IBM Systems and Technology IBM XIV White Paper System Storage

IBM XIV Storage System and VMware:

A perfect fit

Learn more about the IBM XIV® Storage System at:

ibm.com/xiv

© Copyright IBM Corporation 2012

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Table of Contents Overview...............................................................................................................4 XIV core advantages.............................................................................................4

The power of XIV grid architecture ............................................................................ 5 Exceptional capacity utilization .................................................................................. 5 Easy thin-provisioning trailblazer ............................................................................... 5 Simple management .................................................................................................... 6

Uniform hardware that promotes predictability .................................................... 6 Quality of service ...................................................................................................... 7 Stellar IBM XIV graphical user interface............................................................... 7 Maintenance? What maintenance?....................................................................... 7 Automated space reclamation for improved consolidation ................................ 8 Autonomous data recovery..................................................................................... 8

XIV Gen3 SSD caching for a performance boost ................................................... 8 Host-mapped QoS ....................................................................................................... 8 Easy acquisition, lightning-fast deployment ............................................................. 8 XIV storage: A random I/O performer ....................................................................... 9

Introduction: XIV integration with VMware ..........................................................10 XIV-VMware optimized use cases ......................................................................13

Increased vSphere performance and scalability (VAAI) ....................................... 13 VMware storage architecture ................................................................................ 13 VAAI internals ..........................................................................................................14 Customer value........................................................................................................ 15 Effort, risk and cost ................................................................................................. 17 For more information .............................................................................................. 17

Site recovery with automated storage failover (using the storage replication adaptor)......................................................................................................................... 17

Overview ................................................................................................................... 17 Customer value........................................................................................................18 Effort, risk and cost .................................................................................................19

XIV storage management in vCenter.......................................................................19 Overview ...................................................................................................................19 Customer value....................................................................................................... 20 For more information ..............................................................................................22

Storage visibility (vCenter plug-in, VASA) ...............................................................22 Self-service vCenter-operated storage provisioning (vCenter plug-in)...............22

Easy to learn ............................................................................................................22 Effective low-risk delegation to VMware administrators ...................................23

Virtual machine backup and recovery......................................................................23 Simplified backup and recovery management ...................................................23 Command line interface ........................................................................................ 24 Single-pass backup................................................................................................ 24

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Flexible recovery options .......................................................................................25 Effective backup/restore progress monitoring and historical reporting.......... 26 Sophisticated XIV snapshots to minimize overhead ........................................ 26

Customer success stories...................................................................................26 Conclusion ..........................................................................................................26 Appendix A - Further reading..............................................................................28

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Overview The IBM XIV™ Storage System has revolutionized the enterprise storage landscape with quantum-leap architecture that puts to rest the traditional trade-off between performance and functionality on the one hand and total cost of ownership (TCO) on the other. XIV storage delivers consistently high enterprise-level performance—with hard-to-beat functionality and reliability—to almost any imaginable enterprise use-case or cloud implementation, and at a much lower TCO than other enterprise products.1 Propelled by its revolutionary architecture, with a smart solid state drive (SSD) cache memory boost, the XIV Gen3 model pushes the performance envelope. The IBM XIV Storage System offers a compelling storage solution for customers deployed in VMware and other virtualized environments—the large majority of which are connected to VMware ESX or ESXi servers. The highly developed XIV and VMware solution, in particular, offers maximal benefit from storage integration with VMware. This paper is geared toward IT decision makers, storage administrators and VMware administrators, and offers a complete high-level walkthrough of XIV storage and VMware integration. The walkthrough begins inside the XIV system and expands outwards, covering:

Core advantages that XIV storage brings to any deployment How the XIV architecture adds exceptional value to VMware

environments How the IBM and VMware partnership continuously invests in making

XIV and VMware work better together Deep VMware integration – specific XIV features tailored for VMware

XIV core advantages At the root of almost every advantage that XIV brings to VMware deployments is its unique architecture and features. This section briefly describes XIV core characteristics. Note: VMware administrators, if you opt to skip this section, here is one takeaway: with XIV, your storage administrators can provide consistent tier-1 storage performance and quick change-request cycles, because they need do so little planning and maintenance to keep performance levels high and storage provisioned. Note the reference hyperlinks throughout and in Appendix A of this paper. 1 International Technology Group Management Brief: Cost/Benefit Case for IBM XIV Storage Comparing Cost Structures for IBM XIV and EMC VMAX/EMC VMAXe Systems

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The power of XIV grid architecture XIV storage is a grid in a box. It consists of six to 15 modules that symmetrically distribute caching, processors, memory access and spindle access, and parallelize storage area network (SAN) connectivity across all interface modules. The grid design, a core element of the architecture, stripes data across all modules and spindles, incorporating data redundancy, so all I/Os are physically distributed in parallel to all modules and spindles. The design creates a powerfully load-balanced, high-utilization execution that enables industry-leading, consistent and predictable performance with no hotspots—without human-intervention or maintenance. The XIV grid architecture also enables seamless, autonomous and blazingly fast fault recovery. For instance, recovery from a disk failure takes minutes—instead of the hours typical of traditional storage.

