VPLEX: INTERESTING USE CASES EMC Proven Professional Knowledge Sharing 2011 Sandeep Choudhary Puneet Goyal Infrastructure Management Associate Senior Systems Specialist – [email protected] Backup and Storage HCL Comnet [email protected] Table of Contents EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ................................................................................................................................................. 3 WHAT’S NEW IN MY GENERATION? ............................................................................................................................ 3 ABSTRACT..................................................................................................................................................................... 4 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................................................ 6 ARRAY-BASED REPLICATION WITH VPLEX ................................................................................................................... 7 USE CASE 1: BASIC ARRAY-BASED CLONES WITH VPLEX ......................................................................................... 7 USE CASE 2: ADVANCED ARRAY-BASED CLONES WITH VPLEX .............................................................................. 10 USE CASE 3: BASIC ARRAY-BASED RESTORE AND RECOVERY WITH VPLEX ........................................................... 14 USE CASE 4: ADVANCED ARRAY-BASED RESTORE WITH VPLEX............................................................................. 17 CACHE IS KING!! ......................................................................................................................................................... 21 I/O IMPLEMENTATION ........................................................................................................................................... 21 CACHE LAYERING ROLES ........................................................................................................................................ 21 CACHE COHERENCE ............................................................................................................................................... 22 META-DIRECTORY .................................................................................................................................................. 22 HOW A READ IS HANDLED ..................................................................................................................................... 23 HOW A WRITE IS HANDLED ................................................................................................................................... 24 WHAT HAPPENS WHEN CLOUDS RAIN? .................................................................................................................... 26 MANAGING THE RISK ............................................................................................................................................. 26 INCREASED DATA SECURITY ................................................................................................................................... 27 IN FUTURE, CDP USING VPLEX ................................................................................................................................... 28 DATA PROTECTION CHALLENGES .......................................................................................................................... 28 PROTECT AND RECOVER ........................................................................................................................................ 29 DATA PROTECTION OPTIONS ................................................................................................................................. 30 CONTINUOUS DATA PROTECTION WITH APPLICATION BOOKMARKS .................................................................. 31 CDP USING VPLEX .................................................................................................................................................. 31 WHAT IS THE USE OF SRM IF YOU HAVE A VPLEX? ................................................................................................... 35 GLOSSARY .................................................................................................................................................................. 37 Disclaimer: The views, processes, or methodologies published in this article are those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect EMC Corporation‘s views, processes, or methodologies. EMC Proven Professional Knowledge Sharing 2 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY For years, users have relied on ―physical storage‖ to meet their information needs. Now, evolving changes, such as virtualization and the adoption of Private Cloud computing, have placed new demands on how storage and information is managed. To meet these new requirements, storage must evolve to deliver capabilities that free information from a physical element to a virtualized resource that is fully automated, integrated within the infrastructure, consumed on demand, cost effective and efficient, always on, and secure. The technology enablers needed deliver this combine unique EMC capabilities such as FAST, federation, and storage virtualization. The result is a next-generation Private Cloud infrastructure that allows users to: 1. Move thousands of virtual machines (VMs) over thousands of miles. 2. Batch process in low-cost energy locations. 3. Enable boundary/boundary-less workload balancing and relocation. 4. Aggregate separate data centers to form big data centers. 5. Deliver ―24 x forever‖ – and run or recover applications without ever having to restart. WHAT’S NEW IN MY GENERATION? Streamline storage refreshes, Within cross and between data consolidations, and migrations. centers over distance. Simplify multi-array allocation, And enable information to be management, and provisioning ―ACCESSED ANYWHERE‖. Pool storage capacity to extend And provide ―JUST-IN-TIME‖ useful life for N-1 storage assets storage services via scale out. EMC Proven Professional Knowledge Sharing 3 ABSTRACT Both VPLEX™ Local and VPLEX Metro deliver significant value to customers. Some use cases are: For VPLEX Local 1. Data mobility between EMC and non-EMC storage platforms. VPLEX allows users to federate heterogeneous storage arrays and transparently move data across them to simplify and expedite data movement, including ongoing technology refreshes and/or lease rollovers. 2. Simplified management of multi-array storage environments. VPLEX provides simple tools to provision and allocate virtualized storage devices to standardize LUN presentation and management. The ability to pool and aggregate capacity across multiple arrays can also help improve storage utilization. 3. Increased storage resiliency. This allows storage to be mirrored across mixed platforms without requiring host resources. Leveraging this capability can increase protection and continuity for critical applications. Figure 1 Use cases For VPLEX Metro 1. In a single data center for moving, mirroring, and managing storage. 2. In multiple data centers for workload relocation, disaster avoidance, and data center maintenance. EMC Proven Professional Knowledge Sharing 4 For Metro-Plex 1. Mobility and relocations between locations over synchronous distances. In combination with VMware and VMotion over distance, VPLEX Metro allows users to transparently move and relocate virtual machines and their corresponding applications and data over distance. This provides a unique capability allowing users to relocate, share, and balance infrastructure resources between data centers. 2. Distributed and shared data access within, between, and across clusters within synchronous distances. A single copy of data can be accessed from multiple users across two locations. This allows instant access to information in real time, and eliminates the operational overhead and time required to copy and distribute data across locations. 3. Increased resiliency with mirror volumes within and across locations. VPLEX Metro provides non-stop application availability in the event of a component failure. Figure 2 Cluster configuration EMC Proven Professional Knowledge Sharing 5 INTRODUCTION EMC VPLEX is a storage network-based federation solution that provides nondisruptive, heterogeneous data movement and volume management functionality. VPLEX is an application-based solution that connects to SAN Fibre Channel switches. The VPLEX architecture is designed as a highly available solution and as with all data management products, high availability (HA) is a major component in most deployment strategies. EMC VPLEX encapsulates traditional physical storage array devices and applies three layers of logical abstraction to them. The logical relationships of each layer are shown in Figure 3. Extents are the mechanism VPLEX uses to divide storage volumes. Extents may be all or part of the underlying storage volume. EMC VPLEX aggregates extents and applies RAID protection in the device layer. Devices are constructed using one or more extents and can be combined into more complex RAID schemes and device structures as desired. At the top layer of the VPLEX storage structures are virtual volumes. Virtual volumes are created from devices and inherit the size of the underlying device. Virtual volumes are the elements VPLEX exposes to hosts using its FE ports. Access to virtual volumes is controlled