IBM SONAS and VMware vSphere 5 scale-out cloud foundation: A reference guide for storage and security administrators

IBM SONAS and VMware vSphere 5
scale-out cloud foundation
A technical report

Benton Gallun

IBM System and Technology Group
SONAS ISV Enablement
January 2012

© Copyright IBM Corporation, 2012

Table of contents
Abstract........................................................................................................................................1
Executive summary ....................................................................................................................1
Intended audience.......................................................................................................................1
Scope ...........................................................................................................................................1
VMware vSphere 5.0 ............................................................................................................................... 2
IBM SONAS ............................................................................................................................................. 2
SONAS 1.3 qualification on vSphere 5.0................................................................................................. 2
New in vSphere 5 ........................................................................................................................4
Storage vMotion....................................................................................................................................... 4
Storage Distributed Resource Scheduler ................................................................................................ 4
Image Builder and Auto Deploy ............................................................................................................... 5
Centralized logging .................................................................................................................................. 5
Virtual network enhancements ................................................................................................................ 5
VMware Site Recovery Manager 5 (SRM 5): Host-based replication ..................................................... 5
Deploying vSphere5 on SONAS ................................................................................................6
Planning and preparation......................................................................................................................... 6
Planning the creation of shares on SONAS ............................................................................................ 7
Creating and mounting shares............................................................................................................... 12
Installing and configuring ........................................................................................................18
Installing and configuring ESX server.................................................................................................... 18
Installing and configuring the vSphere................................................................................................... 18
Configuring the network ......................................................................................................................... 19
VMware suggested topology for NAS-attached ESX Server................................................................. 24
Adding NFS data stores to the ESX Server ............................................................................25
Backup and restore of VM images stored in SONAS.............................................................28
Recommendations ....................................................................................................................30
DNS / IP NFS targets............................................................................................................................. 30
SDRS ..................................................................................................................................................... 30
Separate Ethernet storage network ....................................................................................................... 30
Routing and IBM SONAS networks ....................................................................................................... 30
Summary....................................................................................................................................31
Appendix A: Glossary...............................................................................................................32
Appendix B: Resources............................................................................................................33
About the author .......................................................................................................................34
Trademarks and special notices..............................................................................................35

IBM SONAS and VMware vSphere 5 scale-out cloud foundation

Abstract
This technical paper discusses the deployment of a VMware environment and best practices in
using IBM Scale Out Network Attached Storage (SONAS) for its primary storage.
VMware vSphere 5 offers a number of new features and enhancements to further improve
usability, system consolidation ratios, and total cost of ownership (TCO) for SONAS customers
using VMware.

Executive summary
More and more enterprises are turning to server virtualization to increase the utility of hardware and data
center real estate while increasing uptime through the use of high availability (HA) solutions built around
VMware with shared storage solutions, such as SONAS. As virtual machines (VMs) increase in number
and the amount of data stored (in TB) continue to grow and drive storage consumption, the benefits of
scale out storage become more and more compelling.
IBM® SONAS scalable I/O and storage provide a competitive advantage in the data center by allowing
I/O and data resources to be aggregated and used efficiently on demand. SONAS presently supports the
aggregation of storage nodes up to 21 PB in a space-efficient footprint. VMware vSphere and IBM
SONAS together provide a winning solution, providing high return on investment (ROI) on data center
costs for mid- and large-sized VMware consolidations, while providing one of the best-of-breeds scalabil-
ity.

Intended audience
This technical report is intended for:
 Customers and prospects looking to implement effective storage solutions for the enterprise
business IT virtual environment requiring extreme scalability with the integration of VMware
vSphere 5 and IBM SONAS.
 IT Management that needs to implement a highly-available and massively-scalable enterprise IT
virtual infrastructure
 Customers who need to consolidate data center resources while improving system density and
scalability

Scope
This technical paper provides:
 Details on VMware vSphere 5 features
 Best practices for vSphere 5 use with IBM SONAS

This technical paper assumes familiarity with the following:
 Basic knowledge of VMware virtualization technologies and products, including:
− VMware vCenter Server
− VMware vSphere
 Basic knowledge of IBM SONAS system
 IBM SONAS version 1.3 GA version or higher.