Exceptional capacity utilization Because XIV delivers consistently high performance independent of capacity, storage administrators do not need to manage or hoard capacity reserves for the sake of performance. Using XIV storage, it is absolutely normal to reach 90% capacity utilization without noticing any performance degradation, whereas traditional storage architectures typically require a 60% utilization safe zone to accommodate space reshuffling and avoid tiering policy violations. The manual space allocation approach, storage hoarding, and tiering methodologies of traditional storage systems can often leave a fair amount of unused and orphaned space—which translates to inefficient use of expensive storage resources. Sophisticated XIV storage distribution, space reclamation, and thin provisioning enable a new level of enterprise storage capacity efficiency and low TCO.

Easy thin-provisioning trailblazer XIV provides an extremely agile and internally monitored thin provisioning function for optimizing utilization and consolidation in virtualized environments. With thin provisioning, the XIV system presents a fully sized logical unit (LUN) to the hosts yet allocates only the physical capacity that is actually necessary. VMware administrators can readily provision more capacity as needed to accommodate natural data growth and minimize the risk of running out of physical space. Users manage the thin-provisioned capacity using XIV storage pools that track the allocated logical and physical space against actual usage. In elastic virtualized environments, where data stores are added and deleted dynamically, XIV thin provisioning allows VMware data stores to take up minimal space when initialized.

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The organization as a whole benefits from thin provisioning, which can defer storage purchases, allowing space to be allocated while avoiding the capacity spend until truly required.

Figure 1: Clear and simple monitoring shows capacity across storage pools -- thin provisioning characteristics (soft and hard provisioning) as well as actual data usage Despite the clear advantages of reduced storage management and improved cost savings, thin provisioning deployed in traditional storage systems typically has downsides that cause IT teams to curb its use: the need to manage the inherent risk of capacity over-commitment, the risk of performance degradation, and the challenge of tracking capacity. With XIV, performance degradation issues are removed from the picture and capacity can be monitored easily, enabling storage administrators to focus on usage trending as a natural storage management risk in meeting needs.

Simple management

Uniform hardware that promotes predictability IBM XIV storage is ideally designed to target the storage requirements dictated by high-end enterprise environments. The system is turnkey, with negligible set-up and configuration demands and storage provisioning in just a few clicks. The highly parallelized, evenly utilized XIV grid architecture and effective distributed caching enable XIV to use very large, uniform, industry-standard high-density disk drives without sacrificing performance and with practically no administration overhead. In contrast, traditional storage architectures burdened by tier

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management overhead (such as ongoing cross-tier data movement) can cause unpredictable performance—which XIV administrators do not need to contend with.

Quality of service To drive differential quality of service (QoS) for clouds and other environments, the simple host-based XIV Gen3 QoS feature controls I/O distribution by categorizing hosts into four levels of service. Both with and without QoS, XIV administrators can focus on straightforward capacity planning and monitoring, without the overhead of maintaining storage tiers, trending performance degradation, managing hotspots, or tracking I/O-intensive internal data migrations.

Stellar IBM XIV graphical user interface The XIV GUI consistently gets high scores from users and analysts, who see it as a game-changer in storage management and a new benchmark in the industry. In fact, the XIV GUI has influenced the design of the browser-based GUI now available in other IBM storage portfolio products. XIV ease of use and user-oriented flexibility extend to mobile devices, including tablets and phones; the IBM XIV Mobile Dashboard enables up-to-the-minute XIV monitoring from anywhere, at any time, using the Apple iPad and iPhone. The inherent ease-of-use of its management software makes XIV one of the simplest storage products in its class to master. Seasoned storage administrators rave about the speed and simplicity in training new administrators and promoting independence.2,3

Maintenance? What maintenance? The autonomic XIV architecture leaves very little to maintain. With continuously steady high performance across the board, powerfully balanced utilization and evenly distributed physical usage over identical drives, the logistical stress of maintaining storage is simply gone. Note that XIV system performance does not rely on automated maintenance either. The system uses mathematical processing and distribution algorithms that make extreme performance fluctuations inherently rare.

2 “The interface is simple and hides all the complexity from the user.”, Tom DeJuneas, IT Manager, Coca-Cola Bottling Company Consolidated 3 “The solution’s unparalleled ease of management and efficiency translate into lower operational costs.”, Joe Jagodich, Vice President and CIO, EllisDon

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Automated space reclamation for improved consolidation An automated XIV process increases available physical capacity by recapturing and consolidating space available for reclamation. The process converts ranges of unused space (populated with zeroes), reclaiming space -- and with no noticeable impact on performance.

Autonomous data recovery Hardware faults happen, and planning for them is just plain sensible. XIV storage features an early warning system, designed to detect problematic hardware automatically, and alert administrators and support personnel before the hardware fails. When worse comes to worst and a physical drive or whole module fails, XIV storage minimizes risk, anxiety, and administrator involvement by rebuilding the disk from data stored redundantly across the grid—at groundbreaking recovery speed. A disk drive is recovered in minutes versus the hours required by traditional storage. The data center can then follow up with a non-urgent, seamless hardware replacement, in which the data is immediately re-balanced across the XIV grid, again, with no noticeable system impact. For customers using the XIV event feature, the recovery process even automatically generates a service request for hardware replacement, further reducing administrative overhead. Except for overall monitoring, and keeping watch on the recovery process, when necessary, XIV storage administrators are freed up for other priority tasks.

