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Dynamics Demanding Transformation in Data Centers

8Gb Fibre Channel – A Step Up in Business Services

Optimized to Exceed the Business Requirements of Next Generation Data Center

Executive Summary

Significant technology changes and improvements within the past two years have introduced multi-core processors, high-density servers, increased performance in server I/O, and OS virtualization. Data center applications drive the need to transform storage networking to scale with the IT infrastructure. applications, such as virtualization, disk-to-disk replication, streaming video post production, and Web 2.0 technologies, require higher bandwidth networks to meet the demands. Increased demands posed by fewer and shorter cycles to complete tasks requires high performance networks.

Moore’s Law predicted in 1965, “The number of transistors that can be inexpensively placed on an integrated circuit will increase exponentially, doubling every 18 months.” This law applies to today’s data center technology; processing speed, memory capacity, multi-core processors, and physical components per square feet of data center spaces are doubling. Storage networking technology must support the increased demands posed by newer applications and available processing power.

To plan for and meet the ever-growing demands on the data center, IT professionals must deploy a scalable architecture that meets a full spectrum of concerns, including cost, performance,

and backwards compatibility. They must meet the minimum business attributes of the new data center: power, security, manageability, aggregation (virtualization and blade servers), and increased raS (reliability, availability and serviceability).

The strategy no longer questions, “Does my data center need next generation speed?” IT executives must step up their business services and plan for the next generation technology that addresses issues beyond speed.

“8 Gb/s Fibre Channel: Feeling the Need for More than Speed.” ❖richard Villars1

Key FindingsDeploying 8Gb Fibre Channel technology meets the ever-growing demands on the data center:

QLogic’s Next Generation FC technology is optimized to meet •the minimum business requirements, including power, security, manageability, aggregation (virtualization and blade servers), and increased raS (reliability, availability and serviceability).

Next Generation FC technology provides the much required •scalability while ensuring optimal cost, performance and ensuring backward compatibility.

1 IDC LINK, “8 GBps Fibre Channel: Feeling the Need for More than Speed,” august 17, 2007

Dynamics Demanding Transformation in Data Centers 8Gb Fibre Channel – A Step Up in Business Services

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Introduction

This paper explores the opportunities for deploying next generation Fibre Channel technology, embodied under the umbrella of 8Gb FC. It describes optimizing business attributes to meet the data center drivers of virtualization, power, raS (reliability, availability, serviceability), security and manageability while having the ability to deliver high performance and handle increased bandwidth to improve operating efficiencies.

Data Center Challenges

Over the past few years, several change agents have driven paradigm shifts in the way corporations build and operate data centers and how they store and replicate data. In addition, new business dynamics continue to demand reduction in processing time-windows.

agents driving the need to change data centers include:

Demands for continuous data access • – Businesses demand 100% availability of data even under the most adverse conditions. IT managers must plan for remote, long-distance, real-time data backup and ability to failover instantaneously.

Disk-to-Disk Backup

Insufficient power and cooling • – The Data Center Power and Cooling Challenge seminar held at the Gartner IT Infrastructure, Operations and Management Summit 2007, revealed that the greatest facility problems with data centers are insufficient power and cooling. 93% of participants said they will need to expand/upgrade, relocate, or renovate their facility to accommodate power and cooling needs over the next year. IT managers want to ensure products are energy efficient and allow dynamic power/performance trade-offs.

“Power and cooling is a pandemic in the world of the data center. By next year, about half the world’s data centers will be functionally obsolete due to insufficient power and cooling capacity to meet the demands of high-density equipment.” vMichael Bell, research Vice President, Gartner Inc.1

Need for greater security • – Security breaches cost organizations millions of dollars, as illustrated in the following chart.

Business practices and regulatory agencies • – The cost of security breaches coupled with emerging business practices and regulatory compliance creates a set of new challenges that enterprise data centers have to address.

IT Challenges

regulatory Compliance

Business Challenges

Consolidation

Off-Site replication

Outsourcing

Industry (SOX, HIPaa)

National

(SB 1386)

Local

Insiders

Lost Tapes

Data Breaches

1 InformationAge, “Gartner warns of data centre power crisis,” June 19, 2007

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New resource-intensive applications coupled with an •explosion of information – Emerging new “killer apps” coupled with an “information explosion” sets an expectation for a higher level of user experience with data, voice (music), and high-quality video. For example, we can expect Web2.0, a set of next-generation application platforms, to deliver high quality, rich content, and a dynamic interactive interface. These platforms place demands on the network to retrieve large chunks of data from the SaN and deliver them in real-time.