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VMware vSphere 5.0
VMware vSphere 5.0 is the latest data center virtualization suite from VMware for the enterprise. VMware
has turned feedback from customers and partners into valuable and attractive features for building scal-
able private clouds.
New features include:
 Storage Distributed Resource Scheduler (SDRS)
 VMware File System v5 (VMFS 5)
 Virtual Machine Hardware v8 monster VMs (up to 32 vProcs, 1 TB RAM)
 Up to 512 VMs per host
 Stretch cluster support across WANs with 10 ms and less latency
 Image Builder
 Auto Deploy
 Zero disk deployment options
 Centralized logging
 3D graphics
 USB 3.0 support
 IBM Tivoli® Netcool®
 Performance and management efficiency enhancements

IBM SONAS
IBM SONAS is a leading edge storage solution that provides enterprises the capability to consolidate and
manage data, while reducing floor space and management expenses. SONAS also provides a customer-
centric solution that permits nondisruptive virtualization growth along with a robust set of business
continuity and management tools, while enabling business and economic advantages for customers.
The SONAS advanced architecture virtualizes and consolidates hundreds to thousands of spinning disks
into an enterprise-wide file system, and can scale I/O and capacity dynamically as storage nodes are
added. IBM Scale Out NAS translates into reduced total cost of administration, reduced capital expendi-
ture, and enhanced operational efficiency.

SONAS 1.3 qualification on vSphere 5.0
IBM participated in the vSphere 5 beta and ran extensive storage tests verifying the integrity of SONAS
vSphere storage operations under load during VMware Storage vMotion, HA failover, and
VMware vMotion operations. All tests were conducted against a battery of Microsoft® Windows® 2003,
Windows 2008, SUSE Linux®, and RedHat virtual machines using LSI Logic Parallel, LSI Logic SAS, Bus
Logic ,and VMware paravirtual storage adapters. SONAS has accordingly been certified for use with
vSphere 5.0.
You can find it in the VMware Compatability Guide at:
http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php?deviceCategory=san

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Figure 1: SONAS entry from VMware Compatibility Guide

Figure 2: Certification ID from VMware

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New in vSphere 5
This section explains the features that are new in VMware vSphere 5.

Storage vMotion
In the previous release of vSphere, Changed Block Tracking was used to ensure that blocks changed
during the first pass of Storage vMotion were caught up before fail over. In vSphere 5.0, this process has
changed and the new VMware Mirror Mode is used to make sure that new writes are written to both the
source and target, while other virtual disk blocks are copied sequentially. The result is a more efficient
and quicker failover from source to target. Refer to Duncan Epping’s blog for a more detailed
explanation at:
http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2011/07/14/vsphere-5-0-storage-vmotion-and-the-mirror-driver/

Storage Distributed Resource Scheduler
Storage DRS (SDRS) is a new feature in vSphere 5.0. Previous versions of vSphere contained DRS,
which would redistribute virtual machines across ESX hosts in a cluster-based environment based on a
recent history of their average processor and memory requirements in order to provide the best fit of VMs
to available resources on ESX hosts in the cluster. SDRS provides a similar and complementary function,
dynamically moving virtual machines to different data stores in a data store cluster based on recent I/O
averages and available data store space as monitored by Storage I/O Control (SIOC). SIOC support for
Network File System (NFS) has also been added to vSphere in the 5.0 release. Storage vMotion now
supports linked clones and virtual machines with snapshots. SDRS can be automated or can be config-
ured to make manual recommendations for rebalancing and helps to avoid a denial of service condition
resulting from a full data store. In many environments, SDRS will take place primarily during the initial
placement of a new VM to disk, thus dramatically reducing the need for excessive Storage vMotion opera-
tions and sparing system administrators from having to do a manual storage analysis before creating a
new VM.
IBM recommends the following practices to SONAS customers:

 Make all NFS mounts in an SDRS data store cluster of the same capacity.
 Configure SDRS to migrate virtual machines to new data stores when insufficient space exists to
fit a large VM on a data store.
 Use large SONAS storage pools.
The IBM General Parallel File System (IBM GPFS™) used by SONAS efficiently leverages stor-
age resources and dynamically stripes across all disks in a storage pool. The result is that NFS
data stores backed by large pools are able to efficiently allocate writes providing high throughput
to the VMs that need it most. Larger pools provide more burst write I/O potential.

 Use fewer, larger NFS data stores.
SONAS supports NFS data stores up to 21 PB on SONAS. Multiple file systems per pool are
supported and are useful when different block sizes are desired. Multiple NFS exports per file
system are possible, and it is recommended to have only one NFS mount per file system per
SDRS data store cluster.
 Set SDRS to ensure sufficient free space without being excessive.