XIV Gen3 SSD caching for a performance boost XIV Gen3 architecture offers the option of using SSDs as a random-read caching layer across the XIV grid. Adding SSDs is a simple matter of plug and play—XIV automatically puts the added capacity into use without manual configuration. Deploying XIV SSD caching can significantly elevate the performance of an entire machine.

Host-mapped QoS With the simple yet effective XIV QoS feature, administrators can stratify storage performance priorities by assigning VMware hosts to differentiated performance levels. Administrators can place hosts in one of four QoS groups; each group is configured to limit its hosts by an aggregate maximum of IOPS and an aggregate maximum bandwidth (MB per second). Unassigned hosts remain unlimited.

Easy acquisition, lightning-fast deployment Inherent XIV simplicity kicks in upon acquisition, in the form of pricing and deployment that are among the easiest and fastest in the high-end storage market. XIV system software is all-inclusive, replete with the GUI, advanced functions, and host attachment kits, making licensing simple and transparent.

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This straightforward approach is designed to eliminate procurement limitations, hassles, and delays. Here are the easy steps for getting an XIV system up and running: Purchase. After defining storage requirements, simply choose the drive size (2 or 3 terabytes for XIV Gen3) and number of modules (6-15). Together, these two factors determine the total capacity. The rest of the hardware is included in the box and does not need to be configured or ordered separately, a convenience that makes complexity and compromised storage needs a thing of the past. A full set of advanced functions, including thin provisioning, snapshots, and mirroring, are provided with the XIV management software at no extra charge. Take delivery. After taking delivery, all you need do is: connect. You are now ready to provision high-end storage service. The whole process can be as short as a few hours; allocating just one day should be plenty of time. Migrate data. Connect your new XIV system to your servers and your legacy storage array to the XIV system. The XIV system will start seamlessly migrating your data in the background, with unnoticeable performance impact. Go live. Start using XIV storage in production. Expect to hear comments like, “What have you done to the system? Job times have halved!” Later. Add connections, modules or SSD cache to scale seamlessly. Take advantage of additional software functionality at no extra charge. Upgrade. Install XIV microcode upgrades seamlessly, with no downtime or noticeable performance impact. Forget. No more complex configurations with risky results. Recall the old days when it once took weeks from hardware haul-in to usage. Throw away individual drive layouts and complex tier configurations. Forget about downtime, complex planning for future expansions and upgrades, and complicated licensing constraints.

XIV storage: A random I/O performer The key business driver for server virtualization is hardware consolidation. It is not uncommon to find dozens of workload processes on a single VMware host. More often than not, due to virtualization, a VMware host produces a near-random pattern of consolidated I/O, even if the individual guest operating systems produce mostly sequential I/O. Unfortunately, highly random I/O requires frequent direct spindle access, incurring heavy processing and burdening the storage array.

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Compared to typical storage architectures, the XIV grid handles random I/O better in several ways:

Distributed cache keeps random I/O away from spindles: XIV distributes cache among the modules, providing more bandwidth and cache processing per memory unit. This smarter cache processing design propels more data in and out of cache, keeping random I/O away from the spindles, yielding more effective, powerful data processing compared to centralized-cache architectures.

Extreme parallelism for extreme multi-tasking: The I/O is processed in parallel by multiple modules (6-15) and is always uniformly distributed among all the underlying (72-180) spindles.

Introduction: XIV integration with VMware Customers appreciate XIV storage for the benefits of its unique architecture, including its ability to perform well with random I/O in heterogeneous environments. In addition, XIV storage boasts deep, collaboration-based integration with VMware. Long-term top-tier IBM and VMware partnership As a trusted VMware Technology Alliance Partner, IBM offers one of the world’s leading comprehensive suites of differentiating solutions for VMware users. IBM, a longstanding VMware collaborator, is one of the few vendors co-developing storage integration with the next version of VMware. The IBM XIV Storage System is at the forefront of that development, installed at the VMware Reference Architecture Lab, and actively contributing to the development, testing and release of progressive VMware features and robust IBM storage solutions. VMware vSphere exposes multiple integration points, particularly for storage empowerment. A brief description of XIV integration with VMware is included here, with more detail in the following section:

1. vSphere Storage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI) XIV VAAI support significantly increases the vSphere consolidation capabilities. It allows customers to easily apply VMware’s best storage practices by offloading storage tasks to XIV, helping eliminate unnecessary virtual machine (VM) lockdown, boost performance and deliver better business continuity.

2. vSphere Storage APIs for Storage Awareness (VASA) The IBM Storage Provider for VMware VASA enables vSphere to monitor and automate XIV storage-related operations, such as Storage Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) management functions. The IBM VASA Provider provides VMware with information about storage topology, capabilities, and state, as well as events and alerts.

