NetApp - Storage Nuts & Bolts

SnapDrive for Windows 6.1 Update

I've talked about Snapdrive at least once the past 2 years, here , but for those not familiar with it,  I will provide a high level overview.

SnapDrive (aka SDW) is part of NetApp's Server Suite Software that simplifies provisioning and increases availability, reliability of application data by tightly integrating with our SnapManager solutions part of Application Manageability SW Suite. 

• SDW Key Features
  • Simplified provisioning and robust Snapshot™ management
  • On-the-fly LUN creation
  • File system consistent Snapshot copies
  • Instantaneous Backups 
  • Rapid restores
• Increased Storage Utilization and Efficiency
  • Dynamic LUN Expansion
  • Dynamic LUN Shrink with Windows Server 2008 (New)
  • Immediate creation of space efficient clones of application data
  • NTFS Block Space Reclamation for Physical and Virtual environments

As it is typical with any software product out there, with every release there are bug fixes and new functionality. The 6.1 release follows that rule as well. So what's new?

• Server Virtualization
  • Support for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V
    • Parent OS (Server Core, Full Install, Hyper-V Server)
  • VMware GuestOS
    • Allow creation of RDM LUN when OS vmdk resides in NFS Datastore
      • Drop down window lists Target VMFS Datastore(s) for Mapping file
• Infrastructure
  • IPv6 support
    • iSCSI over IPv6
    • HTTP/HTTPS over IPv6
    • SMTP notification over IPv6
  • FCoE support
• Security
  • Storage Access Control
• Storage Efficiency
  • Space Reclamation of Thin Provisioned volumes
  • Online shrink of NTFS and LUN

Hype-V Support Specifics

• LUN provisioning and Snapshot management
• Support for Windows Failover Clustering
• Support for Hyper-V quick Migration
• VSS auto-recovery
  • Backup and Restore
• Enables 3rd party VSS Requestors for Backup and Restore
• Integrates with NetApp's HyperVIBE solution
• MMC Changes
  • Displays details about Hyper-V VMs
  • Displays details about Physical Host

Storage Access Control

Without a doubt, one the areas that SDW needed to improve was Access Control. With previous releases, each volume, qtree, lun was available for SDW operations.

With the 6.1 release, this has been addressed, and now the functions of the Storage Admin can be separated from the functions of the Server admin for delegated environments. 

The new release uses an array base XML file to store access control information. Access control is applied at 3 levels, Volume, Qtree, LUN and there are 3 Access Control Types: Read, Write, and Delete.  

For every SnapDrive® operation, an Access Check is performed by reading the content of this file. Access Check verifies whether a SnapDrive user can perform an operation on a given storage system resource. This file is under the control of Storage Administrator.

Any attempt to create a LUN, a Snapshot, or restore without proper authorization  will fail and will be logged.

 

 

 

 

LUN Grow-Shrink

With this release we've combined the LUN Grow capability previously available with SnapDrive, with the new LUN Shrink operation now available with Windows Server 2008,  using a Single interface. Just drag the Slide Bar to either direction depending on what you want to accomplish.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Usability Improvements

• Select a Snapshot, click it, View the LUN(s) , and mount whichever one you'd like onto the host by selecting the "Connect Disk" option. There's no need to type the LUN Path.
• Add Volume Labels so LUNs can be identified in Disk Management and Explorer

• SnapDrive will now Auto-Populate all Microsoft Clustered Nodes

In summary, the new SDW release, enables backup and restore of Hyper-V VMs, improves upon existing VMware capabilities, addresses Storage Efficiencies by providing NTFS block reclamation for Thin Provisioned volume and LUN shrink, in Virtual and Physical environments. Additionally, it adds IPv6 support, introduces FCoE support and Storage Access Control. SDW 6.1 is scheduled to post on the NOW site within the few days.

Technorati Tags: SnapDrive,NetApp

Sneak Preview: NetApp System Manager (NSM)

For the past couple of months I've been playing with NetApp's upcoming Element Manager which is a complete re-write and eventually will replace FilerView. Since Val let the cat out of the bag, that opens the door for a blog entry.