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Because SONAS supports very large data stores, the default SDRS threshold of 80% utilization is
likely to cause undesirable vMotion operations.
Example: In an environment where VMs are 100 GB each, data stores are 64 TB each, SDRS’s
default setting of 80% causes VM relocation when less than 12.8 TB are available on the data
stores. Ensuring write space for 128 VMs worth of writes results in an underutilization of storage
and excessive relocation. A setting of 1% still preserves write space for more than six VMs worth
of writes. Still, as vSphere uses thin provisioning by default, the expected disk footprint growth of
thin provisioned VMs and the number of VMs per data store should be considered carefully when
choosing the appropriate threshold for your data store.
For more information on SDRS, refer to the following URL:
http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2011/07/new-vsphere-50-storage-features-part-2-storage-vmotion.html

Image Builder and Auto Deploy
Customers with large VMware deployments can benefit from the ability to create custom image profiles
consisting of VMware and third party VMware installation bundles with Image Builder, which can be rap-
idly and automatically deployed through vSphere Auto Deploy. Hundreds of ESX servers can be deployed
and customized using image profiles or can be updated to the latest VMware installation bundle patch
levels within hours automatically. The Auto Deploy feature uses host profiles to customize host-specific
information post deployment.

Centralized logging
Larger and larger vSphere deployments render analysis of logs distributed across ESX hosts increasingly
complex. ESX systems with no local disk can now be deployed statelessly through Auto Deploy, and as a
result, cannot retain a local log in the event of a crash. Logs can now be redirected to a centralized
SONAS share or to a syslog server for increased convenience and improved availability. System adminis-
trators no longer need to review separate logs on each ESX host when troubleshooting.

Virtual network enhancements
VMware vSphere Distributed Switch improvements allow improved insight into traffic on virtual networks
through protocols, such as Netflow, SPAN, and LLDP enabling sophisticated network analysis through
tools such as, Tivoli Netcool Performance Flow Analyzer, packet inspection through network sniffers, and
network-level virtual machine discovery.

VMware Site Recovery Manager 5 (SRM 5): Host-based replication
VMware SRM 5 with host-based replication support means many new disaster recovery (DR) data center
possibilities for SONAS. SONAS large data capacity makes it ideal as a recovery target for a large num-
ber of VMs hosted on SONAS or another platform which is at or near its capacity.
Figure 3 represents four data centers with IBM System Storage® N series, N7900, with 1 PB of hosted
VMs. Earlier, four N series units would have been required in the DR data center. As host-based replica-
tion takes place in the hypervisor at the virtual-disk level, SRM can leverage one SONAS with 4.4 PB in
the DR data center, thus reducing complexity and cost.

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Figure 3: Representation of four data centers with IBM N series, N7900, with 1 PB of hosted virtual machines

Deploying vSphere5 on SONAS
Organizations willing to deploy or consolidate large numbers of VMs today and prepare to scale out their
virtualization deployment tomorrow can benefit greatly from SONAS scale-out storage. Virtualization effi-
ciencies in terms of servers per unit of cost, servers per sq ft of data center, and improved efficiency of
management are accelerating public and private cloud adoption everywhere. The ability to scale a single
deployment up to 21 PB in a single management pane of glass makes SONAS an excellent choice for
organizations that might otherwise have to manage multiple storage silos in the same data center in order
to meet their needs.

Planning and preparation
NFS shared storage on resilient scale out storage with redundancy at all levels makes it possible to pro-
vide high availability and fault tolerance (VMware HA and FT) and load distribution (VMware DRS) in an

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environment with shared storage I/O capacity. Shared storage capacity on a large SONAS pool means
that the peak burst capacity of any VM in a large group of VMs, where workloads are properly matched to
the pool, can be extremely high.
NFS exports created on SONAS can be mounted by vSphere ESX servers in order to provide the shared
storage required to leverage vSphere enterprise features and provide Big Data data stores and I/O to
vSphere.
A brief overview of NFS share creation on SONAS and vSphere installation follows. SONAS customers
can refer to the SONAS documentation available at:
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/sonasic/sonas1ic/index.jsp and the VMware Installation Guide at:
http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/topic/com.vmware.ICbase/PDF/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-50-
installation-setup-guide.pdf before getting started.

