VMworld 2011

1© Copyright 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

Rick SchererCloud Architect – EMC Corporation@rick_vmwaretips – VMwareTips.com

VMworld 2011@ the Venetian, Las Vegas


Agenda• VMworld 2011 Highlights• VMware Announcements• EMC Announcements• Hands On Labs Details• Q & A


VMworld 2011 Highlights

• Show Dates: August 29 – Sept 1st

• VMworld Theme: Your Cloud. Own It

• Attendees: 19,000+• Audience Profile

• IT Manager (44%), Architect,Sys Admin, C- Level, IT Director


A Few Statistics by Paul during Keynote

Statistics Comparisons> 50% of Workloads VirtualizedVM Created Every 6 Seconds

Faster than Babies being born in the US

20 Million VM’s running on vSphere

If these were physical, they would stretch 2X the length of Great Wall of China

5.5 vMotions per second This is more VM’s in flight than any aircraft in flight at any given time

> 800,000 VM Admins ~population of San Francisco

> 1650 ISV Partners~ 3000 Apps Certified on VMware


Sessions by Tracks & Industries•Cloud Application Platform•Business Continuity•Mgt. and Operations•Security and Compliance•Virtualizing Business Critical Applications•vSphere•End-User Computing•Partner (For VMware Partners Only)•Technology Partners/Sponsors•Technology Exchange for Alliance Partners

Over 175 Unique Breakout Sessions and 20+ Labs

VMworld Session Highlights


VMworld 2011 Numbers ……• 200+ Exhibitors in Solutions Exchange• Over 19,000 attendees• 7 EMC Lead sessions• NetApp had 3 sessions• HP had 2 sessions• Dell and IBM had 1 session each• Over 13,500 Labs attended • Over 148,100 VMs deployed• 175 unique Breakout Sessions• Staged more than 470 lab seats


VMware Announcements


VMware Introduces Portal for Database as a Service--- DBaaS

• Reduce Database Sprawl• Self-service Database

Management • Extend virtual resource

capabilities to the data tier


VMware vCloud AcceleratesJourney to Enterprise Hybrid Cloud

VMware Cloud Infrastructure SuiteThe Foundation for the Enterprise Hybrid Cloud

• VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5• VMware vCloud Director 1.5• VMware vShield 5

VMware vCloud Connector 1.5Fast, reliable transfer between private and public clouds

vcloud.vmware.comFind, connect with, and test drive Service Provider vCloud offerings

Disaster recovery to the cloud with vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5Cloud based Disaster Recovery Services

Together, these products will help customers transform IT to drive greater efficiency of existing investments and improve operational agility.


End User Computing in The Post-PC ERA

• VMware View 5

• VMware Horizon

• Projects AppBlastand Octopus


VMware and Cisco Collaborateon Cloud Innovation

• VXLAN submitted to IETF

• Isolation and segmentation benefits of layer 3 networks, while still being able to travel over a flat layer 2 network.

http://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-mahalingam-dutt-dcops-vxlan/


Technology Preview: vStorage APIs for VM and Application Granular Data Management

• Preview of VM Volumes, No Date Given• Major change to storage model – everything is

at the vApp layer• Works with Block and NAS models• 5 storage vendors implementations

demonstrated• EMC had a strong demonstration footprint


Storage SystemStorage System

How It All Comes Together

VMFSDatastor

eNFS

Datastore

NFSReadWrite

CreateDelete

SCSIReadWrite

ESX Server

CapacityPool

VM VolumeVM Storage Profile

SCSI or NFS

ReadWrite

VM Granular Storage APICreate DeleteSnap Clone

Bind

VM Granular Storage

APIProvider

IO De-mux

VM Volume

•Storage resources•Administrative domain•Visible to all servers in an ESX cluster•One or more Capacity Pools may offer the required Storage Capabilities •Management via VM Granular Storage API Provider

•Data path to VM Volumes•Block: FC, FCoE, iSCSI•File: NFS

•Support VM Granular Storage web-service API•Delivered by the storage vendor•On or off array

•Storage resources•One or more Storage Profiles advertising different Storage Capabilities•Manage VM Volumes•One-to-one mapping of data VM Volume to VMDK•Meta VM Volume for non-data VM files

Capacity PoolCapacity Pool


EMC Announcements


What Does EMC Support with vSphere 5 and When?• Storage platforms on vSphere 5 HCL: VPLEX, VMAX, VMAXe, VNX,

VNXe, CX4, NS• EMC Virtual Storage Integrator 5 (VSI) - Supported• VAAI New API Support

• VMAX – Already included in latest Enginuity but testing still underway, not supported yet

• VNX – Beta of new operating code to support new APIs underway• VNXe – Target for file level support is Q4 2011, 2012 for block• Isilon – Support coming in 2012

• VASA Support• EMC general support GA’s 9/23

• Will support block protocols for VMAX, DMX, VNX, CX4, NS• File support for these platforms and others in 2012

• PowerPath VE• Day 1 support including updated simpler licensing model and

support for Stateless ESX


EMC Releases VSI 5, A 5th Gen Plug-in for VMware

• Full support for VMware vSphere 5

• Provisions in minutes

• New and Robust Role Based Access Controls


EMC Breaks World Record with vSphere 51 Million IOps Through a Single vSphere Host


EMC Breaks World Record with vSphere 5New World Record: 10GBps from vSphere 5


EMC VNX Accelerates VMware View 5.0 Boot 500 Desktops in 5 Minutes

• Boost Performance during log-in storms

• Maximize Efficiency

• Simplify Management


EMC Technology Preview – Scale Out NAS

Characteristics of true scale-out NAS model

•Multiple Nodes Presenting a Single, Scalable File System and Volume•N-Way, Scalable Resiliency•Linearly Scalable IO and Throughput•Storage Efficiency


Tech Preview: Storage, Compute, PCIe Flash Uber Mashup

Emerging Workloads have Different Requirements

•Some benefit by moving compute closer to storage•Others benefit by moving data closer to compute•EMC demonstrated both

• The effect of Lightning IO cards on latency sensitive apps

• The effect of running a VM on a storage node for bandwidth constrained apps


EMC Technology Preview: Avamar vCloud Protector

• To backup and restore vCloud Director is not simple

• Granular, reliable, and fast tenant based restores are a must

• Self serve backup and restore is required in a cloud


vShield 5 and RSA integrationCan The Virtual Be More Secure Than The Physical?

• Uses RSA DLP Technology• Check compliance against

global standards• Catch data leakage• Integrates with RSA Envision

and Archer eGRC

VMware vShield App with Data Security


Hands On Labs


VMware Hands on Labs• 10 Billion+ IOs served• ~148,138 VMs created and

destroyed over 4 days. 4,000+ MORE than VMworld 2010

• 2 X EMC VNX 5700’s• 131.115 Terabytes of NFS traffic• 9.73728 billion of NFS IOPS• VNX internal avg NFS read latency of

1.484ms• VNX internal avg NFS write latency

2.867ms


EMC vLabs• Infrastructure running on a pair of

EMC VNX7500’s• Each loaded with SSD, FAST

Cache, FAST VP and 10GbE• Most of the load on NFS with 3

data movers (and 1 standby)

Lab Type

# of Labs

Lab Type

# of Labs

VSI 85 Archer 6UIM 22 Isilon 49VNX 89 VPLEX 46VNXe 32 VAAI 35Avamar

55 Atmos 20

Description Count# of VM’s 1718# of Users 402# of Lab Stations

15

# of Demos 474Statistics on Types of Demos


VM HAGround-Up

Rewrite


VM HA Enhancement Summary• Enhanced vSphere HA core

– a foundation for increased scale and functionality

– Eliminates common DNS issues

– Multiple Communication Paths

• Can leverage storage as well as the mgmt network for communications

• Enhances the ability to detect certain types of failures and provides redundancy

• Also:– IPv6 Support– Enhanced Error

Reporting– Enhanced User Interface– Enhanced Deployment

Mechanism


vSphere HA Primary Components• Every host runs an agent.

– Referred to as ‘FDM’ or Fault Domain Manager

– One of the agents within the cluster is chosen to assume the role of the Master

• There is only one Master per cluster during normal operations

– All other agents assume the role of Slaves

• There is no more Primary/Secondary concept with vSphere HA

ESX 01 ESX 03

ESX 04ESX 02

vCenter

Useful for VPLEX and Stretched Clusters


The Master Role• An FDM master monitors:

– ESX hosts and Virtual Machine availability.– All Slave hosts. Upon a Slave host failure,

protected VMs on that host will be restarted.– The power state of all the protected VMs. Upon

failure of a protected VM, the Master will restart it.