Update - 03/06/2009: There has been an article recently posted by the Register stating that NetApp dumps FilerView in favor of the upcoming NetApp System Manager. That statement is not true. FilerView will continue to exist and be fully supported in the forseeable future.

The basic idea behind the NetApp System Manager (NSM) is to provide comprehensive management and capability of one of more arrays via a simple, easy to use, intuitive GUI.

NSM is a Windows/MMC 3.0 application that supports Discovery, Setup, FCP, iSCSI, CIFS, NFS, Deduplication, provisioning, Thin Provisioning, Snapshot and configuration management of multiple NetApp Storage Systems from a single pane of glass.

Storage Configuration Wizards

New wizards allow Admins to create quickly and easily create Aggregates, Volumes, LUNs, shares as well as a new Server Virtualization wizard that supports provisioning for VMware implementations.

Aggregate Wizard

Aggregate creation is literally a 3 click process. You can let the system select the appropriate disks based on the disk type you choose automatically, or you can select them manually. The Automatic process makes sure all disks in the aggregate are balanced across multiple back-end loops.

Volume Wizard

Creating a volume is similarly a no brainer process. Pick the aggregate you want, select the Volume size, snapshot space, %, enable thin provisioning if you'd like at the Volume level and/or enable deduplication under the Space settings tab and that's it. In there you can set the different Space Guarantees provided depending on what it is you want to accomplish.

LUN Wizard

The process of creating a LUN is pretty much out of the "How to Create a LUN for Dummies" book. Select a name for the LUN, it's size, the LUN type which corresponds to the OS type the LUN will be used by, click next, select an existing NetApp Aggregate/Volume that will contain the LUN or create a new Aggregate/Volume, select the initiators (FCP or iSCSI) that will have access to the LUN and you're done. Given the entire process is wizard driven I have personally found no way to mess up.

Server Virtualization Wizard

Given that we're seeing a large number of customer requests for NFS implementations for VMware, the NSM provides a Wizard for creating NFS Datastores. The process is similar to creating a Volume, however, the wizard will also ask for the VMkernel IP address of the ESX host(s) so the NFS volume gets exported. The dedup option is also there should you choose to take advantage of our NetApp level dedup capability.

Dashboard/System Tools

NSM provides a dashboard with notifications that are integrated with the Windows System Tray so you receive updated notifications regarding the system's health status. The Dashboard also includes it's own notification pane and performance pane. Autosupport, licensing, SNMP, and syslog can also be configured.

NSM will also be supported for the IBM N-Series system. The product will become available in the next few months, in the mean time it will soon become available to the NetApp Beta Community as a download for testing. We'd love to hear your feedback!!!

Technorati Tags: NetApp,NSM,NetApp System Manager

SPEC SFS 2008: The Benefit of the Performance Acceleration Module

Back in August I posted an entry regarding NetApp's Performance Acceleration Module (PAM). To summarize, the PAM card is a 16GB DRAM based read cache integrated with ONTAP that shipped around the middle of 2008. Depending on the platform, up to 5 modules can be installed for a maximum of 80GB of intelligent read cache.

The caching policies implemented as part of ONTAP in conjunction with the usage of the PAM(s) are designed to discern random from sequential reads and hold on to these blocks in cache in order to minimize back-end disk reads which can add latency.

In that article, I also said that an additional PAM benefit is that it can, potentially, provide significant reduction in terms of  the number of disks and shelves to be deployed in order to support the same application(s), thus reducing costs, while providing great response times.

Today, we announced results using the new SPEC SFS 2008 Benchmark  to test 3 configurations. For more on the Specifics of the SPEC SFS 2008 Benchmark, Mike Eisler has a couple of great posts here and here.