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3. vCenter Server Plug-in IBM plug-ins offer enhanced management functionality: The IBM vCenter plug-in (IBM Storage Management Console for

VMware vCenter) provides an option for pool-level, storage-administrator-controlled delegation of storage provisioning tasks to VMware administrators. Working within vCenter, the VMware administrator can easily create, map and modify XIV LUNs on demand, regular or thin-provisioned, limited only by the capacity allocated via the delegated pools. The storage administrator is freed from ad hoc provisioning, and benefits from more realistic storage consumption tracking and more accurate capacity planning.

The IBM® Tivoli® Storage FlashCopy® Manager Data Protection for VMware vCenter plug-in provides scheduled datastore-level XIV hardware snapshots. XIV storage offers datastore-level snapshots in conjunction with Tivoli FlashCopy Manager (see below).

4. vStorage APIs for Data Protection (VADP):

IBM Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager integrates hardware snapshot management and synchronizes the backup process with vSphere, reducing backup times and promoting backup consistency and recoverability. IBM Tivoli® Storage Manager for Virtual Environments performs block-level incremental backups of VMware guests using VADP. The IBM TSM Data Protection for VMware Recovery Agent mounts snapshots to enable file-level and instant volume restores.

5. Site Recovery Adapter for VMware Site Recovery Manager:

The IBM XIV Adapter for VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) enables VMware administrators to automate XIV failover in sync with VMware SRM failover.

6. Pluggable Storage Architecture (PSA): PSA allows storage vendors to directly manage the VMware ESX storage I/O path. As a best practice, the XIV system uses native storage I/O path subsystems for every platform, including VMware; therefore, with IBM XIV storage, PSA integration and a special multipath driver are not necessary.

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Figure 2: XIV integration points with VMware Deep XIV storage integration with VMware is provided at no additional charge, as part of IBM XIV licensing. Integration works either out of the box, such as VAAI with vSphere 5.0, or with simple software plug-ins or drivers. Optional, separately-licensed Tivoli products provide additional VMware data protection integration. The following section describes each XIV-VMware integration point in depth in terms of its applicable customer use and benefit.

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XIV-VMware optimized use cases

Increased vSphere performance and scalability (VAAI) XIV storage is VAAI-capable out of the box. Beginning with VMware vSphere version 5.0, ESX hosts automatically detect XIV machine VAAI capability, adopting it by default. To utilize VAAI with vSphere 4.1, simply install the IBM Storage Device Driver for VMware VAAI on ESX servers. Using VAAI-capabilities, XIV customers can increase their ESX density and improve vSphere performance without adding hardware. These benefits include:

Adding guests on any ESX host without impacting other guest performance

Boosting guest performance by adding virtual resources Using larger (thus fewer) XIV volumes to create datastores Introducing more guests to existing datastores

VMware storage architecture SCSI is a standard storage command and control protocol for block devices. A vSphere datastore is the VMware storage model for block (SCSI) storage. A Virtual Machine Disk File (VMDK) is the image file of a virtual machine (VM) disk. Each datastore presents a Virtual Machine File System (VMFS), which contains VMDK files, to VMware. VMware allocates storage space for the datastore from one or more selected LUNs that are mapped to the ESX hosts.

Figure 3: The relationship between XIV LUNs and VMware datastores

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VAAI internals To comply with VAAI requirements, XIV storage (a SCSI device) applies an additional set of standard SCSI interfaces. VMware vSphere v5.0 and later versions automatically detect VAAI-capable storage devices and can use these interfaces as follows: Full Copy (XCOPY)

The XIV system copies a specified source range of blocks to a location in a specified target LUN.

Block Zeroing (WRITE_SAME)

XIV wipes out a range of blocks with zeroes.

ATOMIC TEST AND SET (ATS)

XIV locks a specific range of blocks and writes to that range exclusively.

These commands may seem very basic; to appreciate the impact of VAAI, see the following real VMware use cases and how they compare with and without VAAI. Use case 1: Storage vMotion datastore move Move a 40 GB guest VMDK from datastore A to data store B. Without VAAI With VAAI The VMware ESX host reads 40 GB of data from datastore A and writes 40 GB of data to datastore B. During the operation, 80 GB of data tax the total I/O bandwidth, a significant portion of the CPU cycles is allocated to control the operation, and a significant amount of memory is temporarily allocated to hold the copy buffers and caching.

The VMware ESX host sends a series of Full Copy commands to XIV storage, specifying various block ranges that need to be moved. Data moves internally within the XIV system, with negligible ESX CPU and I/O tax, and no memory tax. The operation completes much faster due to extremely fast XIV I/O internal connectivity (XIV Gen3 uses InfiniBand connectors) and parallel grid processing.

Summary: With VAAI Full Copy command, Storage vMotion is much faster and has negligible I/O, processor, and memory impact. The ESX host is insignificantly impacted by the operation. Use case 2: Create a new 40 GB VM As part of the VM initialization process, the VMware host wipes out the designated VM space.

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Without VAAI With VAAI The host writes 40 GB of zeroes to the designated space. During this relatively long operation, 40 GB of zeroes tax the total I/O bandwidth.

When the administrator chooses eager-zero thick provisioning, the host sends a WRITE_SAME command, which has practically no I/O impact. XIV architecture stores zeroed segment information as metadata, barely consuming any storage space. The operation completes instantly.

