HP Virtual Server Environment Reference Architecture: Shared Infrastructure...

HP Virtual Server Environment Reference Architecture: Shared Infrastructure for Databases

High Level Concepts

Introduction................................................................................................................................ 2Executive Summary...................................................................................................................... 2Modular building blocks............................................................................................................... 3

Servers .................................................................................................................................. 3Storage.................................................................................................................................. 6Management .......................................................................................................................... 6

Shared Infrastructure for Databases................................................................................................ 7Test ....................................................................................................................................... 7Integration.............................................................................................................................. 8Production.............................................................................................................................. 8

Business Benefits ......................................................................................................................... 8Costs..................................................................................................................................... 8Agility ................................................................................................................................. 10Quality of Service.................................................................................................................. 11

Implementing a Shared Infrastructure for Databases ........................................................................ 11Appendix A: TCO Example ........................................................................................................ 13Summary ................................................................................................................................. 14

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IntroductionThe HP Virtual Server Environment for HP Integrity and HP 9000 servers helps you achieve a greater return on your IT investments by optimizing server resource utilization in real time based on business priorities. The HP Virtual Server Environment (VSE) encompasses a number of fully integrated, complementary components that enhance the functionality and flexibility of a server environment. HP VSE Reference Architectures are designed to help you apply VSE in your IT solutions with ease and efficiency. HP VSE Reference Architectures are documented best practices for solutions based on VSE components, HP Integrity servers and key industry applications. HP VSE Reference Architectures are based on proven, real world IT deployments and reduce solution deployment time.

Figure 1: HP VSE Reference Architectures

HP Virtual Server Environment Reference Architectures for HP-UX 11i

Documented best practices that reduce solution deployment time

• Deploy VSE in less than half the time• Customizable to suit your environment• Based on proven, real-world IT

deployments

Executive SummaryThe increasingly vital role of IT within a business motivates sharing of IT functions across the enterprise. In the shared IT model, IT acts as a service provider, hosting applications and managing servers, on behalf of different lines of business within the enterprise. The shared IT model helps organizations achieve new levels of cost efficiency, agility and service quality resulting in better alignment between business and IT. This HP VSE Reference Architecture represents a Shared Infrastructure for Databases suitable for organizations advancing from dedicated infrastructures to the shared IT model, it is based on a real customer implementation. With this solution, a centralized IT department can host and manage databases on behalf of different lines of businesses and gainseveral benefits (Figure 2).

Applications

Documented Best Practices

HP VSE

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Figure 2: Shared versus Dedicated Infrastructure

LOB 3LOB 2LOB 1 LOB 3LOB 2LOB 1•Reduce costs•Increase agility•Improve quality

Traditional IT – Dedicated Database Infrastructure

Shared IT – Shared Database Infrastructure

The core concept behind the Shared Infrastructure for Databases involves simple building blocks,comprised of computing elements, connected together to create a powerful, yet elegant shared database environment. This white paper describes the shared infrastructure, its benefits and HP offerings to help you implement this solution. The target audience for this paper is high level IT and business managers.

Modular building blocksThe shared infrastructure is based on a few standard, modular building blocks consisting of VSE components, HP Integrity servers and storage connected via a standard networking infrastructure. These building blocks are modular in that they can be deployed together to build the larger scale shared infrastructure.

ServersMultiple databases are deployed on a single instance of HP-UX running on an HP Integrity server(Figure 3). The database instances run within their own Secure Resource Partition which is the choice in this customer implementation. HP Secure Resource Partitions (SRPs), a component of HP VSE, are a soft partitioning and virtualization technology available on HP-UX 11i. Secure Resource Partitions support stacking of multiple applications within a single HP-UX 11i instance, allowing for the most dynamic and most granular allocation of resources. Increased security is achieved through the assurance that a process running in one secure resource partition cannot communicate with processesin another resource partition. There are also other HP soft partitions like Virtual Partitions(vPars) and Integrity Virtual Machines which offer operating system level of isolation. When multiple databases require different operating system versions, system configurations or software versions, vPars and Integrity Virtual Machines can provide the balance between isolation and flexibility.

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Figure 3: Consolidated servers

...

Workload Management

Database A

Secure Resource Partition

Database B


Database C


Database n


iCAP CPU integration

Figure 4: Clustered servers

...