• An FDM master manages:– The list of hosts that are members of the

cluster, updating this list as hosts are added or removed from the cluster.

– The list of protected VMs. The Master updates this list after each user-initiated power on or power off.

ESX 02


The Slave Role• A Slave monitors the runtime state of its

locally running VMs and forwards any significant state changes to the Master.

• It implements vSphere HA features that donot require central coordination, most notably VM Health Monitoring.

• It monitors the health of the Master. If theMaster should fail, it participates in the election process for a new master.

• Maintains list of powered on VMs.

ESX 01 ESX 03

ESX 04


The Master Election Process• The following algorithm is

used for selecting the master:

– The host with access to the greatest number of datastores wins.

– In a tie, the host with the lexically highest moid is chosen. For example moid "host-99" would be higher than moid "host-100"

since "9" is greater than "1".

ESX 01 ESX 03

ESX 04ESX 02


Agent Communications• Primary agent communications utilize the

management network.• All communication is point to point (no

broadcast)• Election is conducted using UDP.• Once the Election is complete all further

Master to Slave communication is via SSL encrypted TCP.

• Each slave maintains a single TCP connection to the master.

• Datastores are used as a backup communication channel when a cluster’s management network becomes partitioned.

ESX 01 ESX 03

ESX 04ESX 02


Storage-Level Communications• One of the most exciting new features

of vSphere HA is its ability to use a storage

subsystem for communication.– The datastores used for this are referred to

as ‘Heartbeat Datastores’.– This provides for increased communication

redundancy.

• Heartbeat datastores are used as a communication channel only when the management network is lost - such as in

the case of isolation or network partitioning.

ESX 01 ESX 03

ESX 04ESX 02

Useful for VPLEX and stretched clusters


Storage-Level Communications• Heartbeat Datastores allow a Master to:

• Monitor availability of Slave hosts and the

VMs running on them.• Determine whether a host has become

network isolated rather than network partitioned.

• Coordinate with other Masters - since a VM can only be owned by only one master, masters will coordinate VM ownership thru datastore communication.

• By default, vCenter will automatically pick2 datastores. These 2 datastores can also be selected by the user.

ESX 01 ESX 03

ESX 04ESX 02



Storage-Level Communications• Host availability can be inferred differently,

depending on storage used:• For VMFS datastores, the Master reads the

VMFS heartbeat region.• For NFS datastores, the Master monitors

a heartbeat file that is periodically touched by the Slaves.

• Virtual Machine Availability is reported bya file created by each Slave which lists thepowered on VMs.

• Multiple Master Coordination is done by using file locks on the datastore.

ESX 01 ESX 03

ESX 04ESX 02



Storage-Related

Stuff


vSphere 5 – vStorage changes1. vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI) –

expansion2. vStorage Storage APIs for Storage Awareness

(VASA) 3. VMFS-54. Storage DRS5. Storage vMotion enhancements6. All Paths Down (APD) and Persistent Device Loss

(PDL)7. Native Software FCoE initiator8. NFS – improvements for scale-out


1. VAAI Updates


Understanding VAAI a little “lower”• VAAI = vStorage APIs for Array

Integration– A set of APIs to allow ESX to

offload functions to storage arrays

– In vSphere 4.1, supported on VMware File Systems (VMFS) and Raw Device Mappings (RDM) volumes,

– vSphere 5 adds NFS VAAI APIs. – Supported by EMC VNX, CX/NS,

VMAX arrays (coming soon to Isilon)

• Goals– Remove bottlenecks– Offload expensive data

operations to storage arrays• Motivation

– Efficiency– Scaling

VI3.5 (fsdm)

vSphere 4 ( fs3dm - software)

vSphere 4.1/5 (hardware) = VAAI

Diagram from VMworld 2009 TA3220 – Satyam Vaghani


Growing list of VAAI hardware offloads• vSphere 4.1

– For Block Storage:• HW Accelerated

Locking• HW Accelerated Zero• HW Accelerated Copy

– For NAS storage:• None

• vSphere 5– For Block Storage:

• Thin Provision Stun• Space Reclaim

– For NAS storage:• Full Clone• Extended Stats• Space Reservation


Hardware-Accelerated Locking• Without API

– Reserves the complete LUN (via SCSI-2 reservation) so that it could update a file-lock

– Required several SCSI -2 commands– LUN level locks affect adjacent hosts

• With API– Commonly Implemented as Vendor Unique

SCSI opcode– Moving to SCSI CAW opcode in vSphere 5

(more standard)– Transfer two 512-byte sectors– Compare first sector to target LBA, if match

writes second sector, else returns miscompare


VMDK

SCSI WRITE (0000…..)SCSI WRITE (data)SCSI WRITE (0000….)SCSI WRITE (data)Repeat MANY times…

SCSI WRITE SAME (0 * times)SCSI WRITE (data)

Hardware-Accelerated Zero• Without API

– SCSI Write - Many identical small blocks of zeroes moved from host to array for MANY VMware IO operations

– Extra zeros can be removed by EMC arrays after the fact by manually initiating “space reclaim” on the entire device

– New Guest IO to VMDK is “pre-zeroed”

• With API– SCSI Write Same - One giant block of zeroes

moved from host to array and repeatedly written– Thin provisioned array skips zero completely (pre

“zero reclaim”)– Moving to SCSI UNMAP opcode in vSphere 5

(which will be “more standard”, and will always return blocks to the free pool)


SCSI READSCSI READSCSI READ..MANY times…

SCSI EXTENDED COPY

SCSI WRITESCSI WRITESCSI WRITE..MANY times…

“let’s Storage VMotion”“let’s Storage VMotion”

“Give me a VM clone/deploy from template”

Hardware-Accelerated Copy• Without API

– SCSI Read (Data moved from array to host)– SCSI Write (Data moved from host to array)– Repeat– Huge periods of large VMFS level IO, done via

millions of small block operations

• With API– Subset of SCSI eXtended COPY opcode– Allows copy within or between LUs– Order of magnitude reduction in IO

operations– Order of magnitude reduction in array IOps

• Use Cases– Storage VMotion– VM Creation from Template


VAAI in vSphere 4.1 = Big impact

http://www.emc.com/collateral/hardware/white-papers/h8115-vmware-vstorage-vmax-wp.pdf

http://www.emc.com/collateral/hardware/white-papers/h8115-vmware-vstorage-vmax-wp.pdf


vSphere 5 – Thin Provision Stun• Without API

– When a datastore cannot allocate in VMFS because of an exhaustion of free blocks in the LUN pool (in the array) this causes VMs to crash, snapshots to fail, and other badness.

– Not a problem with “Thick devices”, as allocation is fixed.

– Thin LUNs can fail to deliver a write BEFORE the VMFS is full

– Careful management at VMware and Array level needed

• With API– Rather than erroring on the write, array reports

new error message– On receiving this command, VMs are “stunned”,

giving the opportunity to expand the thin pool at the array level.

VMDKVMFS-5

Extent

VMDKVMDK

Thin LUNs

Utilization

! ! !

Allocate VMFSAllocate VMFSAllocate VMFS

SCSI WRITE - OKSCSI WRITE - OKSCSI WRITE – ERROR!

Storage Pool (free blocks)


vSphere 5 – Space Reclamation• Without API

– When VMFS deletes a file, the file allocations are returned for use, and in some cases, SCSI WRITE ZERO would zero out the blocks.

– If the blocks were zeroed, manual space reclamation at the device layer could help.

• With API– Rather of SCSI WRITE ZERO, SCSI UNMAP is

used.– The array releases the blocks back to the

free pool.– Is used anytime VMFS deletes (svMotion,

Delete VM, Delete Snapshot, Delete)– Note that in vSphere 5, SCSI UNMAP is

used in many other places where previously SCSI WRITE ZERO would be used, and depends on VMFS-5

VMDKVMFS-5

Extent

VMDK

Utilization

Storage Pool (free blocks)

SCSI WRITE - DATASCSI WRITE - DATASCSI WRITE - ZERO

CREATE FILECREATE FILEDELETE FILE

SCSI WRITE - DATASCSI WRITE - DATASCSI UNMAP

CREATE FILECREATE FILEDELETE FILE


vSphere 5 – NFS Full Copy• Without API

– Some NFS servers have the ability to create file-level replicas

– This feature was not used for VMware operations – which were traditional host-based file copy operations.