Summary: With the VAAI WRITE_SAME command, creating a new VM is much faster and has negligible I/O, CPU and memory impact. The ESX host is essentially not impacted by the operation. Use case 3: Powering up a VM To power up a guest VM, the VMFS file system requires exclusive access to the guest VMDK file. Without VAAI With VAAI The VMware ESX host uses SCSI reservation commands (PERSISTENT RESERVE IN and PERSISTENT RESERVE OUT) to obtain exclusive access to the whole LUN on which the particular VMDK data resides. As long as exclusive access is required, VMDK files that happen to be stored on the same LUN cannot be accessed, even if they are not related to the operation. As a result, applications using the unrelated VMs experience unnecessary latency.

The VMware ESX host uses SCSI ATOMIC TEST AND SET command to obtain exclusive access to the exact block range that the guest VMDK occupies. By giving access to VMDK files that share the LUN but reside on blocks outside the exclusive range, XIV prevents them from being impacted by the operation. These applications proceed as usual, with no latency.

Summary: With the VAAI ATOMIC TEST AND SET command, powering up a VM does not have any I/O impact on other VMs. Note: The same benefit applies to the additional cases: creating a template from a VM, deploying a VM from a template, migrating a VM, growing a VMware thin-provisioned VMDK file, and modifying or deleting a datastore.

Customer value VAAI can help improve the responsiveness of a virtualized environment and consolidate more application workloads within a single infrastructure.

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Consolidation With the key benefit of virtualized infrastructure being server consolidation, the VAAI-capable XIV infrastructure enables customers to apply VMware best practices without compromise, consolidating more without causing latency or increasing risk. With VAAI-enabled XIV storage, customers can:

Use larger LUNs to create or expand datastores Use fewer LUNs to create larger datastores, simplifying storage

management Increase the number of VMs in a datastore Potentially increase the number of VMs running on a host or cluster Migrate VMs between data stores without host impact Copy VMs and create templates without host impact Create new VMs without host impact

Performance VMware does not provide formal benchmarks to measure VAAI improvements. However, VAAI-enabled XIV performance improvements are very pronounced and measurable on individual operations. For example, it is easy to demonstrate the time and resource savings of identical VM migrations before and after VAAI is applied. VMware can be configured to disable individual VAAI capabilities, which can be useful for this type of lab testing.

Figure 4: Field examples of performance improvements with VAAI Full Copy (Source: VMware vSphere 5 and IBM XIV Gen3 end-to-end virtualization - lab report) The overall performance improvement with VAAI depends on several factors; the impact is generally greater with high-density clusters or hosts. The performance increment also hinges on the performance baseline, including raw network strength and host configuration.

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Effort, risk and cost From IBM XIV Storage System Software version 10.2.4 and above, VAAI

default. For VMware version 4.1 only, the IBM Storage e VAAI is required on each host. Starting from VMware

, go to: : http://www.vmware.com/products/vstorage-apis-for-

capability is enabled by Device Driver for VMwarV5, VAAI requires no driver software installation. The XIV VAAI implementation is based on standard SCSI commands, certified byVMware and supported by IBM.

For more information For more information on VMware

VMware VAAI pagearray-integration/overview.html

here Search for updated XIV VAAI information on ibm.com .

torage failover (using the storage

overy Manager (SRM), the VMware native disaster duct, is tightly integrated with VMware vSphere. Customers use the lly automate failover from a primary (protected) site to a secondary

Site recovery with automated sreplication adaptor)

Overview VMware vCenter Site Recrecovery proproduct to fu(recovery) site. SRM provides an elaborate management application for creating, testing and executing failover sequences, helping simulate disaster recovery prior to an actual event. Starting with VMware v5.0, Site Recovery Manager also automates failback to the primary site.

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Figure 5: SRM/XIV replication including failover and failback End-to-end failover and failback automation includes coordinated storage and server failover. The Site Recovery Manager architecture enables the integration of storage products via a third-party storage replication adapter (SRA), such as the IBM XIV Adapter for VMware vCenter SRM for the XIV storage system.

Customer value The IBM XIV Adapter for VMware vCenter SRM enhances SRM with the several capabilities, spanning configuration, failover and failback, and monitoring:

Configuration Add and remove XIV arrays from the SRM configuration Create recovery plans for XIV-based datastores Create and manage protection groups for XIV-based datastores

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Enable, disable and view the connectivity status Manage mirroring status between volumes and consistency groups

Failover and failback

Fail the operation over to the recovery site by reversing mirroring, designating the Recovery LUNs as primary for updates and mapping them to new Primary hosts.

Fail back by reversing mirroring from the recovery site XIV arrays to the protected site XIV arrays.

Test

Create and use XIV snapshots of target mirror LUNs in failover testing without interrupting the replication.

Create backup LUN snapshot replication points before they become mirroring targets and are overwritten (applies to both failover and failback scenarios)

Perform cleanup (delete snapshots) Monitor and manage

Query XIV array details and connectivity health status Detect and display paired XIV arrays (e.g., mirrored relationships)

Effort, risk and cost The IBM XIV Adapter for VMware vCenter SRM is certified by VMware and supported by IBM. It is available for download at no additional charge and installed once on the SRM server.

