Maximizing Storage efficiencywith Dell and Microsoft Storage SpacesSyama PoluriSenthil Baladhandayutham

Brief Introduction to Storage SpacesHardware Support & CapabilitiesDeployment ConsiderationsVDI Performance & Efficiency using Storage SpacesDell-Microsoft Value

Q&A:You will also find us at the Dell booth

Agenda

Introduction to Storage Spaces

Microsoft’s infrastructure-as-a service storage vision

Lowers the costs and effort of delivering storage services

Disaggregated compute and storage

Independently manage and scale at each layer

Industry standard servers, networking and storage

Affordable networksAffordable shared JBOD storage

Target MarketService Providers Private Cloud Scenarios

JBOD storage

Server Message Block (SMB)

Pow

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SC

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Man

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Scale-out file

server clusters

Storage Space

Storage Space

Storage Space

Hyper-V clusters

AnnouncingWindows Storage Spaces support on high density Dell PowerVault MD3060e JBOD60 – 3.5” or 2.5” SAS drives

4U

Dual EMM’s

Dual power supply units

What’s new?• Storage Spaces compatible EMM firmware• Storage Enclosure Management Software• Documentation

PowerEdge rack servers

Excellent performance, functionality and outstanding reliability. Complete portfolio of 1-, 2-, and 4-socket rack servers designed to reduce complexity and deliver superior value.

High quality and reliability at a consistently low acquisition cost with exceptional price for performance. Complete tower server portfolio with a side choice of performance and functionality.

PowerEdge tower servers

MD1200 : 2U – 12 drive 3.5” enclosureMD1220 : 2U – 24 drive 2.5” enclosureSupports Nearline, 10K and 15K RPM SAS HDDs and SAS SSDsConnectivity : Dell SAS 6Gb/s HBA SAS Ports : 4

PowerVault MD1200/ MD1220 storage

4U – 60 drive 3.5” enclosureSupports 2.5” and 3.5” drivesSupports Nearline, 10K and 15K RPM SAS HDDs and SAS SSDsConnectivity : LSI 9207-8e

SAS Ports : 6

PowerVault MD3060e storage

Dell PowerEdge and PowerVaultStorage-optimized servers and scalable, cost-effective external storage

*MD3060e dense JBOD enclosures validated with R620, R720, R720xd only

Mirror/Parity Storage Spaces (Resilience, Flexibility)Native Data Striping (Performance)Enclosure Awareness (Resilience)Storage Tiering (Performance, Flexibility)Write Back Cache (Performance) HW and Spaces Management (Management, Monitoring)

Storage Spaces Capabilities

Pooling of disks

Flexible resilient storage spaces

Native data striping

Enclosure awarenessParallelized rebuild of failed drives

Capabilities Overview - Resiliency, Flexibility

Storage Pool

Storage Spaces

Data Copy 1 Data Copy 2

Mirror Space

Mirror Space

Parity Space

Mirror Space

…

…

Physical Disks from

Shared SAS JBODs

Disk Failure!

Data is rebuilt to multiple disks simultaneously, using

spare capacity

Automated movement of hot/cold data between SSD and HDD

Use the best capabilities of HDD for capacity, and SSD for performance in a single volumeSub-File-Level Data Movement

Admins can override automatic placement, and pin files to a Tier

Can be used, for example, to offer different performance levels to different workloadsExample : VM’s VHD in Pooled VDI scenario

WBC absorbs write burstsImproved performance for real-world workloadsSSDs absorb random writes at high IOPs levels

Tiering and Write Back Cache (WBC)

Compute Nodes

SSD Tier

HDD Tier

I/O Activity Accumulates Heat

on Sub-File Granularity

Write Back Cache and Tiering Demo

Syama Poluri

JBOD HealthEMMPower Supply FansVoltage SensorsCurrent Sensors

Physical Disk HealthStorage Pool Health Storage Space Health Additional monitoring for Storage Enclosure Health with http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2913766

Monitoring Health

JBOD Hardware Monitoring Demo

Syama Poluri

Planning a Deployment

Capacity NeedsOverhead necessary for resiliency

Resiliency NeedsHow many drive failures must the deployment sustain?Number of JBODs required for Enclosure Awareness

Performance NeedsUnderstanding workload IO requirements and characteristicsCan start to characterize based on raw IOPS and Throughput

High Availability and Failover needsNumber for fileserver nodesMultipath requirement / Number of SAS HBA(s) per Server

Choose SSDs, HDDs, JBODs, and Servers

Planning a Deployment

Stripe SizeAmount of date written to spaces in one pass

Number of Data ColumnsNumber physical disk across with one stripe of date is written