– Vendors would leverage them via vCenter plugins. An example was EMC exposed this array feature via the Virtual Storage Integrator Plugin Unified Storage Module.

• With API– Implemented via NAS vendor plugin, used by

vSphere for clone, deploy from template– Uses EMC VNX OE File file version– Somewhat analagous to block XCOPY hardware

offload– NOTE – not used during svMotion

NFS Mount

Extent

FOO-COPY.VMDK

Filesystem

NFS Server

FOO.VMDK

ESX Host

File ReadFile ReadFile Read..MANY times…

“let’s clone this VM”“let’s clone this VM”

File WriteFile WriteFile Write..MANY times…

“Create a copy (snap, clone, version) of the

file


vSphere 5 – NFS Extended Stats• Without API

– Unlike with VMFS, with NFS datastores, vSphere does not control the filesystem itself.

– With the vSphere 4.x client – only basic file and filesystem attributes were used

– This lead to challenges with managing space when thin VMDKs were used, and administrators had no visibility to thin state and oversubscription of both datastores and VMDKs.

• think: with thin LUNs under VMFS, you could at least see details on thin VMDKs)

• With API– Implemented via NAS vendor plugin– NFS client reads extended file/filesystem details

NFS Mount

Extent

Filesystem

NFS Server

FOO.VMDK

ESX Host

“Filesize = 100GB”

“just HOW much space does this file take?”“just HOW much space does this file take?”

“Filesize = 100GB, but it’s a sparse file and has 24GB of allocations in

the filesystem. It is deduped – so it’s only REALLY using 5GB”


vSphere 5 – NFS Reserve Space• Without API

– There was no way on NFS datastores to do the equivalent of an “eagerzeroed thick” VMDK (needed for WSFC) or a “zeroed thick” VMDK

• With API– Implemented via NAS

vendor plugin– Reserves the

complete space for a VMDK on an NFS datastore


2. vSphere Storage API

for Storage Awareness

(aka “VASA”)


What Is VASA? VASA is an Extension of the vSphere Storage APIs, vCenter-based

extensions. It allows storage arrays to integrate with vCenter for management functionality via server-side plug-ins or Vendor Providers.

Allows a vCenter administrator to be aware of the topology, capabilities, and state of the physical storage devices available to the cluster. Think of it as saying:

“this datastore is protected with RAID 5, replicated with a 10 minute RPO, snapshotted every 15 minutes, and is compressed and deduplicated”.

VASA enables several features:•It delivers System-defined (array-defined) Capabilities that enables Profile-driven Storage.•Another example is that it provides array internal information that helps several Storage DRS use cases to work optimally with various arrays.


Storage Policy• Once the VASA Provider has been

successfully added to vCenter, the VM Storage Profiles displays the storage capabilities from the Vendor Provider.

• For EMC in Q3, this is provided for VNX and VMAX via Solutions Enabler for block storage. NFS will require user-defined.

• In the future, VNX will have a native provider, and will gain NFS system-defined profiles

• Isilon VASA support is targeted for Q4


Profile-Driven ProvisioningToday

StorageDRS

Storage DRS + Profile driven

storage

Identify requirements

Find optimal datastore Create VM

Periodically check

compliance

Identify storage

characteristics

Groupdatastores

Identify requirements Create VM

Periodically check

compliance

Discover storage

characteristics

Groupdatastores

Select VM Storage profile Create VM

Initial setup

Initial setup


Storage Profile During Provisioning• By selecting a VM

Storage Profile, datastores are now split into Compatible & Incompatible.

• The Celerra_NFS datastore is the only datastore which meets the GOLD Profile (user defined) requirements


VM Storage Profile Compliance


3. VMFS-5


VMFS-5 Versus VMFS-3 Feature Comparison

NOTE: LUN count limit for a vSphere 5 cluster is still 256, but with larger datastores the norm, should be less of an issue…


VMFS-3 to VMFS-5 Upgrade• The Upgrade to VMFS-5 is displayed in the

vSphere Client under Configuration → Storage view.

• It is also displayed in the Datastores → Configuration view.

• The upgrade is non-disruptive.