XIV storage management in vCenter

Overview VMware vCenter plug-in architecture allows software and hardware vendors to infuse management support for their products directly into vSphere’s management server and expose the storage management user interface via the vSphere client. The IBM Storage Management Console (vCenter plug-in) was developed for both VMware administrators and IBM storage administrators to resolve cross-management issues while supporting proven management boundaries. The plug-in manages XIV storage as well as other IBM storage products.

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Figure 6: Cloud, VMware, backup, and storage administrators share a common user interface via VMware vCenter

Customer value

Better storage visibility Out of the box, VMware vSphere offers limited storage management visibility; it can display standard meta-data, but cannot display advanced, native storage information. The vCenter plug-in enhances IBM storage visibility by displaying, via a native IBM storage tab, detailed LUN information in context when viewing datacenters, clusters, hosts or VMs. For each datastore, VMware administrators can see a quick list of associated LUNs, with native IBM storage attributes. This detail includes a capacity usage graph, volume name, pool name, serial number, consistency group, and snapshot and mirroring information.

Figure 7: IBM vCenter Plug-in screen showing XIV-stored LUNs

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The main plug-in tab also provides a global view of the related IBM storage pools and their capacities, including the pools dedicated to VMware and their usage statistics. This information allows VMware administrators to independently assess capacity status and plan for storage needs.

Figure 8: XIV vCenter plug-in display of LUN detail and storage pools

Self-provisioning VMware administrators typically depend on storage administrators to create and map new LUNs to VMware before they can safely create datastores or raw device mappings (RDMs). Optionally, with the XIV vCenter Plug-in, storage administrators can delegate the creation of LUNs, in dedicated pools, to VMware administrators. Storage provisioning by VMware administrators offers several benefits:

Allocation a simple matter of setting a quota for a pool by the storage administrator. Without the plug-in, the best practice is to create and map a number of LUNs ahead of time, which requires a script and/or repeat maintenance effort.

Coordinating and setting pool-capacity quota is a one-minute action, with no scripts and no shelved LUNs.

There is no need to create LUNs ahead of time, which eases up repetitive requests and delays for incremental capacity.

Capacity is flexible. LUNs and datastores can be increased on the fly in vCenter.

The industry-leading, forward-looking XIV storage design carries over naturally to the vCenter plug-in. Combining the plug-in ease of use and operational efficiency with the automation applied to every LUN created on the XIV storage system, the

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virtual infrastructure assures that storage provisioned from vCenter will be optimally placed in the storage configuration—avoiding hotspots, disk contention and misaligned configurations.

For more information -> View the IBM Storage Management Console demo. -> Download the IBM Storage Management Console for VMware vCenter. -> Read the IBM Storage Management Console User Guide.

Storage visibility (vCenter plug-in, VASA)

The IBM Storage Provider for VMware VASA is an alternative tool for viewing information about the XIV Storage System—available in vCenter, including:

Real-time disk status Real-time alerts and events Support for multiple vCenter consoles and multiple XIV Storage Systems

Figure 9: vSphere client view with powerful XIV storage information surfaced via VASA

Adding vSphere 5 VASA support delivers actionable storage insights, such as availability, alerts, and events, to VMware and cloud administrators for enhanced storage infrastructure management.

Self-service vCenter-operated storage provisioning (vCenter plug-in)

In addition to VASA visibility, the XIV Storage System vCenter Plug-in for vSphere 4 and vSphere 5, extends storage management to VMware-administrator-enabled provisioning, mapping, and monitoring of replications, snapshots, and capacity.

Easy to learn The intuitive plug-in is simple to access from within vCenter Server and a breeze to learn.

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Effective low-risk delegation to VMware administrators The plug-in empowers storage administrators, leaving behind the worry of traditional storage management delegation.

Self provisioning is controlled via pools and quotas, and can be monitored continually for proactive capacity management

Self provisioning is optional only The in-balance XIV architecture ensures that VMware administrators can

not cause a hotspot

Virtual machine backup and recovery Large-scale VMware vSphere environments with hundreds or thousands of virtual machines are at high risk without a solid backup and recovery solution that complies with organizational recovery time and recovery point service level agreements. IBM offers a full suite of products that enables customers to effectively protect and recover data and manage retention while controlling costs. By integrating with the VMware data protection framework—vStorage APIs for Data Protection (VADP)—and leveraging advanced XIV storage snapshot technology, Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager (FCM) provides high-powered data protection with stellar performance and simplified management for VMware environments. VMware VADP integration is supported by vSphere 4.x and 5.x. FCM-captured XIV snapshots can be retained on the XIV system for lightning-fast, reliable restores. Customers can also exploit the powerful data protection and data reduction capabilities available through TSM-FCM integration via Tivoli Storage Manager for the Virtual Environment (TSM for VE). The wide range of integrated functionality with VMware includes content-aware backup, changed block tracking (CBT), data deduplication, progressive incremental backup, LAN-free backup, hierarchical storage management, and centrally managed policy-based administration.

Simplified backup and recovery management With Tivoli data protection functionality, organizations can empower vSphere administrators with full control over VM backup and recovery processes. The web-based FCM and TSM plug-in expands the familiar vSphere client to include a wide range of management processes, from incremental backups of individual VMs for long-term TSM storage pool retention to leveraging space-efficient XIV snapshots for high-speed full datastore backups. Snapshot retention policies can be defined separately for datastore snapshots managed by FCM and for VM backups sent to TSM.

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Figure 10: Tivoli vCenter plug-- managing backup schedules

Command line interface The IBM Tivoli Data Protection for VMware command line interface (CLI) offers a powerful common front end for Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager for VMware and Tivoli Storage Manager for Virtual Environments. The CLI can correlate backups created by FCM and TSM, combining multiple backup runs into one logical backup. It also offers a simple backup scheduler to configure recurring backup tasks. The CLI features robust custom scripting and specialized external scheduling capabilities.

Single-pass backup Through TSM and FCM, XIV backups can be scheduled or performed ad hoc. Tivoli VM backup software covers all major operating systems, so OS-specific agents are not needed.

FCM helps protect entire vSphere environments by leveraging VADP to create snapshots of LUN-level VMFS datastores with a single backup server. These snapshots restore individual virtual machine images, virtual volumes owned by a virtual machine, or individual files from a particular VM.

Integrated XIV snapshots taken in VMware by FCM promote simple recovery. When taking an XIV snapshot of a datastore in vCenter:

FlashCopy Manager initiates a VMware software snapshot of the VMs residing on the datastore through the vSphere API

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VMware snapshots can trigger application quiescence for individual virtual machines, helping ensure application backup consistency

FlashCopy Manager determines the XIV LUNs that are associated with the datastore

FlashCopy Manager invokes a hardware snapshot, creating a persistent copy of the virtual disks and associated VMware snapshots

The hardware snapshot is retained for restore until specified for deletion

With optional TSM integration through TSM for Virtual Environments, XIV snapshots can be mounted and virtual machine data can be moved and/or copied into TSM storage pools for long term retention, disaster recovery purposes, or compliance objectives. When moving data to TSM, customers can leverage advanced data protection and data reduction capabilities from both VMware and TSM to reduce both backup size and backup time for processes such as content aware backup, changed block tracking, data deduplication, progressive incremental backup, LAN-free backup, hierarchical storage management and centrally managed policy based administration.

Flexible recovery options Customers can choose multiple XIV snapshot recovery options. Individual VMs can be restored from an XIV hardware snapshot of VMFS datastores or from an offloaded TSM backup—to either the original or an alternate VMFS datastore—under the original or a new name. The Tivoli vCenter plug-in presents a unified view of all available FCM- and TSM-based backups, both XIV snapshots and TSM storage pool backups. For pinpoint recovery, FCM provides the flexibility to selectively restore one or more individual virtual disks, without the need to restore an entire virtual machine. Individual files can be restored by attaching one or more virtual disks from a datastore snapshot to a guest VM. The TSM for Virtual Environments recovery agent accesses the migrated storage pool data directly in TSM, offering similar robust recovery options. TSM VE recovery agent applies TSM storage pool access rules, enabling authorized recovery initiation by helpdesk personnel, backup administrators or application owners.

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Effective backup/restore progress monitoring and historical reporting The FCM and TSM plug-in expands the vSphere client to drive quick and easy monitoring of in-progress backup and restore activities as well as historic reporting of past backup and recovery operations. The rich TSM monitoring and reporting functionality features summary views with detailed drill-down analysis, important backup and restore statistics, and managed-capacity reporting to facilitate effective data protection strategies and promote timely, accurate restores.

Sophisticated XIV snapshots to minimize overhead

The IBM XIV Storage System performs snapshots with virtually no overhead using redirect-on-write technology instead of the traditional latency-causing copy-on-write snapshot processing used by other vendors. Supplementing this efficiency, XIV incremental backup snapshots are optimally configured (just like primary volumes) helping ensure enterprise-class read and write performance while eliminating the need for processing and space overhead.

Customer success stories Enterprises across a range of industries leverage IBM XIV storage with VMware, achieving exceptional performance, cost-saving consolidation, and measureable results worth sharing. Below are several highlights. For a full inventory of customer case studies on XIV-VMware integration, go to the success stories area of ibm.com. EllisDon Construction Canada Tallink Shipping Estonia Wiberg Consumer products Austria Zucchetti Group Computer services Italy

Conclusion As VMware server virtualization adoption penetrates enterprises, potentially reaching the VMware projected target levels of 66 percent system virtualization by 2012,4 organizations are continuing to strategically rely on virtualization to squeeze out costs and infuse efficiency into their ever-growing IT infrastructures. Traditional storage has often been the weak link in the virtualization lifecycle, burdened with performance, agility, and complexity issues that have limited the full potential of enterprise server virtualization. 4 Business and Financial Benefits of Virtualization, VMware white paper

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The XIV storage architecture has dramatically reshaped this landscape with performance-boosting integration, a revolutionary virtualized architecture that works in synergy with highly virtualized VMware environments, and a strategic VMware alliance that keeps IBM XIV development in lock-step with emerging VMware product introductions. With the XIV system as the VMware environment storage foundation, enterprises are positioned to achieve stellar hotspot-free performance, reach unprecedented consolidation and continuity levels, and meet long-term low TCO objectives to attain the maximum from their VMware deployments.