Tim O’reilly of O’reilly Media, an advocate for free/open-source software movement, summarized the needs of Web 2.0 eloquently. Key attributes include viewing the web as a platform, with data as the driving force, to enable network effects by offering an architecture that promotes bidirectional interaction and participation. To support these functions, enterprise data centers need to scale their resources and prepare to support high bandwidth and the increased performance requirements.

Defining the “Minimum Business attributes” for the Data Center

To meet the data center challenges described above, IDC outlined the minimum business attributes or the critical framework of an enterprise data center. The framework includes manageability, scalability, availability, security, virtualization, power, cooling, storage, and floor space. IDC considers these attributes keys to building a strong foundation for the new data center and storage area network.

Next Generation Technology – Meeting the Minimum Business attributes for the Data CenterThe business dynamic continues to evolve data center infrastructure. Data storage practices need a revolutionary transformation to meet the demands imposed on data centers. Upcoming technologies address the various “change agents” and enable scaling to address

the next generation of “killer apps.” These new technologies such as disk-to-disk replication, remote mirroring, de-duplication technology, denser and power efficient data centers (multi-core/multi-processor servers, blade architecture and virtualization) are being developed. Next generation 8Gb FC technologies address the minimum business attributes expected from enterprise class data centers.

Minimum business attributes are:

Virtualization • – Industry is moving to more efficient data centers by deploying technologies that enable denser server consolidation. Virtual servers require more powerful processors. Consolidating multiple applications on a single physical server requires scalable, fatter I/O pipes, while ensuring end-to-end isolation and security, with a Quality of Service (QoS) guarantee. as virtualization proliferates, manageability of virtual components (servers and devices) is an increasing concern.

The server connectivity landscape has changed dramatically between 2004 and 2008, thanks to one technology, server virtualization.” vrichard Villars1

1 IDC LINK, “8 GBps Fibre Channel: Feeling the Need for More than Speed,”

august 17, 2007

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Power and cooling • – The budget gaps between available IT spending and infrastructure requirements drive more efficient data center designs. Newer designs enable denser data centers. awareness of global warming and green initiatives require that every component in the data center strives to optimize power. adaptive power management techniques with dynamic power/performance throttling are trends that ensure the most optimal power and cooling utilization. Floor-space optimization drives the data center to a much higher adoption of rack optimized and blade server solutions. This requires compact components within the data center to enable aggregation and power optimization. In addition, data centers need to significantly reduce real-estate costs and extensive cooling costs by ensuring the most optimal use of floor-space.

Security • – as data centers adopt virtualization technologies, IT managers need to improve security to prevent privacy loss, data theft, impersonation attacks, and data integrity compromises. Next generation products must offer a superior authentication infrastructure to deploy advanced security protocols and extend access control solutions that meet the challenges posed by a virtual infrastructure. They must extend the capabilities of end-to-end data-integrity to virtual machines.

Increasing efficiency • – IT managers must keep pace with more demanding service level agreements (SLas). These SLas drive the need for increased raS (reliability, availability, and serviceability), reduced time-windows to complete tasks, and proliferation of mission-critical applications. This requires reduced response times available over high performance networks. Newer applications such as disk-to-disk replications, streaming videos, and web 2.0 technologies require meeting increased bandwidth. The core of 8Gb Fibre Channel technology addresses these issues by doubling the performance and bandwidth over its previous generation of products.

The following illustration shows how the back-up windows are halved at every technology transition. This continuously reduces the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) by building higher efficiencies in data centers.

Virtualization aggregates multiple applications and OS instances on a single physical server. Each of these applications and OS instances generate significant I/O traffic. Server vendors address this issue by ensuring higher performance multi-core processors, developing PCI Express Gen2-based host buses, and adopting next-generation memory. To ensure the I/O adapter does not become the next bottleneck in the I/O plumbing, data centers must populate these denser servers with a fatter I/O pipes. IT professionals can achieve this by deploying multiple smaller pipes (2Gb or 4Gb) or through a larger, fatter pipe (8Gb). 8Gb technology would enable higher levels of aggregation at the adapter level.

“With continued levels of consolidation and the use of more powerful multi-core servers, these new servers are running multiple applications and therefore need more aggregate performance. The move to 8Gb/s makes perfect sense.” vrichard Villars1

1 IDC LINK, “8 GBps Fibre Channel: Feeling the Need for More than Speed,”

august 17, 2007

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Summary and Conclusion

The data center change dynamics are overwhelming. Consolidation (server, storage, and floor space) drives increased deployment of virtual machines. Infrastructure and economic dynamics drive the need for denser power optimized solutions. New regulations for data security and the impact of data loss have created a set of challenges. These challenges require solutions for authentication, integrity, and encryption. Expectations for continuously improving efficiencies (more for less), reduced response times, and enhanced user-experience breed the deployment of new killer applications.