InterleaveAmount of date written to a single column per Stripe(Default 256 KB)

Understanding Columns , Interleave and Stripe Size

1 2 3 4 5 6

Spaces layout for 2 column 2-way mirror

2 Data Columns 2 Data Copies

• Minimum number of drives required to optimally expand storage space: Columns x Copies

Resiliency schemes have different capacity overhead and drive/enclosure requirements

Capacity and Resiliency Planning

Resiliency Scheme

Resilient to

Minimum # of Disk Failures

Capacity Efficiency

Minimum Number of Enclosures

Required for EA

Min.Disks Required for

Clustered Spaces

Recommended Workloads

Simple 0 100% N/A 3Suitable for workloads where resiliency is not required, or provided by another mechanism.

Two-Way Mirror

1 50.0% 3 3

Recommended for all workloads(Ex:VDI)Three-Way

Mirror2 33.3% 3 5

Dual Parity (4+3 LRC)

2 57.1% 4 7 Recommended for archival workloads.

Don’t utilize all available capacity in the pool upfront!Need to reserve capacity for:

Reserved capacity in the pool for parallel rebuild (at least 2 physical disks worth)

Expansion of SSD tiers on Tiered Volumes as workloads become established and predictable

In tiered spaces column count must be identical between the HDD and SSD tiers Maximum recommended for clustered storage spaces

Up to 80 physical disks in a clustered storage pool Up to 4 storage pools per clusterUp to 64 storage spaces in a single poolUp to 480 TB of capacity in a single storage pool

Capacity Planning (2)

Resiliency schemes have different ideal performance characteristicsStart with single drive performance to extrapolate expected performance with Spaces

General Performance Planning (1)

2 4 8 16 32 64 920

1,000

2,000

3,000

4,000

5,000

6,000

7,000

8,000

9,000

10,000

100% Random Read, 8KB

Mirrored Space (100% Read) RAW Disks (100% Read)

Number of Disks

IOP

S

2 4 8 16 32 64 920

1,000

2,000

3,000

4,000

5,000

6,000

7,000

8,000

9,000

10,000

100% Random Write, 8KB

Mirrored Space (100% Write) RAW Disks (100% Write)

Number of DisksIO

PS

Tested with 7200 RPM SAS HDDs, no WBC, maximum of 8 columns, 2-way mirror. Queue depth was maintained

consistent between tests at an effective 3 QD/Disk to attain an average latency of at most 30ms

Ensure you have sufficient SSDs in the pool for WBC to match number of data copies on virtual diskEnsure sufficient hardware (Compute, Memory ,PCI-E Slots etc.) to drive Throughput and IOPSEnsure all latest OS updates are installed

Consider starting with the defaults for advanced settings

Column CountInterleaveWrite-Back Cache Size

Storage Spaces Performance Paper:http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/15200.storage-spaces-designing-for-performance.aspx

General Performance Planning (2)

Design for what’s practical for number of drive slots

Spaces doesn’t constrain the number of SSDs or SSD capacityInvest in sufficient number of SSDs for:

Sufficient column count for both SSD and HDD tiersSufficient throughput and IOPS from SSD tier

Recommended minimum number of SSDs:

Buy as much SSD capacity as your workload’s working set size.

Sizing guidance for Tiered Spaces

Resiliency Type

24-bay JBOD

(2 columns)

60-bay JBOD

(4 columns)

Two-Way Mirror 4 8

Three-Way Mirror

6 12

VDI Deployment Using Storage Spaces

Microsoft VDI Deployment Choices

Pooled Desktops

Personal Desktops

OS/APPS DATA USER DATA

Diff disk

s

Diff disk

s

DIFF DISKS

Diff disk

sDiff disk

s

Diff disk

s

Diff disk

sDiff disk

s

Diff disk

s

Diff disk

s

Market Challenges to VDI Adoption

Barriers of EntryHigh storage cost

Linear predictable Scale

Complex storage configuration

Windows 2012R2 Storage Features Value in Practice

Hot Data

Cold Data

Storage SpacesSoftware configurable storage that scales with linear cost(Pay as you grow)

Improved performance with storage tiering

Barriers of EntryHigh storage cost

Linear predictable Scale

Complex storage configuration

Data- deduplicationStorage cost savings by leveraging data de-duplication

Dell–Microsoft Value in PracticeHot Data

Cold Data

Storage Spaces certified JBOD’s to take advantage of latest features

PowerShell API integration to monitor health of JBOD

Pre-validated VDI workload optimized configurations

By leveraging Windows storage features and optimizing the solution for cost and performance, Dell-Microsoft VDI Solution offers cost-optimized solution at linear scale for pooled and persistent desktops