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Appendix A - Further reading These additional documents may help further your understanding of XIV solutions for VMware: IBM XIV Storage System

IBM XIV system information center: http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/ibmxiv/r2/index.jsp

IBM XIV system pre-installation network planning guide: http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/ibmxiv/r2/topic/com.ibm.help.xiv.doc/docs/GA52-1328-04.pdf

Publications: http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/ibmxiv/r2/index.jsp XIV-VMware end-to-end virtualization

VMware vSphere 5 and IBM XIV Gen3 end-to-end virtualization lab report: ftp://public.dhe.ibm.com/common/ssi/ecm/en/tsw03122usen/TSW03122USEN.PDF

IBM XIV host attachment guide: http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/ibmxiv/r2/topic/com.ibm.help.xiv.doc/docs/IBM_XIV_HAK_1.7.1_HAG.pdf

Site Recovery Manager

Data sheet: http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/products/SRM/VMware-vCenter-Site-Recovery-Manager-with-vSphere-Replication-Datasheet.pdf

VMware SRM webpage: http://www.vmware.com/products/site-recovery-manager/

Download: http://downloads.vmware.com/d/info/infrastructure_operations_management/vmware_vcenter_site_recovery_manager/5_0

vSphere Storage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI)

VAAI overview: http://www.vmware.com/products/vstorage-apis-for-array-integration/overview.html

VAAI brochure: http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/vsphere_enterprise_datasheet.pdf

IBM Storage Device Driver for VMware VAAI installation guide: http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/ibmxiv/r2/topic/com.ibm.help.xiv.doc/docs/IBM_DD_for_VMware_VAAI_1.2.0_IG.pdf

VMware vStorage APIs for Storage Awareness (VASA)

VASA overview: http://www.vmware.com/products/datacenter-virtualization/vsphere/storage-apis-for-storage-awareness/features.html

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IBM Storage Provider for VMware VASA installation guide http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/ibmxiv/r2/topic/com.ibm.help.xiv.doc/docs/Storage_Prov_for_VMware_VASA_1.1.0_IG.pdf

VMware vStorage APIs for Data Protection

VADP Overview: http://www.vmware.com/products/vstorage-apis-for-data-protection/overview.html

IBM Storage Management Console for VMware vCenter

System download: http://www-933.ibm.com/support/fixcentral/swg/doSelectFixes?options.selectedFixes=StorageDisk-2076-IBM_Storage_Management_Console_for_VMware_vCenter-v2.5.0

User guide: http://delivery04.dhe.ibm.com/sar/CMA/SDA/02meb/1/IBM_MNG_for_VMware_VC_2.5.0_UG.pdf

http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/ibmxiv/r2/topic/com.ibm.help.xiv.doc/docs/IBM_MNG_for_VMware_VC_2.6.0_UG.pdf

Release Notes http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/ibmxiv/r2/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.help.xiv.doc/xiv_pubsrelatedinfoic.html

VMware best practices

VMware vCenter Server Performance and Best Practices: http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/vsp_41_perf_VC_Best_Practices.pdf

Performance Best Practices for VMware vSphere 4.1: http://www.vmware.com/pdf/Perf_Best_Practices_vSphere4.1.pdf

VMware Technical Resources

Technical website: http://www.vmware.com/technical-resources VMware knowledgebase website: http://kb.vmware.com

IBM Tivoli Storage Manager

Storage Manager for Virtual Environments Data Protection for VMware Installation and User's Guide: http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/tsminfo/v6r2/topic/com.ibm.itsm.ve.doc/b_ve_inst_user.pdf

IBM Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager

IBM Tivoli Storage FlashCopy Manager for VMware Installation and User's Guide: http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/tsminfo/v6r3/topic/com.ibm.itsm.fcm.vm.doc/b_fvm_guide.pdf

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© Copyright IBM Corporation 2012 Route 100 Somers, NY 10589 IBM, the IBM logo, ibm.com, FlashCopy, Tivoli and XIV are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries or both. If these and other IBM trademarked terms are marked on their first occurrence in this information with a trademark symbol (®or ™), these symbols indicate U.S. registered or common law trademarks owned by IBM at the time this information was published. Such trademarks may also be registered or common law trademarks in other countries. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the web at “Copyright and trademark information” at ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml. Microsoft, Windows, Windows NT, and the Windows logo are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. Other company, product or service names may be trademarks or service marks of others.

This document is current as of the initial date of publication and may be changed by IBM at any time. Not all offerings are available in every country in which IBM operates. The performance data and client examples cited are presented for illustrative purposes only. Actual performance results may vary depending on specific configurations and operating conditions. It is the user’s responsibility to evaluate and verify the operation of any other products or programs with IBM products and programs. THE INFORMATIONIN THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED “AS IS” WITHOUT ANYWARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WITHOUTANY WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR APARTICULAR PURPOSE AND ANY WARRANTY OR CONDITIONOF NON-INFRINGEMENT. IBM products are warranted according to the terms and conditions of the agreements under which they are provided. The client is responsible for ensuring compliance with laws and regulations applicable to it. IBM does not provide legal advice or represent or warrant that its services or products will ensure that the client is in compliance with any law or regulation.