Database A


Database B


Failover C


Failover n


...

Failover A


Failover B


Database C


Database n


Consolidated servers are then clustered using HP Serviceguard to provide high availability for mission-critical databases. Figure 4 shows such a high availability cluster – each database is

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configured to fail over to a partition on the other server. Additionally, each production server can include HP Instant Capacity processors that can be invoked using Temporary Instant Capacity CPUs to provide additional resources when a database fails over.

Why this configuration

The rationale behind this configuration is higher server utilization and simplicity:

• Higher server utilization: Enterprise workloads typically exhibit CPU utilization profiles that allow them to be consolidated on the same server. This is because the peaks of individual workloads do not typically occur at the same time. Figure 5 illustrates this common effect with a conceptual example – the peaks of the three workloads (Workload 1, 2 and 3) occur at different times and this makes it possible to consolidate them on one server for better overall server utilization with less core counts. With this particular example, each workload was hosted on a dedicated server with N cores separately. When all three workloads are consolidated on one server, the combined workload can be hosted on one server with between 1.5*N to 2*N cores instead of 3*N cores in the dedicated server configuration.

• Efficient high availability: In a dedicated infrastructure, each database instance may need to have a dedicated standby server to handle failures. In a shared infrastructure, a single server can serve as a production server as well as a failover host, as shown in Figure 4.

• Better quality of services: Dedicated server maxes out at N cores, three applications with 2*N cores, each application can peak at almost 2*N cores and more I/O bandwidth. Computer resources are shifted to match the varying workloads with sub-second response time.

• Lower administration costs: Consolidating multiple workloads on a single instance of HP-UX, with Secure Resource Partitions (SRPs), helps avoid the management and support costs of multiple servers and OS instances. SRPs provide an ideal balance between isolation amongmultiple workloads and flexibility in sharing server resources. HP-UX 11i offers the robust foundation to consolidate a large number of workloads.

Figure 5: Improved CPU utilization through sharing

0%

50%

25%

0%

75%

100%

50%

25%

CPU utilization for three different workloads on separate servers

CPU utilization for three different workloads deployed on single, shared server

Combined Workload

Workload 1 Workload 2 Workload 3 Combined Workload

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Implementing this building block

Secure Resource Partitions are implemented by using HP Process Resource Manager (PRM) together with the Security Containment features of HP-UX 11i. SRPs can be also implemented using HP-UX Processor Sets or Fair Share Scheduler Groups. For a Shared Infrastructure for Databases, SRPs withFair Share Scheduler Groups or PRM are ideal, as they provide the highest granularity for sharing resources between database instances.

This building block can be built from any model of HP Integrity servers – the specific model and configuration depends on the number and capacity needs of the databases hosted. The following are simple guidelines for server choice and configuration:• Cell-based HP Integrity servers with 8 Processor Cores or more are ideal for moderate size

environments. These server models support HP Instant Capacity and Temporary Instant Capacity licenses that can be activated to rapidly expand server capacity as database demands grow.

• The more databases running on one operating system, the better the utilization and the better peak capacity per database.

• Each server should have sufficient memory, I/O and networking capacity to handle the demands of multiple databases.

StorageThe storage building block can be composed of any type of storage system capable of supporting the demands of multiple consolidated databases. The storage system can be direct attached, network attached or SAN based. The storage system must support sufficient storage capacity for the hosted databases. If servers are clustered, then the storage must be configured as shared among the servers.

ManagementVSE Management Software

The heart of the HP Virtual Server Environment is a fully integrated software family for planning, management, and automation. These products all plug into HP System Insight Manager (SIM), HP’s unified infrastructure management platform. HP SIM provides a common management architecture that VSE applications use to discover and track server resources. It also gives a common look and feel to all menus, tabs, and basic commands.

HP Integrity Essentials Virtualization ManagerHP Integrity Essentials Virtualization Manager provides unified visualization and management for servers in the shared environment. Virtualization Manager provides a central point of control from which virtualized servers are configured, monitored and managed. HP Virtualization Manager includes an easy-to-use interface that lets you see your available virtual resources, how they’re being used, and how they relate to your physical infrastructure. It also allows you to seamlessly configure VSE tools in real time.