The individual benchmarks results can be be found below:

• FAS3140 + 224 15k RPM FC Disks
• FAS3140 + 112 15k RPM FC Disks + 2 PAM Modules (16GB each)
• FAS3140 + 112 7.2k RPM SATA Disks + 2 PAM Modules (16GB each)

However, thru the good work of a co-league of mine, the results from the 3 configurations have been summarized on the below chart:

 

Based on the specific results the conclusion one can easily arrive to is that:

• SATA is a viable option ,given that it is possible to increase storage capacity by 75%, reduce disks by 50% and still achieve highly acceptable levels of performance. 
• Improve response times, by 35% using FC drives while reducing the number of drives by 50%

Starting with DataONTAP 7.2.6.1, we've provided the ability thru the collection of Predictive Cache Statistics (PCS) to determine whether specific workloads will benefit from the deployment of PAM modules and with what significance.

 

Technorati Tags: Performance Acceleration Module,PAM,NetApp SPEC SFS 2008

Performance Acceleration Module (PAM)

Along with the introduction of the new FAS3100 series arrays  a couple of months ago, NetApp also made an announcement regarding a Performance Acceleration Module (PAM).

Since i haven't  seen any of the NetApp bloggers discussing it, although I may have missed it, I figured you'd probably find it more interesting than hearing a story about how every time I go on vacation I lose my luggage.

So what is a PAM?

The PAM offers a new way to optimize the performance of a NetApp storage system by improving Throughput and Latency while reducing the number of disk  spindles/shelves required as well as power, cooling and rack space requirements .

 

VMware over NetApp NFS: A Customer's Testimonial

A while back, in a previous blog entry, I've explained the benefits of implementing VMware over NFS on NetApp. That particular entry received almost 9500 hits in a single day. That, by itself, shows the high interest folks have in this capability, and understandably so, if one were to weigh the pros and the cons of such implementation.

In fact, we have not been alone in suggesting that NFS in VMware environments make a lot of sense, you can find other entries like this one here.

The fact of life is that Virtual Machines are files, and NAS protocols are designed to manage files. So why complicate things?

We can sit down and debate all day about the performance of FC vs NFS vs iSCSI but the reality is that in typical VMware implementations you'll be hard pressed to tell the difference.

Where FC typically gets deployed is in environments that already have available infrastructure components (i.e FC switch ports/HBAs).

Smaller businesses, tend to gravitate towards iSCSI implementations, typically because they do not want to deal with the complexity FC brings, as well as, because of lack of IT expertise.

But what if you're a "big house" and have considerable FC and NAS investments? What we're seeing is that these folks tend to prefer NFS as the protocol of choice.

In fact we have customers that have migrated their VMware enviroments from FC running on 3rd party disk arrays, to NetApp NFS implementations.  One such customer has posted his thoughts of such implementation on NetApp and the compelling value proposition. 

NetApp to acquire Onaro

For those of you who may not have been reading the newswire today, NetApp announced an agreement to acquire Onaro. For those not familiar with Onaro I'll give a brief overview of who Onaro is, what they do and their value proposition.

Upon hearing about this acquisition today I got very excited since I've been familiar with Onaro for the past 3 years and have been one of the cheerleaders of this company's solutions for some time.

Who's Onaro?

Onaro's a leading provider of Storage Service Management software based in Boston with an R&D facility in Israel. Over the years they've accumulated an impressive list of customers comprised of the "Who's Who" of the Fortune 50. In addition, they have made it onto the Gartner magic quadrant as one of the leading visionaries in 2007 and captured the "Best in show" award at VMWorld 2007 for their VMware capabilities.

What does Onaro do?

Onaro extends Data center automation to storage by providing:

• Real-time heterogeneous reporting without agents from the entire storage infrastrucure
• Application and Service level centric views and service quality reporting
• Support for IT processes such as built, manage, run, optimize, chargebacks
• Support for storage management decisions based on actionable data for:
  • Root Cause analysis - Every change is logged and analyzed
  • Troubleshooting - Track changes quickly to identify and rectify issue
  • Capacity Planning - Continuous reporting with trending and tiering information
  • Performance - Switch & array performance with built-in detection of service quality violations
  • Availability -
  • Server & Storage Utilization  - Identify underutilized resources
  • Server Virtualization  - Strong VMware integration and identification of hosts as server virtualization candidates
  • ITIL - Impact prediction prior to implementation
  • Audit & Compliance - Log all changes to environment with searchable database
  • Consolidation & Migration- Address issues prior to migration and pre-assess impact of change.