CSV Cache

VDI Storage Optimizations in 2012R2

Storage Spaces with SSD or HDD

Storage Spaces with SSD & HDD

Data Deduplication

Read I/O served from CSV cache helping Bootstorm & LoginStorm

SSD serving hot data absorbing boot and login spikes. WBC cache absorbs write spikes Chunk

Store

Capacity savings through deduplication

Read I/O served from chunk store

Pooled DesktopPersistent Desktop

Pinning gold image to SSD tier, improving boot performance

VDI Deployment Scale TestingWorkload ConfigurationSystem Under Test ConfigurationPerformance of Pooled desktops with Storage SpacesPerformance of Personal desktops with Storage SpacesDemo of Key Technologies

Workload Configuration

Test configuration & Success Criteria

Test Success Criteria:Linear Performance Optimized cost across pooled

& persistent desktops

LoginVsi

Medium

Workload Configuration:

JBOD Under Test:1* MD1220(24 disks)

System under Test ConfigurationConfiguration :1*MD1220(24 Disks)Dell PowerEdge R720 with SOFSSpaces: 2-way Mirror5*Hyper-v nodes each running up to 150 Windows 8.1 VDI VM’s

Performance of Storage Spaces with Pooled VDI Deployment

Gold Image: 25GBUser Profile Disk VHD: 1GB/UserDiff Disk size @Steady State: 3.5 GB /user*

Pooled Desktop Storage Allocation

Provision

Boot Login Steady State

Logoff

Diff Disk Capacity/VM

1GB 1.5GB 2.0 GB 3-4 GB 1.5 GB

100 Pooled VM sizing :25GB +(100*1GB)+3.5 *100GB =475GB*Diff Disk size varies based on size of VM RAM. Test VM was assigned 2.5 GB memory.

Pooled Desktop Scalability Results

0 150 300 450 600 7500

2000

4000

6000

8000

10000

12000

14000

16000

18000

IOPS

Users

Tota

l IO

PS

Configuration Users

Consumed Capacity

Usable Capacity

Total IOPS

IOPS from SSD

IOPS/user

4*400GB SSD 150 700GB 750GB 3100 100% 20.7

4*400GB SSD20*1TB(7.2k)HDDTiering OnWBC=1GB

350 1.5TB 10TB 78407000 SSD840 HDD

90% 22.4

4*400GB SSD20*1TB(7.2k)HDDTiering OnWBC=1GB

700 3 TB 10TB 1624012240 SSD4000 HDD

80% 23.2

Configuration :1*MD1220(24 Disks)Spaces: Mirror

Results Linear Performance

4*400GB SSD

20*7.2K 1TB HDD

Cold DataHot Data

93% Capacity used

4*400GB SSD

4*400GB SSD

Most IOPS served from SSD

Linear scaling with SSD’s but at a high cost

Hit SAS HDD latency & IOPS limits

Consider storage capacity in-addition to IOPS when sizing pooled desktopsIf high performance and cost is not a barrier, choose single tier SSD configurations To balance cost and performance with linear scale, choose tiered configurations with SSD & HDDPin the parent VHD of pooled desktop collections to the SSD tier

Pooled Desktop Results Summary

Performance of Storage Spaces with Persistent VDI Deployment

ConfigurationMD1220,4*400GB SSD, 20*7.2k 1TB150 Persistent users with tiering , with and without dedupe

Impact of de-dupe on persistent desktops

67% savings on Read IOPS1.5X write penalty with dedupe. No impact to performance as most IOPS were served from SSD due to Tiering.No impact to Total IOPS

Up to 90% Capacity savings after provisioning

Read IOPS Write IOPS Total IOPS0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

3500150 users- Non-Dedupe vs

Dedupe

No-dedupeDedupe

No- dedupe Dedupe0

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

7000

Capacity savings with dedupe

Capacity(GB)

Capacit

y in G

B

4*400GB SSD

20*7.2K 1TB HDD

Persistent Desktop Scalability Results

Configuration Users Total IOPS

IOPS from SSD

Capacity Savings

IOPS/user

4*400GB SSD20*1TB(7.2k)HDDDedupe +Tiering

150 3208 100% 92% 21.3

350 7952 90% 88% 22.72

700 16100 80% 86% 23

Configuration:1*MD1220(24 Disks)Spaces:2-Way MirrorDedupe 1st+ Tiering 2nd

Results

0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 8000

2

4

6

8

10

12

Total IOPS

Users

Tota

l IO

PS

Linear IOPSPerformance from Tiering

Capacity savings from Dedupe

4*400GB SSD

20*7.2K 1TB HDD

Leverage data deduplication to reduce the capacity needs of personal desktopsProvision VM’s across multiple smaller volumes to improve dedupe and provisioning performanceFor balanced cost, choose a configuration with SSD & HDD Run storage tiering after dedupe to increase steady state performance

