer benefits
Feature Benefit
Next-generation unified storage, optimized
for virtualized applications Tight integration with VMware allows for advanced array features and centralized management
Capacity optimization features including compression, deduplication, thin provisioning, and application-consistent copies
Reduced storage costs, more efficient use of resources and easier recovery of applications
High-availability, designed to deliver five 9s
availability Higher levels of uptime and reduced outage risk Automated tiering with FAST VP and FAST
Cache that can be optimized for the highest system performance and lowest storage cost simultaneously
More efficient use of storage resources without complicated planning and configuration
Simplified management with EMC Unisphere for a single management interface for all NAS, SAN and replication needs
Reduced management overhead and toolsets required to manage environment Up to three times improvement in
performance with the latest Intel Xeon multicore processor technology, optimized for flash
Reduced latency, increased bandwidth and IOPS result in more headroom for demanding workloads
Overview
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Different software suites and packs are also available for the VNX series, which provide multiple features for enhanced protection and performance:
Software suites
FAST Suite — Automatically optimizes for the highest system performance and the lowest storage cost simultaneously.
Local Protection Suite — Practices safe data protection and repurposing. Remote Protection Suite — Protects data against localized failures, outages,
and disasters.
Application Protection Suite — Automates application copies and provides compliance.
Security and Compliance Suite — Keeps data safe from changes, deletions, and malicious activity.
Software packs
Total Efficiency Pack — Includes all five software suites.
Total Protection Pack — Includes local, remote, and application protection suites.
VNX Snapshots is a software feature introduced since VNX OE for Block Release 32, which creates point-in-time data copies. VNX Snapshots can be used for data backups, software development and testing, repurposing, data validation and local rapid restores. VNX Snapshots improves on the existing SnapView Snapshot functionality by integrating with storage pools.
Note: LUNs created on physical RAID groups, also called RAID LUNs, support only SnapView Snapshots. This limitation exists because VNX Snapshots require pool space as part of its technology.
VNX Snapshots support 256 writeable snaps per pool LUN. It supports branching, also called a Snap of a Snap, as long as the total number of snapshots for any primary LUN is less than 256, which is a hard limit.
VNX Snapshots use redirect on write (ROW) technology. ROW redirects new writes destined for the primary LUN to a new location in the storage pool. Such an
implementation is different from copy on first write (COFW) used in SnapView, which holds the writes to the primary LUN until the original data is copied to the reserved LUN pool to preserve a snapshot.
This release (Block OE Release 33) also supports consistency groups (CGs). Several pool LUNs can be combined into a CG and snapped concurrently. When a snapshot of a CG is initiated, all writes to the member LUNs are held until snapshots have been created. Typically, CGs are used for LUNs that belong to the same application. VNX SnapSure is an EMC VNX File software feature that enables you to create and manage checkpoints, which are point-in-time, logical images of a production file system (PFS). SnapSure uses a copy on first modify principle. A PFS consists of VNX Snapshots
43 EMC VSPEX Private Cloud: VMware vSphere 5.5 for up to 1,000 Virtual Machines Enabled by Mircosoft Windows Server 2012 R2, EMc VNX Series, and EMc Powered Backup-Proven Infrastructure Guide blocks. When a block within the PFS is modified, a copy containing the block’s
original contents is saved to a separate volume called the SavVol. Subsequent changes made to the same block in the PFS are not copied into the SavVol. The original blocks from the PFS in the SavVol and the unchanged PFS blocks remaining in the PFS are read by SnapSure according to a bitmap and block map data-tracking structure. These blocks combine to provide a complete point-in-time image called a checkpoint.
A checkpoint reflects the state of a PFS at the time the checkpoint is created. SnapSure supports two types of checkpoints:
Read-only checkpoint — Read-only file system created from a PFS. Writeable checkpoint — Read/write file system created from a read-only
checkpoint.
SnapSure can maintain a maximum of 96 read-only checkpoints and 16 writeable checkpoints per PFS while allowing PFS applications continued access to real time data.
Note: Each writeable checkpoint associates with a read-only checkpoint, referred to as the baseline checkpoint. Each baseline checkpoint can have only one associated writeable checkpoint.
For more detailed information, refer to Using VNX SnapSure.
EMC VNX Virtual Provisioning enables organizations to reduce storage costs by increasing capacity utilization, simplifying storage management, and reducing application downtime. Virtual Provisioning also helps companies to reduce power and cooling requirements and reduce capital expenditures.
Virtual Provisioning provides pool-based storage provisioning by implementing pool LUNs that can be either thin or thick. Thin LUNs provide on-demand storage that maximizes the utilization of your storage by allocating storage as needed. Thick LUNs provide both high performance and predictable performance for your applications. Both types of LUNs benefit from the ease-of-use features of pool-based provisioning. Pools and pool LUNs are also the building blocks for advanced data services such as