Data center infrastructure needs balance between addressing these emerging challenges and protecting the current investments. While enterprises must deploy a scalable architecture to meet the future challenges, they must also ensure complete backward compatibility, optimal costs, and manageability.

Introducing the next generation technology, embodied under the umbrella of 8Gb Fibre Channel, QLogic 8Gb HBas and switches provide a migration path that supports today’s infrastructure and promises to meet the minimum business attributes of the data center.

QLogic 8Gb FC technology optimizes the IT infrastructure to meet and exceed the minimum business attributes:

Virtualization • – QLogic solutions deliver enhanced security, Quality-of-Service, and dynamic provisioning during live migration. They also enable a higher degree of aggregation. Doubling the throughput enables higher levels of server

consolidation and reduces data-migration/backup windows. It also improves performance and ensures reduced response time for mission-critical and next-generation killer applications.

Power • – QLogic StarPower Technology enables adaptive and dynamic power management techniques to ensure optimal power utilization.

RAS • – This includes Overlapping Protection Domains (OPD) extended for control and data paths, extension of hardware-assisted troubleshooting, and data integrity capabilities.

Security • – QLogic solutions enable SaN-level authentication, fabric-level isolation, and end-to-end data integrity.

Management • – QLogic’s comprehensive easy-to-use device management tools enables faster deployment. QLogic products are certified with all major operating systems, servers, storage, and applications.

Who Needs “A Better 8Gb?” – QLogic offers the right solution, building a non-disruptive migration plan while delivering immediate benefits and helping to address the minimum business attributes of enterprise data centers. Planning for the future today so you can meet tomorrow’s business requirements is a step up in business services.

“From both technology and silicon development perspectives2008 is the logical time to begin the transition to the next generation of FC.” vrichard Villars1

1 IDC LINK, “8 GBps Fibre Channel: Feeling the Need for More than Speed,” august 17, 2007

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references

Illustrations presented in this paper courtesy of the following publications:

“The estimated cost of a storage Security Breach,” • Infostor, Priming the storage security pump, July 13, 2007. http://www.infostor.com/display_article/297832/23/arTCL/Display/none/Priming-the-storage-security-pump/

“Drivers for Next Generation Datacenter,” • IDC 2007 Data Conference - CIO Strategies to Build the Next-Generation Data Center, March 2007.

“Virtual Server Opportunity,” • IDC 2007 Data Conference - Enterprise Class Virtualization, March 2007.

“Worldwide Server Installed Base by Form Factor,” • IDC Technical Brief – Enabling Technologies for Power and Cooling, September 2006.

Dynamics Demanding Transformation in Data Centers 8Gb Fibre Channel – A Step Up in Business Services

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© 2007–2008 QLogic Corporation. Specifications are subject to change without notice. all rights reserved worldwide. QLogic, the QLogic logo, and SaNblade are registered trademarks of QLogic Corporation. SaNtrack is a trademarks of QLogic Corporation, which may be registered in some jurisdictions. Dell is a registered trademark of Dell Inc. all other brand and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. Information supplied by QLogic Corporation is believed to be accurate and reliable. QLogic Corporation assumes no responsibility for any errors in this brochure. QLogic Corporation reserves the right, without notice, to make changes in product design or specifications.

Dell has tested and certified the QLE256x QLogic Series HBa with Dell servers and storage systems. Dell specifically disclaims knowledge of the accuracy, completeness or substantiation for all statements and claims made in this document regarding the properties, capabilities, speeds or qualifications of the QLogic 2500 Series HBa.

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DisclaimerQLogic Corporation is not liable for any error in this published white paper or the results thereof. Variation in results may be a result of change in configuration or in the environment. QLogic specifically disclaims any warranty, expressed or implied, relating to the test results and their accuracy, analysis, completeness or quality.

Dell has tested and certified the QLE2560 QLogic Series HBA with Dell™ PowerEdge™ R805, R905, R900, 1900, 1950, 2900, 2950, 2970 servers and storage systems. Dell specifically disclaims knowledge of the accuracy, completeness or substantiation for all statements and claims made in this document regarding the properties, capabilities, speeds or qualifications of the QLogic 2500 Series adapters.