Intelligent storage management solution using VMware vSphere 5.0 Storage DRS: A technical report of the storage management solution using SDRS on the IBM SONAS storage system

Intelligent storage management solution
using VMware vSphere 5.0 Storage DRS

A technical report of the storage management
solution using SDRS on the IBM SONAS
storage system

Udayasuryan Kodoly
IBM Systems and Technology Group ISV Enablement

June 2012

© Copyright IBM Corporation, 2012

Table of contents
Abstract .................................................................................................................................... 3
Executive summary.................................................................................................................. 3
Intended audience ....................................................................................................................................4
Scope .......................................................................................................................................................4
Prerequisites ............................................................................................................................ 4
Solution components............................................................................................................... 4
VMware vSphere ......................................................................................................................................4
IBM SONAS overview ..............................................................................................................................5
Solution architecture ............................................................................................................... 6
Material list for solution setup in the lab ...................................................................................................7
Basic configuration requirement for the solution ......................................................................................8
NFS data store configuration ............................................................................................................8
Create file set on a specific file system for the NFS data store ........................................................8
Creating NFS share (export) with the newly created file set ......................................................... 10
Data store clusters ................................................................................................................................ 12
Data store cluster constraints ........................................................................................................ 13
Best practices before creating the data store clusters .................................................................. 13
Steps to create a data store cluster ............................................................................................... 14
Profile-Driven Storage ........................................................................................................................... 21
Create user-defined storage capabilities ....................................................................................... 22
Create a VM storage profile........................................................................................................... 25
Assign the user-defined VM storage profiles to the data stores .................................................... 28
Using the VM Storage Profile ........................................................................................................ 31
Checking compatibility ................................................................................................................... 32
Guiding Storage DRS recommendations for the solution ..................................................................... 34
Affinity and anti-affinity rules.......................................................................................................... 35
Intra-VM VMDK affinity rule ........................................................................................................... 35
Intra-VM VMDK anti-affinity rule .................................................................................................... 37
Inter-VM anti-affinity rule ............................................................................................................... 38
Different VMFS block sizes ........................................................................................................... 39
SDRS data store maintenance mode ............................................................................................ 40
Summary................................................................................................................................. 42
Appendix A: Glossary ............................................................................................................ 43
Appendix B: Materials used in the lab setup........................................................................ 44
Appendix C: Resources ......................................................................................................... 45
About the author .................................................................................................................... 47
Trademarks and special notices ........................................................................................... 48

Intelligent storage management solution using VMware vSphere 5.0 Storage DRS
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Abstract
This technical paper provides the essential technical information about the advanced
storage management solution for VMware virtual infrastructure using the VMware
vSphere 5.0 Storage Distributed Resource Scheduler (Storage DRS) feature with the
IBM Scale Out Network Attached Storage (SONAS) storage system.
Storage DRS (SDRS) is a new vSphere 5.0 feature that provides intelligent virtual
machine (VM) placement across storage by making load-balancing decisions based on
the current I/O latency and space usage and moving virtual machine disks (VMDKs) in
a non-disruptive manner between the data stores in the data store cluster.
Storage DRS selects the best data store to place the virtual machine or VMDKs in the
selected data store cluster of the SONAS file systems.

Executive summary
IBM® SONAS is a scalable storage offering designed to manage vast repositories of information
in enterprise environments requiring very large capacities, high levels of performance, and high
availability. IBM SONAS provides a clustered network-attached storage (NAS) system with a
single name space for Common Internet File System (CIFS), Network File System (NFS),
Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS), Secure Copy Protocol (SCP), and File Transfer
Protocol (FTP) services. The system consists of:

• Two to thirty-two interface nodes (2851-SI2)

• One to thirty storage pods consisting of storage node (2851-SS2), storage

• Controller (2851-DR1) and attached disks

• Disk storage expansion units (2851-DE1)
• Ethernet and InfiniBand® switches and racks

IBM SONAS can scale up to a maximum configuration that provides up to a massive 21.6
petabytes (PB) of storage capacity in a single cluster, highly redundant system. The storage used
in the SONAS system can be high-performance 15 K/10 K rpm serial-attached SCSI (SAS) hard
disk drives (HDDs) or high-capacity 7.2 K rpm nearline SAS HDDs, allowing configuration
according to the needs.
The VMware vSphere 5.0 Storage DRS feature aggregates storage resources of several storage
volumes and file systems of the IBM SONAS storage system in to a single pool and simplifies
storage management at scale. The feature intelligently places workloads on storage volumes and
file systems during provisioning based on the available storage resources. It performs ongoing
load balancing between storage volumes and file systems to ensure space and avoids I/O
bottlenecks as per predefined rules that reflect business needs and changing priorities with
vSphere Storage DRS. The important benefits of Storage DRS on a vSphere 5.0 virtual
infrastructure are as follows.

• Reduce IT costs and improve agility with rapid and simpler VM provisioning.

• Increase manageability at scale by automated monitoring and remediation.

• Improve application performance by avoiding storage resource bottlenecks.

3

• Meet application service level agreements (SLAs) during unavoidable congestion by
using storage I/O control.

Intended audience
This technical report is intended for:
• Customers and prospects looking to implement advanced storage management solution
for the VMware virtual infrastructure using Storage DRS with the IBM SONAS storage
system.
• Users and management seeking information to implement advanced storage
management solution for the VMware virtual infrastructure using Storage DRS with the
IBM SONAS storage system.

Scope
This technical report provides:
• Detailed and advanced storage management solution implementation for the VMware
virtual infrastructure using Storage DRS with IBM SONAS.
• Detailed design and implementation guide; configuration best practices.
• Reproducible test results that simulate common failure scenarios resulting from
operational problems and unplanned outages.

This technical report does not:
• Discuss any performance impact and analysis from a user perspective.
• Replace any official manuals and documents from IBM and VMware on the products
used in the solution.

Prerequisites
This technical paper assumes familiarity with the following prerequisites:
• