Storage for
Converged Infrastructures
Advances in storage technology promise to change the game in
converged infrastructure and cloud computing. Here’s how to align
your storage strategy with future technology.
Logicalis White Paper:
Converged Storage
Servers, networks, desktops and applications have received most of the attention as the virtualization and consolidation trend has evolved into converged infrastructure and cloud computing in the last few years. Storage has often been relegated to a supporting role away from center stage.
Sure, storage has been somewhat virtualized and converged, but storage technology has held out from Moore’s law, seeming to evolve at a slower pace than the rest of technology and never quite catching up. You always need more of it and what you get tends to be more of the same. Many IT departments, as a result, are relying on the same storage architectures that have been in place for decades.
A conservative approach to storage is arguably appropriate: storage technology is, after all, where you put data that you don’t want to lose. Dependability is paramount.
At the same time, new challenges from big data, mobility, social media, and cloud computing —combined with pressure on IT to align more closely with business requirements and deliver a constant flow of new applications and new services—have accelerated innovation across the infrastructure. And all that innovation generates more data.
Analysts estimate that more than 2 million terabytes (or 2 exabytes) of data are created every day. The range of applications that IT has to support today spans everything from business analytics and ERP to email, ecommerce, collaboration, CRM and video. All the data for all those applications has got to be made available to mobile devices, and it’s all got to be stored somewhere.
This is a new world for IT, and legacy storage systems just aren’t cutting it. They’re too slow, too complex and, as a result, too costly. Paying for dependable storage is costing many IT shops as much as 20 percent of their annual budgets and is holding back efforts to extend virtualization and leverage advances in converged infrastructure and cloud computing. Analyst reports indicate a typical IT shop has virtualized less than half of its x86 servers.
Legacy storage was built around the traditional infrastructure model that contributed to fragmented islands of data and applications. This worked fine when IT was running a single centralized payroll job or manufacturing report. Virtualization, federation and cloud computing, however, have busted the centralized IT model and thrown diverse types of data into the mix across distributed infrastructures.
A Catapult for Virtualization
Advances in converged storage have emerged in recent years that promise to allow storage not just to catch up to virtualization, but to actually catapult virtualization initiatives further down the converged infrastructure path toward cloud computing and the delivery of IT as a service.
Focusing on converged storage provides an opportunity not only to ensure that you will be able to leverage advances in all aspects of converged infrastructure, but also to provide the best “bang for your IT buck.”
Basically, converged storage eliminates traditional silos and combines storage and compute resources within the same physical infrastructure through the use of shared, industry-standard hardware; software-based, scale-out storage controllers; and common management.
Technology
advances that
need to be on your
IT roadmap
Thin provisioning/
reclamation
Scale-out
architecture
Solid state drives
(SSDs)
Software-defined
storage (SDS)
Software-defined
data centers
(SDDC)
Autonomic service
level optimization
Big data analytics
Key features of converged storage include:
Thin provisioning lets you subscribe more capacity to virtual machines than they actually have, eliminating the waste of resources and space caused by unused over-allocated stor-age and streamlining capacity manstor-agement for the storstor-age and server teams.
Federated storage uses distributed volume management to shift workloads across storage devices managed as a single pool of resources.
Scale-out architecture uses a combination of modular computers and standardized stor-age components to create federated storstor-age pools.Scale-out storage addresses both the growth of unstructured data and the need to simplify data center operations. It also has the ability to failover to collocated facilities or DR-as-a-service sites.
Accelerating Trend
In the industry trade magazines, the term “converged storage” has already been upstaged by a new buzzword: software-defined storage (SDS), and its bigger brother: software-defined data centers (SDDCs). SDDC builds on the abstraction server virtualization has created and extends it to networking and storage. The abstraction is a layer of software that defines a data center as pools of virtual and physical resources which can be fashioned into specific user-defined services. To participate fully in SDDC, converged storage will need to become SDS.
The implications of software-defined data centers and storage for IT management are huge. If you can separate the management of your data center from the actual devices residing in it so that the management is living above the devices, you can better control your entire data center from that single location. This is the future of the data center and, although it’s not here yet, it’s coming fast.
“As the software-defined data center matures,” says Logicalis’ vice president of HP solutions Brandon Harris, “choosing your vendor partners wisely will be critical; be sure that the devices you buy today are enabled for the software-defined environment you will be running tomorrow.”
The principles of convergence are inherent in the term “software-defined.” These include shared and standards-based resource pools and the logical separation between data services and programmatic control.
When “software-defined” applies to storage, it abstracts the storage controller functions —i.e., volume management, RAID, data protection, snapshots and replication—and moves them from storage hardware into software.
Whatever you call it, a new architectural approach to storage makes it possible to run everything—physical, virtual or cloud-based—as a single entity that includes applications as well as information retention, security, analytics, and data protection tools.
You’re going to want this.
The features of software-defined storage:
The ability of your primary storage to support all applications and data types across physi-cal, virtual and cloud resources.
The ability to create an environment for information retention and analytics that can archive and search within massive big data content repositories.
The ability to protect your information and create a data storage and backup environment that is both efficient and high speed.
Storage challenges
from virtualization:
Virtual applications
place a much
greater demand on
storage systems,
generating random
I/O requests,
which traditional
storage systems
are unable to
support.
Virtual applications
can also make
high performance
demands that
can exhaust
capacity if efficient
thin provisioning
capabilities are not
available.
Legacy storage
systems provide
limited hypervisor
integration, creating
operational
inefficiencies for
IT staff.
Brave New World
The culmination of all of these software-defined technologies will be a truly dynamic IT environment that is as different from traditional, static, hierarchical architectures as relativity theory is from Newtonian physics.
All the creatures—servers, storage, networks and applications—in this brave new world will need to be able to respond to each other autonomically according to an intelligence codified in overarching IT service management systems that enable all the technologies across the IT infrastructure to respond seamlessly and dynamically to each other according to parameters determined in advance by IT and business stakeholders.
A new, higher level category of IT service management platforms is now emerging to provide this kind of all encompassing management capability. HP, for example, is expected to announce a management platform this fall that spans the entire converged infrastructure encompassing what is currently covered by several management products including Systems Insight Manager, Cloud System Matrix, and Cloud Service Automation.
In June HP announced HAVEn, a big data analytics platform that leverages HP’s analytics software, hardware and services to create the next generation of big data-ready analytics applications and solutions. At its current stage, a big data analytics platform is appropriate for large enterprise and governmental organizations. It is relevant to every IT department, nonetheless, because it defines the future of IT at the point where IT and business services merge and the role of IT is not just to manage data and not lose it, but to do something of value with it.
So, that’s where you want to get to eventually.
In the meantime, you’re standing in a data center that still has technology left behind by your last three predecessors. You’ve virtualized around the applications on servers that haven’t been supported for years—like that old DEC VAX—but the limitations of storage are holding you back from extending virtualization further. Your CEO, meanwhile, is demanding more services for the business, and your CFO wants to cut your budget…again.
Platform of Choice
Focusing on storage can provide an opportunity for you to leverage the capabilities of converged infrastructure to do more with less today…instead of sometime in the future. “Storage has become such a key component of a converged infrastructure that the choice of storage systems is replacing servers as a driver of platform choices for IT departments,” says Logicalis’ VP Harris. “The decision that organizations make about storage today is going to be the linchpin to what their overall converged infrastructure is going to be tomorrow.”
The absolute requirement that all the technologies across a converged infrastructure need to be able to interact seamlessly, argues for implementing IT systems that were designed from the ground up to work together.
HP was the first to use the term “converged infrastructure” and today is the only manufacturer that offers products across the entire IT infrastructure from facilities to storage, servers, networks, security and management.