HP Integrity Essentials Capacity AdvisorHP Integrity Essentials Capacity Advisor is a capacity planning tool that is used to plan server consolidation. HP Capacity Advisor captures historical server utilization data and tracks virtualization configuration scenarios so you can perform ongoing capacity planning. HP Capacity Advisor graphically represents historical resource usage data and lets you perform simple, easy-to-understand scenarios, presenting outcomes that allow you to choose the virtual configurations that best fit your

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business needs. Figure 5 is an example of the kind of scenario planning that HP Capacity Advisor supports.

HP Integrity Essentials Global Workload ManagerHP Integrity Essentials Global Workload Manager (gWLM) provides policy-based and automated resource allocation among applications running in a virtualized server. HP gWLM is used to allocate server resources among the workloads so that server utilization is optimized, while all workloads meet required service levels.

The policy settings for a Shared Infrastructure for Databases will depend on the service level requirements of the hosted databases, their relative business priorities and the governance practices of the IT organization. The following are two examples of policy settings:

• A fixed allocation for each database: The IT organization can use gWLM to give each database a fixed amount of CPU (e.g. 40 shares of a CPU). The allocation amount can depend on the amount of CPU capacity “purchased” by the line of business.

• A guaranteed minimum allocation for each database with the ability to borrow from other databases: HP gWLM can be configured to give each database a guaranteed minimum amount of CPUs and borrow additional unused CPUs from other database instances. The IT organization can charge the line of business based on CPUs used.

Other Management Software

Management software to monitor and manage database and server health and the overall performance of the shared infrastructure should be deployed as needed. HP software products that help manage such environment include:o HP Operations Managero HP SiteScopeo HP Performance Manager and HP GlancePlus for system and application performance

managemento HP Smart Plug-Ins (SPIs) for databases, operating systems and other common applicationso HP Business Availability CenterTo learn more about HP management software, please check: www.hp.com/managementsoftware

Shared Infrastructure for DatabasesThe building blocks described above are combined to create separate environments that support each stage in the lifecycle of a database – from test to production. Figure 6 shows a conceptual view of the Shared Infrastructure for Databases.

TestThis environment exists to allow application development teams to package the application for deployment in production. The packaging would include creation of scripts for deployment, regression testing, etc. Additionally, this environment is used to test the functionality of the application in isolation from other applications. The stage imposes relatively light demands on the infrastructure –since only basic tests are performed here. High availability clusters are not necessary. The virtualized server building block is sufficient to provide a shared test environment.

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IntegrationThis is the environment in which most of the testing is performed. This environment includes testing of interfaces to other systems, load and performance testing, failover testing and testing of deployment and operational procedures. This environment is also used for concurrency testing of this application with the other applications in the shared environment. The infrastructure for this stage resembles that of the production stage in terms of server capacity needed. High availability clusters are not strictly required in this environment, since this is not a production environment, but high availability will be typically added for test purposes.ProductionThis is the shared environment hosting production instances of databases from the different lines of business. Production databases supporting mission-critical applications require high availability and typically require clustered servers.

Figure 6: Conceptual View of complete Shared Infrastructure for Databases

Test Production

Network

Management

Integration

Database

Database

Database

Database

Database

Database

Database

Database

Database

Failover

Failover

Database

Failover

Database

Database

Failover

Business BenefitsShared IT represents a transformative paradigm for organizing and managing IT. The benefits stem principally from standardization, simplification, centralization and economies of scale and scope. TheShared Infrastructure for Databases is a solution that embodies the shared IT model, and delivers new levels of cost efficiency, agility and quality of service.

CostsCompared to a dedicated infrastructure, a shared infrastructure requires fewer servers and OS instances – and this leads to a better cost structure. Figure 7 and Figure 8 show an example, comparing the cost structure of a dedicated to a shared infrastructure – for simplicity, this example compares costs of a production environment hosting 6 database instances. In this particular example, the cost reduction is mainly from elimination of idle standby servers and consolidation of databases in

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the same OS image to allow best resource sharing. Appendix A shows a detailed cost breakdown for this example. In this case, the largest benefits are from the Oracle® database license and support costs, server acquisition costs and OS license costs. A more comprehensive cost comparison for a complete shared environment (Test, Integration and Production environment) hosting a large number of databases will show more dramatic differences in the cost structure. The paragraphs below describe the reasons behind the cost structure differences.