Reference guide Description and URL

IBM Scale Out Describes how to use the command-line interface (CLI) and graphical-user
Network Attached interface (GUI) of the SONAS management console to administer the system
Storage Administra- http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/sonasic/sonas1ic/topic/com.ibm.sonas.do
tor's Guide c/sonas_admin_guide.pdf
(GA32-0713)

IBM SONAS User's Describes how storage users within your enterprise can use the SONAS system
Guide (GA32-0714) http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/sonasic/sonas1ic/topic/com.ibm.sonas.do
c/sonas_user_guide.pdf

IBM SONAS Con- Describes how to configure SONAS hardware and software after their installation
figuration Guide http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/sonasic/sonas1ic/topic/com.ibm.sonas.do
(GA32-0718) c/configuration_guide.pdf

IBM SONAS Intro- Describes SONAS hardware products (software and network) and planning
duction and Plan- considerations for installation
ning Guide (GA32- http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/sonasic/sonas1ic/topic/com.ibm.sonas.do
0716) c/sonas_ipg.pdf

IBM SONAS Trou- Contains error messages and troubleshooting procedures
bleshooting Guide http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/sonasic/sonas1ic/topic/com.ibm.sonas.do
(GA32-0717) c/sonas_pd_guide.pdf

Table 1: SONAS documents

Planning the creation of shares on SONAS
SONAS is very flexible and allows creation of multiple shares on one underlying file system and multiple
file systems per pool, with multiple VMs per share. SONAS can also be used to export one directory per
file system per VM up to the SONAS NFS export limits. However, it is recommended that customers lev-
eraging SDRS minimize the number of shares per file system to one per cluster. Customers should also
consider leveraging SDRS manual mode in order to analyze the SDRS rule set and determine that rules
are appropriate for the existing data stores and workload in order to avoid unnecessary VM migration.

7

After rules sets have been tuned appropriately, SDRS automation can be enabled. Leveraging the large
NFS data store support of VMware on SONAS reduces the number of SDRS automated migrations when
SDRS is in fully automated mode.
Although fewer large data stores and fewer exports (one per file system) provide optimization for SDRS,
consideration should also be given to maximizing the efficiency of SONAS NFS service under normal op-
erations and in the event of an infrastructure node failure. Refer to the “DNS / IP NFS targets” section for
more details.
NFS data stores include the following key features.
 File system: GPFS, global namespace
 Maximum VMware supported size of data NFS data stores: 21 PB
 Maximum number of NFS data stores: 256 per host
 Thin-provisioning support: Yes
 Ethernet connectivity and number of ports: Quad-port GbE or dual-port 10 GbE ports for
connecting to NIC team)

Note: For more details, refer to the Configurations Maximums (VMware vSphere 5.0) document at:
http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsphere5/r50/vsphere-50-configuration-maximums.pdf
This section provides the key steps for creating a file system, and for more details, refer to the SONAS
Creating a file system section of the IBM Scale Out Network Attached Storage Administrator's Guide at
the following URL:
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/sonasic/sonas1ic/topic/com.ibm.sonas.doc/sonas_admin_guide.p
df

8

Perform the following steps to create a file system.
1. Log in to the SONAS GUI with an administrator account.

Figure 4: SONAS web GUI logon page

2. On the main menu, click Files  File Systems.

Figure 5: Selecting the File Systems menu

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3. On the New File System window, enter an appropriate name for the file system and select a disk
type. Then and move the size slider to specify the necessary size for the file system.

Figure 6: SONAS New File System window

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4. After the file system is created, click Close.

Figure 7: SONAS file system being created

Figure 8: File system creation complete

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Creating and mounting shares

1. On the main menu, click the File  Shares  New Share.

Figure 9: SONAS Files menu

2. On the New Share page, click NFS.

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Figure 10: SONAS NFS share creation dialog

13

3. Use the browse tool to browse to the new file system and create a directory to export.

Figure 11: Specifying the directory to export

14

4. Select the new directory and click OK.

Figure 12: Selecting the file system / directory to export

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5. On the New Share page, enter an appropriate name for the share. In the Client name or ID field,
enter the IP of the VMKernel on the first ESX system which will mount the share and clear the
Read only access, Root squash, and Secure check boxes. Click the plus sign (+) and repeat
for each VMKernel IP that will mount the share.

Figure 13: SONAS NFS share creation

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6. After the task is completed, click Close.

