Accelerating Application Performance -- Tier-0

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EDUCATION

Accelerating Application

Performance -- Tier-0

Richard Gillett

Acopia Networks

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EDUCATION

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EDUCATION

Abstract

Accelerating Application Performance – Tier-0

• Traditional tiered storage or Information Lifecycle Management

(ILM), approaches seek to move lower priority files to lower

performing, less expensive disk in an effort to save on storage and

backup costs.

• Users can expand this conventional cost savings approach to

include tiering of data for the specific purpose of optimizing

application performance.

• By utilizing a “Tier-0” approach, specific data sets can be moved to

higher performance, memory-based platforms, resulting in dramatic

improvement in application performance

This tutorial introduces the general concept of Tier-0 storage and

then discusses the use of Tier-0 storage to accelerate the

performance of applications that access storage using NAS

protocols.

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Agenda

• Context

• Traditional tiered storage

• A new kind of tiered storage

• High-performance storage options

• Application characteristics

• Solution example

• Summary

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Context

• “Application Acceleration” is a term used in many

contexts

• This tutorial discusses the application of fast storage

(called “Tier-0”) to make applications run faster

• Tier-0 storage can be used to accelerate applications

that use either block or NAS protocols

• This tutorial focuses on the use of Tier-0 storage to

make applications accessing storage over NAS protocols

(e.g. NFS and CIFS) run faster

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Traditional NAS

Tiered Storage

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Traditional NAS Tiered Storage

• Traditionally, NAS tiered storage has been used to

integrate a lower cost storage pool for the purposes of

off-loading Tier-1 storage of infrequently accessed data

–

In a simple world: “FC” = Tier-1 and “SATA” = Tier-2

• Simple policies based on file access or modify time can

be used to identify candidates for migration to Tier-2

• Assuming Tier-2 can be integrated without impact to the

existing storage users, the cost savings are significant

• On the next slide, we will describe ways Tier-2 NAS

storage can be integrated with existing Tier-1 NAS

storage

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EDUCATION

Traditional NAS Tiered Storage

Applications

Tier-1

Default

NAS

(FC)

Tier-2

Cost-focused

NAS

(SATA)

Typically 2-4x

savings on

CapEx

Additional

savings on

backup OpEx

Option1

Applications see

another mount

Option 2

Tier-2 appears

behind Tier-1 stubs

Virtualize

Option 3

Virtualize Tier-1

and Tier-2 into a

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A new kind of

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A New Tier of NAS Storage

Applications

Performance

Optimized

(Memory)

Tier-0

Tier-1

Default

NAS

(FC)

Tier-2

Cost-focused

NAS

(SATA)

Tier-3

Capacity

Optimized

Storage

(Compressed

SATA)

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EDUCATION

Definition of Tier-0

• “Tier 0” is a storage tier

–

optimized and intelligently managed

–

for the purpose of high-performance

–

and deterministic serving

–

to critical applications

• “Tier-0” NAS is focused on accelerating

applications that access storage over NAS

protocols

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EDUCATION

Tier-0 NAS Building Blocks

• The basic requirement is that it be able to serve NAS

protocols

• Though it sounds strange, a “Tier-1” NAS system,

intelligently managed specifically to accelerate

application performance meets the definition of Tier-0

• The specific application requirements will generally

suggest the right building blocks

–

“Cache” memory in the server and solid-state storage are the

primary building blocks for memory-based Tier-0

• On the next slide, we discuss the emerging opportunity

to use mainstream servers with large memory

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EDUCATION

The Memory Opportunity

• Over the last year, the alignment between

several important parameters has greatly

increased:

–

Cost of high-performance memory

–

Size of the memory in a mainstream server

–

Performance of the memory in mainstream servers

–

Performance of the network in mainstream servers

–

Size of an application’s “critical working set”