  Onaro's key features

• Unobtrusive, agentless discovery and reporting of heterogeneous storage environments
• Scalable architecture with rapid deployment
• Continuous monitoring and logging of all changes made to the environment
• Service path creation from applications to storage and correlation of infrastructure to logical devices
• Correlation and management of storage devices in a server virtualization environment with Cross-Domain visibility
• Continuous monitoring for reporting and management
• Deployment validation based on  Best Practices
• Quick identification of applications that could be migrated to lower storage tiers
• Validation of pre-migration plans based on "What-If" scenarios
• Monitoring and logging of all changes during migration
• Monitoring and reporting of post migration storage service level delivery

Here's an illuminating post from John McArthur (ex-IDC), President and co-founder of Walden Technology Partners on the Onaro acquisition.

I'll be writing more about Onaro in the near future as Onaro's product suite goes way beyond your typical SRM solution and addresses trends that require a different approach and one that does not primarily revolve around file level management.

What's the NPIV benefit again?

For those who are not familiar with NPIV (N_Port ID Virtualization), let me give you a short summary. Basically, NPIV is the ability for a physical N_Port to carry multiple Virtual Ports IDs using a point-to-point connection.

Something similar called Multi-ID also accomplishes the same thing using a Loop topology. In fact, we used this early on with the FAS270 systems for FC configurations.

NPIV is seen as a "simplification" step in server Virtualization deployments with some of the benefits touted as providing Higher Availability, Lower Total cost of ownership, QoS etc.

While NPIV has the potential to provide some benefits, such as the ability to replace HBAs seamlessly, at least in theory, since the Physical HBA WWNs should not be tied to Zoning and LUN masking (this is not true for ESX with this release), it also increases the headaches associated with zoning, lun masking and can create management nightmares.

First of all, NPIV with ESX server requires RDM. That means that for each LUN mapped to a VM, you will need to configure separate switch zones as you would typically do with physical servers and zone every physical path to the VM.

Because the physical HBA and the storage ports must be visible to the VMkernel, you will end up with at least 2 zones called "control" and "working" zone: 

Zone 1 - "working zone" will include:

• The VM's VPORTs
• The storage Target port for the LUN accessed by the VM

Zone 2  - "control zone: will include:

• The physical HBA ports on the server
• The storage Target Ports

The above is a  mess and in dynamic server virtualization environments where VMs are commissioned and de-commissioned regularly, is not going to fly. How would like to call your storage admin several times a day or a week to modify zones? What if it takes several days for a new zoning request to be satisfied given that in some environments changes can only occur at specific times during a week or month.

One of the benefits of NPIV is QoS since some vendors apply QoS policies at the port level to limit IOPs and Bandwidth. We've chosen a different path and apply QoS policies via FlexShare at the Volume level itself so to NetApp arrays it provides no benefit.

Another NPIV benefit mentioned was the ability to track storage traffic per VM. Well, if your tracking tools use the Fabric as the point of discovery then that'll help but given that we're talking about RDM here and the whole LUN is assigned to a specific VM, disk array vendors are able to  track I/O, reads/writes, IOPs, latency, KB/s, MB/s etc, on a per LUN basis on the array side. That's representative of the VM's I/O performance.

Yet another NPIV benefit cited was the ability to track VM storage capacity utilization using the WWPNs. Again, if your tracking tools use the fabric to do this then this will help but you don't need NPIV to accomplish this. In fact this is already been done by SRM tools today without using NPIV.

Lastly I've also seen a statement that NPIV with VM zoning provides application isolation. Fooey...ESX server already guarantees VM isolation and thus application isolation.

All in all, NPIV using RDM seems to me of little value and it appears to complicate things much more than it simplifies them. In fact, I don't see simplification anywhere. My view is that it'll help more the SRM vendors that are dependent on the fabric for discovery and reporting rather that the Administrators.