Figure 14: SONAS NFS share creation complete

17

Installing and configuring
At present, the legacy Windows Virtual Center scales better than the newer Linux based vCenter Appli-
ance. Due to its’ better scalability and compatibility with more vSphere add-ons vCenter for Windows is
recommended for future vSphere scalability. An appropriately configured Microsoft® Windows® 2003 or
2008 server is required to run the Virtual Center. This server OS can run in a VM or on physical hardware.
Refer to chapter 2, System Requirements, in the Installation Guide for vSphere. Virtual Center provides
a single point of management for clusters of ESX servers. An ESX server installs directly on the server
hardware and inserts a robust virtualization layer between the hardware and operating system. The num-
ber of ESX servers required depends on your VM load and redundancy policy. A minimum of two ESX
servers are required for VMware features such as HA, DRS, and vMotion. Refer to the Hardware Re-
quirements section in the VMware vSphere 5 Installation and Setup guide for minimum requirements.
For quick tips on installation and configuration processes, refer to the following VMware documentation.
 vSphere Installation and Setup
http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/topic/com.vmware.ICbase/PDF/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-
50-installation-setup-guide.pdf
 VMware vSphere Basics
50-basics-guide.pdf
 VMware vSphere 5.0 Upgrade Best Practices
http://www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/10216

Installing and configuring ESX server
It is recommended that each ESX host have at least three physical network ports. Servers or clusters
should be sized appropriately for their intended VM loads and HA fault tolerance requirements. Network,
RAM, processor, and storage I/O should be planned carefully. In an ideally designed environment, re-
sources will be nearly fully utilized. Although, overcommitment of many resources is possible, do so only
gradually and carefully as an overcommitment tipping point is reached quickly and easily. Too much over-
commitment of resources can easily convert an otherwise very successful virtualization deployment into a
lackluster performer.

Installing and configuring the vSphere
A dedicated Windows 2008 Server is recommended as a Virtual Center server. License keys for ESX
hosts and vSphere features are stored and allocated by Virtual Center. After Virtual Center is installed,
create a data center object through the vSphere client. After the data center object is created, clusters are
created and ESX servers are added to the clusters. It is recommended that all the systems in a cluster
mount the same SONAS shares so that VMs can be started on any system in the cluster and can be mi-
grated from one system to another through vMotion.

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Configuring the network
To use the Storage vMotion and NFS data store function, at least one VMKernel port is needed. VMware
recommends configuration of virtual switch as a NIC team on two of the available physical adapters to
provide fault tolerance. Figure 15 shows the VMkernel configuration on NIC team, using the vSphere
client.
Note: Customers with an Enterprise Plus license may wish to create a vNevwork Distributed Switch (vDS)
once for the cluster instead of repeating the below instructions on each host.
Refer to VMware KB1010557 for more information at:
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=10
10557
To configure the network:
1. On the client, click Configuration  Networking.
2. At the top-right corner, click Add Networking.

Figure 15: Using VMware Infrastructure 3 to configure NIC team

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3. On the Connection Type page, select VMkernel and click Next (refer to Figure 16).

Figure 16: Selecting the VMkernel

4. On the VMkernel - Network Access page, select Create a virtual switch. Select two physical
NICs and click Next (refer to Figure 17).

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Figure 17: Selecting the Create a virtual switch option and choosing two physical NICs

5. In the Port Group Properties section (refer to Figure 18), enter NIC Team in the Network Label
field.
6. In the IP Settings section, specify the correct IP settings. (Note: The IP address should be on the
same subnet that the SONAS NIC Team / IP(s) it is trying to communicate with.
7. Click Next.

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Figure 18: Specifying values in the Port Group Properties and IP Settings sections

8. Confirm the VMkernel connections, and then click Finish.
9. Use NIC teaming to set the failover order at the port-group level. To set policies, follow the Virtual
Switch configuration steps provided in the vSphere Networking guide on the VMware website at:
50-networking-guide.pdf

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10. On the NIC teaming tab (on the vSwitch configuration page, refer to Figure 19), select Beacon
Probing for network-failover detection. Make sure that the value in the Rolling Failover list is set
to No.

Figure 19: Setting options in the NIC Teaming tab

11. Create a NIC team on the NAS filer in the same subnet as the ESX NIC team.

Recommendation: When possible dedicate a fast interface (10 GB) to the VMkernel being used for NFS
and use 10 GB on SONAS to host NFS. Storage performance is best when the NFS VMKernel is sepa-
rate from the VMkernel for management, vMotion, and FT.