Figure 7: Example – comparing cost structure of dedicated and shared infrastructure

Dedicated Shared

2 8-way HP Integrity rx7640Servers 12 4-way HP Integrity rx4640

12*4 =48

12

Processor Cores

OS Instances 2

2*8=16

Database

Database

Database

Database

Database

Database

Failover

Failover

Failover

Failover

Failover

Failover

Database

Database

Database

Failover

Failover

Failover

Database

Database

Database

Failover

Failover

Failover

Figure 8: Example – comparing cost structure of dedicated and shared infrastructureCost Structure for 6 database instances: Dedicated vs Shared Database Infrastructure

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$1,000

$2,000

$3,000

$4,000

$5,000

$6,000

1 2

Co

st (

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$K

)

Change costs

Facilities

IT Administration

IT Operations

Oracle DB license andsupportHP-UX license and support

Server Hardware

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Hardware & Software

These costs include acquisition and ongoing support costs for servers, operating system and server management software and database software. Database software such as Oracle is typically licensed on a per CPU basis. Software license costs constitute a significant portion of overall costs. In a dedicated infrastructure, servers are typically underutilized – CPU utilization of 15-30% is the norm. This translates to a significant amount of wasted hardware and software investment. In a shared infrastructure, server utilization is significantly higher due to sharing as indicated in Figure 5. Therefore, the same hardware and software investments are amortized across a larger number of applications. This reduces the hardware and software costs per database. Doubling utilization immediately cut per-CPU license costs in half.

Facilities

Facilities costs include power and cooling costs and data center space costs. A Shared Infrastructure for Databases results in an overall hardware footprint that is considerably smaller than the aggregate footprint of individual dedicated infrastructures. Most recent studies indicate that power and cooling represents about 60% of the facility cost. Significantly reducing the number of platforms will also significantly reduce the power and cooling cost.

Administration

Administration costs include personnel time spent on IT administration and IT operations. A Shared Infrastructure for Databases results in lower system administration costs since there are fewer servers and OS instances to manage. Further, with dedicated infrastructure, personnel costs tend to increase disproportionately with the number of applications and servers. In a shared infrastructure, owing to the lower hardware footprint and centralized management, system administration costs tend to be constant relative to the number of application and servers. This allows IT organizations to reap considerable economies of scale.

Personnel productivity is another important cost factor. Centralized management affords many opportunities to systematically optimize productivity through skill specialization, applying industry best practices such as ITSM/ITIL and other methods.

AgilityA Shared Infrastructure for Databases allows an organization to respond much faster to change.Centralized management eliminates many of the time consuming processes incurred in a dedicated infrastructure. Figure 9 illustrates one such benefit conceptually. In a dedicated infrastructure, deploying a new database would take days to weeks – servers have to be procured, set up and tested before the database is deployed. Depending on the length of such preparation cycles, new database deployment can take from days to weeks. In a shared infrastructure, capacity for a new database is deployed in minutes or hours in a simple workflow – hardware capacity is simply provisioned from the existing shared infrastructure by setting up a new Secure Resource Partition. In addition, peak capacity for each database instance is much higher in a shared infrastructure.

Standardization of the hardware, software and processes also shortens application development cycles. Development teams can rapidly test and qualify new projects in the shared Test and Integration environments.

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Figure 9: Increased agility with shared infrastructure

Shared

Dedicated

Time to deploy a database instance

Provision

Procure TestDays to Weeks

Minutes to Hours

Setup

Timeframe

Deploy

Deploy

Quality of ServiceA centrally managed, Shared Infrastructure for Databases affords many opportunities to improve IT service quality. The following are some ways quality of service is enhanced:

• Centralized support processes can be designed and better staffed, resulting in better overall support capability

• A single point of management and control leads to less errors in configuration and set up procedures

• Centralized infrastructure can be upgraded as needed to benefit all lines of business• Centralized budgets, allows IT to invest in high availability, hardware redundancy and disaster

recovery. Such investments would be harder to justify for each individual line of business with dedicated infrastructures

• Long term planning for growth and short term capacity planning is much more effective in a shared infrastructure

Implementing a Shared Infrastructure for DatabasesImplementing a Shared Infrastructure for Databases requires changes to the technology, people and process aspects of your IT. The above discussion focused on the technology aspect of this solution. The degree of people and process-related changes needed to adopt this solution depends on various factors – such as the existing organizational structure and culture, IT management and governance processes, etc. You can follow one of several approaches in implementing a Shared Infrastructure for Databases. As shown in Figure 10, HP offers a wealth of resources to help you in implementing thissolution. You can utilize your own IT staff and in-house IT capabilities, engage HP services, or consult an authorized HP partner. HP published some database specific VSE Reference Architectures to share

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the best practices on some particular use scenarios. HP Services offers a comprehensive portfolio of services to help you transition to a shared infrastructure.