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A Mainstream Server of 2007

• 2 fast processor cores

• 16GB memory

• 5 GBytes/sec memory bandwidth

• 500MB/sec network bandwidth

• 500MB/sec NAS serving bandwidth

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Achille’s Heel

• An Achilles heel of any modern storage system is disk

performance when the application has a

randomly-accessed working set larger than cache memory

• On the next slide, we show the results of a benchmark

that highlights this behavior

• The benchmark uses 24 gigabit connected clients to

perform random 4KB reads within a defined working set

• The tests were run against two servers

–

NAS server with 3GB memory and a high-performance FC array

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Benchmark Results

Working Set

NAS Server with

3GB memory

(single 1Gb link)

Server with

16 GB memory

(4x1Gb channel)

1 GB

120 (limited by 1Gb link)

450 (limited by 4x1Gb channel)

5 GB

21

450 10 GB

18

450

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Application

Characteristics

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Application Critical Working Set

(ACWS)

• First a definition…

–

ACWS is the total size of the unique storage space that an

application “needs” served at high-performance to avoid being

bottlenecked by I/O

• How do you measure ACWS ?

–

The easiest way is often empirical….

• Serve your application with storage from a memory-based

server(s)

• Repeat runs while shrinking the memory size until the

application experiences I/O bottlenecks

• This is an approximation of the application’s ACWS

–

There are analysis/simulation based approaches but the details

are beyond the scope of this tutorial

Check out

SNIA Tutorial:

Check out

SNIA Tutorial:

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EDUCATION

ACWS Across Applications

Trading

Decisions

Large Scale

Software

Compilations

Major Movie

Rendering

Large Scale

Semiconductor

Simulations

10 100+

ACWS

(GB)

Note:

These values are estimates for

various types of applications. The

actual ACWS can vary greatly even

within the same application space.

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EDUCATION

Placement Challenge

• In the general case, the position of a file within

the namespace hierarchy and the corresponding

optimal placement across Tier-1 and Tier-0

storage is unrelated

• For example, at a specific time “file3” in “dir2” is

part of the application’s critical working set (and

therefore will be served from Tier-0) while other

files within the same directory are not critical

• The example on the next slide will help to clarify

this concept

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EDUCATION

Ideal Placement Example

dir1

dir2

dir-3

dir-4

file1

file2

file3

file4

file7

file6

file5

Tier-1

Tier-0

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An Integrated

Tier-1 and Tier-0

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Desirable Characteristics

• Transparent integration with existing Tier-1

–

Applications see a logical view decoupled from physical location

• Analysis service to determine application characteristics

(including CWS) and best placement policy

–

Humans don’t have to guess the best policy

• Flexible file-level placement capability

–

Individual files can be dynamically placed anywhere within the

Tier-0 and Tier-1 resources

• Ability to transparently scale Tier-0 capacity across the

range of working set requirements

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Application Acceleration Flow

Application Servers

Analysis

Sophisticated

Access Analysis

Fast

Big

Safe

Other

Access Stream

Policy Stream

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Application Acceleration Example

Application Servers

Sophisticated

Access Analysis

Access Stream

Policy Stream

_{Move file1 to}

“Fastest”

file1…file2…file1

Continuous

Analysis

Check out

SNIA Tutorial:

FAN

File Area Networks

Check out

SNIA Tutorial:

FAN

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EDUCATION

Three-Tier Solution

Acopia ARX Virtualization

Applications

Real-time matching of application/business

needs and storage capability

Tier-1

Default

NAS

(FC)

Tier-2

Cost-focused

NAS

(SATA)

Tier-0

Performance

Optimized

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Summary

• Tier-2 and Tier-0 are both approaches to better align

storage and business needs

• Tier-0 focuses on making applications run faster and

more predictability

• While almost any NAS server can be used as a Tier-0

server, mainstream servers with large memory

configurations are very attractive building blocks for

many applications

• Integrating Tier-0 into existing infrastructure is a

challenge

–

Network-based virtualization is one way to address this

challenge

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EDUCATION

Q&A / Feedback

• Please send any questions or comments on this presentation to

SNIA:

[email protected]

Many thanks to the following individuals

for their contributions to this tutorial.

SNIA Education Committee

Nigel Burmeister

Woody Hutsell

Robert Peglar

Kirby Wadsworth

Cheng Wu

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