23

VMware suggested topology for NAS-attached ESX Server
Figure 20 shows the topology based on VMware suggestions for attaching NAS and ESX Server.

Figure 20: ESX connected to SONAS filer across two physical switches

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Adding NFS data stores to the ESX Server
After configuring the VMKernel port, you can add SONAS exported volumes to ESX through the vSphere
client. Shares for hosting VMs should be mounted read-write, as shown in figure 22 (the read-only check-
box is not selected).

Perform the following steps to add NFS data stores to the ESX Server.
1. In the VMware Infrastructure client, select host, then click Configuration  Storage  Add
Storage.
2. In the Storage Type section, select Network File System (as shown in Figure 21).

Figure 21: Selecting Network File System as the storage type

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3. Fill in the details for the NFS server (refer to Figure 23) and click Next

Figure 22: Specifying the details for the NFS server

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7. Review the summary and click Finish.

Figure 23: NFS server details

Note: Domain Name System (DNS) entries with multiple records will only be resolved by ESX once to a
single IP address. Keep this in mind when planning NFS exports, DNS aliases, and associated IP ad-
dressing. Refer to the “Recommendations” section of this paper for more information.

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Backup and restore of VM images stored in SONAS
VMware ESX virtualizes system disks as .vmdk files that can reside on shared storage. VMware ESX
provides flexible methodologies that allow administrators to integrate ESX Server backups with the exist-
ing backup solutions, such as Symantec NetBackup. VMware integrated backups leverage VMware
snapshots enabling system backups with virtually zero downtime and are a great choice for backup of
systems in 24x7 operations.
VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB) support has been discontinued by VMware starting with vSphere 5.
Instead vStorage APIs for Data Protection (VADP) integrated backup products (including VMware Data
Recovery) will be the recommended option for efficient backup and restoration of vSphere VMs. VMware
Data Recovery has a hard limit of 100 VMs and is suitable for backing up small environments. However,
customers plannning large scale out clouds on SONAS should should consider VMware-based backup
solutions, which scale better. Backup solutions qualified by IBM for use with SONAS are: Tivoli,
NetBackup, and Veeam.

Figure 24: Diagram of a typical VMware backup solution

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Figure 25: Diagram of a typical Tivoli Storage Manager for Virtual Environments setup

More information is avaialble at the following links:

 Implementing an NDMP backup solution using Symantec NetBackup on IBM SONAS
ibm.com/partnerworld/wps/servlet/ContentHandler/whitepaper/sonas/ndmp/symantec/netbacku
p

 Implementing an NDMP backup solution using CommVault Simpana 9.0on IBM SONAS
http://public.dhe.ibm.com/partnerworld/pub/whitepaper/19d6e.pdf

 Tivoli Storage Manager for Virtual Environments
ibm.com/software/tivoli/products/storage-mgr-ve/

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Recommendations
This section provides a few recommendations that can be helpful in planning and configuring your envi-
ronment.

DNS / IP NFS targets
An ESX Server can mount NFS data stores during startup. When using DNS names, the ESX Server re-
solves the hostname to one IP address and binds to it persistently. Use of multiple A-records for a DNS
host name will not result in load balancing and might cause data corruption. SONAS NFS shares should
be mounted by IP or by a DNS name resolving to a single IP. If a SONAS infrastructure node fails, IPs
from the failed node will be distributed among the remaining interface nodes. No ESX side configuration is
required.
IBM recommends that the number of NFS data stores created be a multiple of the total number of infra-
structure node client access Ethernet interfaces that each data store be mounted by a unique IP address
or by a DNS name with only one A-record.
Use the same IP to mount a particular data store on all ESX hosts. Do not mount the same NFS export on
one client from two different IBM SONAS nodes. Data corruption might occur. When possible, assign one
IP per NFS export / data store to ensure optimal load distribution across SONAS infrastructure nodes.

SDRS
Take time to consider the following recommendations in order to maximize available disk space and
minimize VM migration when using SDRS.

 Use manual mode while determining the best rule set for SDRS.
 Lower the SDRS space reservation threshold when using large data stores.
 Validate SDRS rule set and resulting recommendations carefully before using SDRS
automation.

Separate Ethernet storage network
As a best practice, separate IBM SONAS NFS traffic from public IP network traffic by implementing sepa-
rate physical network segments or virtual LAN (VLAN) segments.