NOTE: Upgrading VMFS-3 to VMFS-5 non-disruptively doesn’t enable all the new goodness•>2TB volume size works post upgrade•Other features need a net new filesystemRecommendation:•Create new Datastore•Storage vMotion to new Datastore


4. Storage DRS


What Does Storage DRS Solve?• Without Storage DRS:

– Identify the datastore with the most disk space and lowest latency.

– Validate which virtual machines are placed on the datastore and ensure there are no conflicts.

– Create Virtual Machine and hope for the best.• With Storage DRS:

– Automatic selection of the best placement for your VM.– Advanced balancing mechanism to avoid storage performance

bottlenecks or “out of space” problems.

– VM or VMDK Affinity Rules.


What Does Storage DRS Provide?• Storage DRS provides the following:

1. Initial Placement of VMs and VMDKS based on available space and I/O capacity.

2. Load balancing between datastores in a datastore cluster via Storage vMotion based on storage space utilization (“capacity”)

3. Load balancing via Storage vMotion based on I/O metrics, (latency).• Storage DRS also includes Affinity/Anti-Affinity Rules for VMs

and VMDKs;• Affinity rules cannot be violated during normal operations.


Datastore Cluster• A group of datastores

called a “datastore cluster”

• Think: – Datastore Cluster - Storage

DRS = Simply a group of datastores (like a datastore folder)

– Datastore Cluster + Storage DRS = resource pool analagous to a DRS Cluster.

– Datastore Cluster + Storage DRS + Profile-Driven Storage = nirvana

datastore cluster

datastores

500GB

2TB

500GB 500GB 500GB


2TB

Storage DRS – Initial Placement• Initial Placement – VM/VMDK create/clone/relocate.

– When creating a VM you select a datastore cluster rather than an individual datastore – SDRS recommends a datastore based on space utilization and I/O load.– By default, all the VMDKs of a VM will be placed on the same datastore within a datastore cluster

(VMDK Affinity Rule), but you can choose to have VMDKs assigned to different datastore clusters.

300GB availabl

e

260GB available

265GB available

275GB available

datastore cluster

datastores

500GB 500GB 500GB 500GB


Storage DRS Operations – IO Thresholds• SDRS triggers action on

either capacity and/or latency – Capacity stats are

constantly gathered by vCenter, default threshold 80%.

– I/O load trend is evaluated (default) every 8 hours based on a past day history, default threshold 15ms.

• Storage DRS will do a cost / benefit analysis!

• For latency Storage DRS leverages Storage I/O Control functionality.

When using EMC FAST VP, use SDRS, but disable I/O metric here.This combination gives you the simplicity benefits of SDRS for automated placement and capacity balancing but adds:

•Economic and performance benefits of automated tiering across SSD, FC, SAS, SATA•10x (VNX) and 100x (VMAX) higher granularity (sub VMDK)


Storage DRS – Affinity/Anti-Affinity

• Keep a Virtual Machine’s VMDKs together on the same datastore

• Maximize VM availability when all disks needed in order to run

• On by default for all VMs

Datastore Cluster

VMDK affinity VMDK anti-affinity

Datastore Cluster

VM anti-affinity

Datastore Cluster

• Keep a VM’s VMDKs on different datastores

• Useful for separating log and data disks of database VMs

• Can select all or a subset of a VM’s disks

• Keep VMs on different datastores

• Similar to DRS anti-affinity rules

• Maximize availability of a set of redundant VMs


Storage DRS/EMC considerationsFeature/Product/Use

CaseSDRS Initial

Placement

SDRS Migration

VMware Linked Clones (View) Not supportedVMware Snapshots SupportedVMware SRM Not SupportedRDM Pointer Files SupportedRDM (physical or virtual) Not ApplicablePre vSphere 5 hosts Not SupportedNFS Datastores SupportedDistributed Virtual Volumes (VPLEX)

Not Supported

Array-based Replication (SRDF, Recoverpoint, etc)

Supported

Use Manual Mode Only – as unanticipated Storage vMotions will increase WAN utilization

Array-based Snapshots Supported

Use Manual Mode only – as unanticipated Storage vMotions will increase space consumed

Array-based Compression/ Deduplication

Supported

Use Manual Mode only – as unanticipated Storage vMotions will temporarily increase space consumed

Array-based thin provisioning Supported

Supported on VASA-enabled arrays only

Array based auto-tiering (EMC FAST VP)

Supported

Supported, but use SDRS for capacity load-balancing + use FAST VP for IO load-balancing. Turn off I/O metrics in SDRS, but enable SIOC on datastores to handle spikes of I/O contention.