Business benefits
of converged
storage
Minimize costs
and complexity
Provide dynamic
flexibility
Maximize
resource
efficiency
Build in data
and application
integration and
protection
A look at HP’s storage portfolio shows the extent of convergence built into its product strategy. HP’s converged storage architecture is designed to handle various protocols (block, object, file) and functions (primary storage, information protection, information retention), yet uses common data services and central management via orchestration tools as well as programmatic RESTful APIs.
Based on industry-standard servers and storage hardware, HP’s storage architecture encompasses cloud, scale-out (of both performance and capacity), and federation as needed for seamless data mobility. It spans from low to high across conventional hard drives and solid state drives, and is designed to accommodate other forms of flash-based media.
The HP Converged Storage portfolio includes:
HP StoreServ Storage: This is the HP 3PAR technology. It has recently been extended from its roots in the Tier-1 enterprise to include a midrange version. Both high-end and midrange versions have common data services, functions, and management. 3PAR StoreServ is used for primary block and file data, including a healthy and growing role in ITaaS deployments.
HP StoreAll Storage: Designed for retaining, mining, and analyzing object and file data, StoreAll is a scale-out design that enables non-disruptive addition of direct attached or SAN attached capacity into a single 16 PB namespace. An embedded noSQL metadata database called Express Query can be many orders of magnitude faster than traditional file system scanning techniques.
HP StoreOnce Backup: StoreOnce is a data protection platform with a federated
dedupli-cation architecture that emphasizes restore speed just as much as ingest speed. Built on the same underlying scale-out code and data services as StoreAll, the StoreOnce portfolio has the same polymorphic attributes as 3PAR and is available as a single-node or enterprise scale-out deduplication appliance with common data services, management, and cross-platform data mobility from small to large.
HP StoreOnce Virtual Storage Appliance (VSA) is software-defined storage for backup and recovery of virtualized environments that provides a dramatically lower cost for protecting data at smaller sites.
HP StoreVirtual Storage: The third generation of HP LeftHand technology HP StoreVirtual Storage gives customers a choice between purchasing a software-only VSA, a preconfig-ured Converged Storage Appliance (CSA) that runs on rack-based ProLiant Gen8 hardware, or an HP BladeSystem-based solution also based on ProLiant Gen8. All versions feature the same simple management for virtualized environments, non-disruptive scaling of perfor-mance and capacity, and cost-effective replication.
For many organizations, the hypervisor console has become the primary management interface. All HP converged storage systems, including the StoreVirtual and StoreServ products, use a common set of hypervisor management plug-ins, delivering a consistent management experience across the HP portfolio.
HP was the first
to use the term
“converged
infrastructure”
and today
is the only
manufacturer
that offers
products across
the entire IT
infrastructure...
Preferred Upgrade Path
3PAR StoreServ storage is HP’s declared upgrade path for converged infrastructures. Acquired by HP in 2010, 3PAR has since become the benchmark for Tier 1 storage for cloud and ITaaS environments.
3PAR capabilities include:
Massively scalable, dynamically tiered, multi-tenant arrays
Rapid, autonomic provisioning capabilities
Autonomic service level optimization with Dynamic Optimization and Adaptive Optimization Software Thin provisioning Secure multi-tenancy
In December 2012, HP introduced the HP StoreServ 7000, which made the same capabilities available to midrange organizations.
Logicalis’ HP Storage and Software Brand Manager Ken Bylsma says that the introduction of StoreServ 7000 has opened the door for many midrange organizations to step up to converged storage without having to learn several new skill sets.
“You used to have to have different storage domains for different types of data. A key advantage with 3PAR,” Bylsma says, “is that you only have to deal with one architecture, one set of commands. You don’t have to learn one set of commands for midrange and another for high end, another for block and another for file. You learn it once and you’re good to go.”