Routing and IBM SONAS networks
As a best practice always configure IBM SONAS and ESX / ESXi hosts on the same subnet whenever
possible. This model helps to ensure performance and provides a layer of data security.

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Summary
VMware vSphere 5.0 provides new features to enterprises enabling scale out of existing VMware de-
ployments with larger VMs, more rapid infrastructure deployment, dynamic storage management, im-
proved virtual network visibility, increased performance, and improved disaster recovery. Improved effi-
ciency and monster VMs make consolidation of nearly all enterprise servers a possibility. Existing data
center real estate is used more efficiently and energy consumption goes down by consolidating workloads
and providing lower TCO while improving manageability and reliability. SONAS scalability provides the
ability to scale far beyond the capacity of traditional storage and makes it perfect for high-density consoli-
dation and as a DR site storage solution for multiple vSphere deployments, regardless of their capacity.
Because SONAS is both fault tolerant and scales at both storage node infrastructure node levels, it is an
excellent choice for building a scale out cloud.

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Appendix A: Glossary
 IBM Scale Out Network Attached Storage (SONAS) - Build on IBM high-performance comput-
ing experience and based upon IBM GPFS, scale out network-attached storage (NAS) solution
provides the performance, clustered scalability, high availability, and functionality that are
essential to meet strategic Petabyte Age and cloud-storage requirements.

 VMware vSphere – Formerly developed as VMware Virtual Infrastructure, it is VMware’s first
cloud operating system that can manage large pools of virtualized computing infrastructure,
including software and hardware.

 VMware ESXi - VMware ESXi is bare-metal embedded hypervisor, which runs directly on server
hardware without requiring an additional underlying operating system.

32

Appendix B: Resources
These websites provide useful references to supplement the information contained in this paper:
 IBM Systems on IBM PartnerWorld®
ibm.com/partnerworld/systems

 IBM Redbooks®
ibm.com/redbooks

 IBM Publications Center
www.elink.ibmlink.ibm.com/public/applications/publications/cgibin/pbi.cgi?CTY=US

 IBM SONAS on PartnerWorld
ibm.com/partnerworld/systems/sonas

IBM SONAS documentation
 IBM Scale Out Network Attached Storage Concepts
ibm.com/redbooks/redpieces/abstracts/sg247874.html?Open

 IBM SONAS Introduction and Planning Guide (GA32-0716):
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/sonasic/sonas1ic/topic/com.ibm.sonas.doc/sonas_ipg.pdf

 IBM SONAS administration and user documentation:
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/sonasic/sonas1ic/index.jsp

 IBM Scale Out Network Attached Storage Administrator's Guide (GA32-0713):
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/sonasic/sonas1ic/topic/com.ibm.sonas.doc/sonas_admin
_guide.pdf

 IBM SONAS User's Guide (GA32-0714):
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/sonasic/sonas1ic/topic/com.ibm.sonas.doc/sonas_user_
guide.pdf

 IBM SONAS Configuration Guide (GA32-0718):
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/sonasic/sonas1ic/topic/com.ibm.sonas.doc/configuration
_guide.pdf

 IBM SONAS Troubleshooting Guide (GA32-0717):
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/sonasic/sonas1ic/topic/com.ibm.sonas.doc/sonas_pd_gui
de.pdf

VMware documentation

 vSphere PowerCLI Administration Guide
http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/PowerCLI/PowerCLI41U1/doc/viwin_admg.pdf

 VMware Virtual Networking Concepts
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/virtual_networking_concepts.pdf

33

About the author
Benton Gallun is a Systems Architect in the IBM SONAS ISV Enablement Group. He has 15 years
experience working with thin client, virtualization, and storage technologies. His focus is on server
virtualization, Virtual Dekstop Infrastructure (VDI), and cloud solutions from ISVs which leverage the
power of scale out NAS.
You can reach Benton at bgallun@us.ibm.com.

34

Trademarks and special notices
© Copyright IBM Corporation 2012.
References in this document to IBM products or services do not imply that IBM intends to make them
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Information concerning non-IBM products was obtained from a supplier of these products, published an-
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35

formation is presented here to communicate IBM's current investment and development activities as a
good faith effort to help with our customers' future planning.
Performance is based on measurements and projections using standard IBM benchmarks in a controlled
environment. The actual throughput or performance that any user will experience will vary depending
upon considerations such as the amount of multiprogramming in the user's job stream, the I/O configura-
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36

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