Figure 10: Implementation approaches for shared infrastructure solution

Engage HP Services

Consult HP Partners

Technical Documentation•VSE Product Documentation•HP VSE Reference Architectures•HP VSE book•…and many other resources

Services, Training and Support•HP Education Services – VSE courses available•IT Shared Services•HP Support Services•IT Consolidation Services•…and many other services

Partners•VSE Certified Channel Partners•…and other authorized HP partners

Resources

Implement with in-house capabilities

HP Services’ portfolio includes an IT Shared Services transformation methodology(www.hp.com/services/ITsharedservices) , an IT Shared Services Reference Architecture, and supporting tools to assist customers in assessing their current maturity. The methodology considers your IT organization, processes, and technical architectures. One primary objective of the service is to identify the projects and activities that must be completed to fill the gap between your current state and your desired target end state, which could be a shared services model. In its most mature form, your shared-services organization has the capability to flexibly price its services, using a utility-like model, which is competitive with open market pricing assuring the most competitive cost structure.HP’s IT Shared Services Transformation Methodology helps your organization create a shared services operating model with the following unique characteristics:

• Your IT organization transforms from a cost center to a supplier/consumer relationship with your Lines of Business

• Services are described in a service catalog, marketed and sold to your Lines of Business in terms that are meaningful to your customers

• Service Level Agreements are monitored and reported via a dashboard and have an end-to-end view of service impacts from a business perspective

• Service fees are billed on a subscription or usage basis

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Appendix A: TCO ExampleThe cost structure of dedicated and shared infrastructure over a 3-year period

Cost Comparison (cumulative 3 - year) Dedicated Shared

Difference (Dedicated -

Shared)Difference

(%)Server Hardware (1) $821,550 $479,753 $341,797 41.6%

HP-UX license and support $602,682 $233,915 $368,767 61.2%

Oracle DB license and support

$3,187,200 $1,062,400 $2,124,800 66.7%

IT Operations (2) $299,340 $58,284 $241,056 80.5%

IT Administration (3) $39,960 $7,923 $32,037 80.2%

Facilities (4) $60,566 $12,444 $48,122 79.5%

Change costs (5) $85,434 $56,729 $28,705 33.6%

Total $5,096,732 $1,911,448 $3,185,284 62.5%

Assumptions used in above example:• Cost data obtained from Alinean ROI Analyst, based on data from IDC• Cost comparison considers only Production environment – costs of Test and Integration

environments are not compared• The dedicated and shared configurations are described in Figure 7• Cost comparison performed for server, OS and database software only – storage, network, and

other management software costs are not consideredo Each server runs the HP-UX 11i Mission Critical Operating Environmento Database software used is Oracle Database Single Instanceo All software cost is based on the list price when the analysis was done in early 2007

• HP Instant Capacity and HP Temporary Instant Capacity CPUs are not used in this comparison

1) Server hardware costs include initial server acquisition and server maintenance.2) IT operations costs mainly include labor costs in software deployment, system management,

application management (provisioning and scheduling), OS support, performance and availability management, break-fix management, user administration, etc.

3) IT Administration costs mainly include labor costs of procurement, asset management, IT finance and chargeback, compliance management, etc.

4) Facility costs include power and cooling and data center space costs.5) Change costs include change/project internal labor costs of assessment, planning and

architecture, training, validation and deployment.

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SummaryHP VSE Reference Architectures are designed to help you apply VSE in your IT solutions with ease and efficiency. This white paper provided an overview of the VSE Reference Architecture for Shared Infrastructure for Databases. For more information on the HP Virtual Server Environment and HP VSE Reference Architectures, visit:

www.hp.com/go/vsewww.hp.com/go/vsera

© 2007 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.

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Oracle® is a registered US trademark of Oracle Corporation, Redwood City, California.

4AA1-2328ENW rev 2, August 2007

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