A Storage Diet That Actually Works
The most compelling attribute of 3PAR technology for IT directors, Bylsma says, is that it finally liberates IT shops from always having to “over buy” storage capacity to avoid running out. HP 3PAR Thin Suite software—a combination of Thin Provisioning, Thin Conversion, and Thin Persistence—enables IT departments not only to save money on up-front capacity purchases, but also to remain cost- and energy-efficient over time by ensuring that thin storage stays thin by reclaiming unused space associated with deleted data.
IT directors who want to see it before they believe it can have Logicalis perform a storage audit using HP’s virtual tool Ninja Thin. The audit only takes a couple of days and evaluates their entire storage infrastructure, provides a written utilization report and indicates TCO savings available by migrating from what they have today to 3PAR technology.
HP is so confident that thin provisioning, thin reclamation and other features of 3PAR will reduce the amount of storage capacity you require, that it is willing to make the HP Thin Guarantee which promises—within certain criteria—that you will only need half as much storage capacity with 3PAR as you need with your current storage technology, and, if you need more, HP will make up the difference with free disk capacity.
Another attribute of 3PAR that has been impressing IT directors, Bylsma states, is the Adaptive Optimization/Dynamic Optimization (AO/DO) software which dynamically manages your entire storage array. “If something is being called on regularly, it goes to a fast spinning disk. If it’s really hot, it could go to SSD [solid state storage]. If it’s cooling off, it could go to nearline storage. 3PAR software does it all automatically for you.”
For many
organizations,
the hypervisor
console has
become
the primary
management
interface.
3PAR also has the advantage of being multi-tenant. Designed for the service provider market place, 3PAR makes it possible to accommodate multiple customers on a single device. The same capability allows you to isolate departments and applications from each other within an organization. You can isolate email from SAP, for example, or purchasing from HR.
A few customer examples demonstrate the benefits of 3PAR:
A global technical service provider that provides high performance IT and support for the financial industry and must be able to deliver high-volume, high speed transactions. This organization had been an early adopter of 3PAR storage before 3PAR was acquired by HP. Logicalis was able to demonstrate that HP pricing and new 3PAR capabilities would make it possible to cut their storage costs in half.
A metal treatment company that, at that point, had only direct attached storage was driven to upgrade its storage by competitive pressures to be able to respond more quickly to customer demands. A 3PAR system made it possible for this relatively small organization to implement a storage area network, dramatically increase storage capabilities and cut its response time without having to hire storage experts to manage the resource.
An electrical wholesale distributor that was an old HP EVA shop was reluctant to upgrade away from EVA to 3PAR, until they realized that 3PAR would make it possible for them to grow and manage more data with the same or fewer people.
Bylsma says HP’s EVA has been such a dependable storage system that some IT directors are initially reluctant to make the jump to 3PAR. “It means change, and change is difficult. I’m scared, right.” HP’s utility Peer Motion eases the transition by automatically moving data from EVA to 3PAR in the same way that VMware’s vMotion enables the movement of virtual resources between data centers.
“There’s nothing wrong with EVA,” notes Logicalis’ account exec Carmen Hoch. “It still works great. The question is: should you continue to invest in that technology or should you replace it? It becomes a math problem.”
Doing the Math
When they do the math today, more IT departments are seeing for themselves that, however comfortable the status quo may be, standing still is not an option. That doesn’t necessarily mean you have to walk away from investments in technologies that have become outdated. There are still many specific uses for those old EVA storage systems, for example.
A comprehensive converged infrastructure strategy can be implemented incrementally at a sustainable pace and cost. The key is understanding where you are now and what you need to have in place to take advantage of technical advances when the time is right for your organization. The most expensive technology is always the one you have to rip out later to change direction.
Converged infrastructure, by definition, means you have to take a holistic approach to your overall IT environment. But you can’t focus on everything all at once. The next time you have your IT managers together in a room to discuss strategy, it might be time to let storage take center stage for a change.
Many IT managers are finding that focusing specifically on implementing converged storage can accelerate, extend and enhance virtualization and literally create the space— metaphorically and physically—in which their converged infrastructure can take shape over