Array based mega-cache (EMC FAST Cache)

Supported


5. Storage vMotion

Enhancements


Storage vMotion – Enhancements• Storage vMotion in vSphere 5 works with Virtual Machines that

have snapshots – means coexistence with other VMware products & features such as VDR &

vSphere Replication.

• Storage vMotion will support the relocation of linked clones.• Storage vMotion has a new use case – Storage DRS – which

uses Storage vMotion for Storage Maintenance Mode & Storage Load Balancing (Space or Performance).


Storage vMotion – Enhancements• In vSphere 4.1, Storage vMotion uses the Changed Block Tracking (CBT) method

to copy disk blocks between source & destination – a huge improvement from vSphere 4 (used snapshots)

• The main challenge in this approach is that the disk pre-copy phase can take a while to converge, and can sometimes result in Storage vMotion failures if the VM was running a very I/O intensive load.

• Mirroring I/O between the source and the destination disks has significant gains when compared to the iterative disk pre-copy mechanism.

• In vSphere 5.0, Storage vMotion uses a new mirroring architecture to provide the following advantages over previous versions:

– Guarantees migration success even when facing a slower destination.– More predictable (and shorter) migration time.


6. All Paths Down

and PermanentDevice Loss

(PDL)


APD vs. PDL: Definition of Terms• APD (“All Paths Down”) is a generic term for

an unexplained condition where no usable paths exist to a given device or a device stops responding to outstanding requests

– APD can be transient or permanent– The important point is that the system has no

information about the possible duration; the device may resume normal operation at any time.


APD vs. PDL: Definition of Terms• PDL (“Permanent Device Loss”) is indicated

by the storage target using SCSI sense codes.

– Examples would be a return of 5/25h/00h (ILLEGAL REQUEST; LUN NOT SUPPORTED) or 4/3Eh/01h (HARDWARE ERROR; LUN FAILURE).

– Absent specific indications of PDL, a non-responsive device is considered to be in APD, not PDL.

– Once a device is in PDL, no recovery is expected.


vSphere 5.0: PDL• ESX 5.0 introduced a new device state: PERMANENTLY LOST

– When all paths to a device indicate PDL, the device state is changed to VMK_SCSI_DEVICE_STATE_PERM_LOSS

– PDL can be planned or unplanned– Planned PDL could be deliberately removing a LUN that’s no

longer used.– Unplanned PDL could be, for example, the result of inadvertently

changing a LUN’s masking to block access by a host.– Once a device is determined to be in PDL, no recovery is expected– Restoring a device that’s in PDL requires terminating all running

VMs and closing all files on the device. If a device in PDL is encountered on a HBA rescan (with ‘delete’ option specified if done manually) it will be removed.


vSphere 5.0: PDL• Planned PDL is easy

Step 1 – Unmount Filesystem

Step 2 – Detach Device


7. Native Software

FCoE Initiator


Introduction• The FCoE adapters that VMware supports generally

fall into two categories, hardware FCoE adapters and software FCoE adapters which uses an FCoE capable NIC

– Note – at GA, the primary FCoE capable NIC will be the Intel x520 series.

• Note: Hardware FCoE adapters were supported as of vSphere 4.0.

• EMC Support for Native FCoE exists on both the VNX and the VMAX.


Software FCoE Adapters• A software FCoE adapter is a software code that performs some

of the FCoE processing.• Unlike the hardware FCoE adapter, the software adapter needs to

be activated, similar to Software iSCSI.• For EMC – check eLab for end-to-end support statements


8. NFS ClientDNS Round-

Robin


What has changed?• Minor change in NFS v3 client – not NFS v4, NFS v4.1 or

pNFS• If the domain name is specified in the NFS datastore

configuration:– DNS lookup will occur on every ESX boot– Will honor DNS round robin

• Can be useful to distribute NFS client logins across a vSphere 5 cluster (not a single host) for a datastore to different IP addresses

– Particularly useful for scale out storage (Example: EMC Isilon)

VMworld 2011

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Transcript of VMworld 2011