Personal Desktop Results Summary

Total users:700

Validated configuration was able to deliver same cost/user for both persistent and pooled desktopsLinear IOPS was achieved for persistent and pooled desktops

Overall Result Summary

Total IOPS

IOPS/user

Pooled 16240 23Persistent 16100 23

Demo: VDI Demo

Senthil Baladhandayutham - Dell

Data Center Networking

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Scale-out file

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Storage Space

Storage Space

Storage Space

Hyper-V clusters

Dell PowerVault JBOD Storage

Dell PowerEdge Servers

Dell Network Switches

Dell PowerEdge Servers

Dell & Microsoft Key Value

Dell-M

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“Dell is Microsoft’s largest OEM partner to have implemented support for Storage Spaces. Dell provides the most complete Storage Spaces implementation – server, controller, JBOD and disks form an end-to-end solution, and this support includes new features such as JBOD monitoring.”

Microsoft Server and Cloud Platform Team

February 11, 2014TechNet Server & Cloud Blog

Leverage the power of Dell and Microsoft alliance

Joint IP/development

Engineering labs, technology centers, centers of excellence

US Windows Deployment Partner of the Year2 years running

Most complete

Full, end-to-end capabilities – from tablets to the data center

Global Solutions Centers

Demonstrate the full Microsoft stack running on Dell

Single Point of ContactDell provides a single contact for total solution

TAPs participation

Board participation in Technology Adoption Programs

US Windows Partner of the Year

2013

Dell-VDI Storage Spaces whitepaper

Related content

Dell PowerVault Enclosure Health Monitoring

Deploying Storage Spaces with Dell PowerVault

Manuals & documentation for PowerVault MD3060eSession DCIM-B346 by Bryan Mathew

Find Us Later At Dell Booth . . .

Complete an evaluation and enter to win!

Appendix : Capabilities Overview - write-back cache

Cache absorbs write burstsImproved performance for real-world workloadsSSDs absorb random writes at high IOPs levelsHelps smooth workloads which are bursty, reducing seeks on HDDsWBC uses SSD capacityComplements tiered storageIOs with block size <256KB can be cached

Storage Spaces

Data De-Stage

Solid State Drives (SSD) Tier

Hard Disk Drives (HDD) Tier

Reads/Writes Accumulates Data Activity

Hyper-V Compute Nodes

Seamless

Integration

Report generated after invoke of Tier Optimization

defrag /c /g /h (optimizes all volumes)defrag <drive letter> /g /h (optimizes single drive)

Performance counters on physical disks

Appendix: Tiering Perf ToolsPS C:\> defrag /c /g /hMicrosoft Drive OptimizerCopyright (c) 2013 Microsoft Corp. Invoking tier optimization on New Volume (T:, C:\ClusterStorage\Pool1-CSV2)... The operation completed successfully. Post Defragmentation Report:         Volume Information:                Volume size                 = 62.83 TB                Free space                  = 45.43 TB         Storage Tier Optimization Report:

                % I/Os Serviced from SSD       SSD Tier Size Required                100%                         2.52 TB                 95%                             1.31 TB *                90%                             1.12 TB

<snipped> 

       * Current size of the faster (SSD) tier: 1.46 TB

        Percent of total I/Os serviced from the SSD tier: 87%         Size of files pinned to the SSD tier: 0 bytes        Percent of total I/Os: 0%         Size of files pinned to the HDD tier: 0 bytes        Percent of total I/Os: 0%

Insufficient SSD capacity if ideal I/O distribution too low

Can expand SSD Tier with capacity reserved earlier or with additional SSDsCan re-balance subset of workloads to volumes with greater ideal I/O distributions

Appendix : Optimizing Performance of Tiered Volumes

Ideal I/O distribution with current SSD tier size for

the current workloads

Total I/O Tracked by Tiering Engine

(indicates the majority of I/O)

Current I/O distribution post-

optimization

High workload churn if current I/O distribution does not improve after successive scheduled optimization runs

Can immediately run optimizationCan increase the frequency of optimization schedule (see appendix)Can pin workloads expected to generate high churn to SSD tier

Appendix : Certified JBOD enclosures for Windows Server 2012 R2 Storage Spaces

Supports SAS and SCSI Enclosure Services (SES) protocol

Allows controller to send and receive diagnostic information to connected storage devices

PowerVault MD1220By Dell Inc

PowerVault MD1200By Dell Inc

PowerVault MD3060eBy Dell Inc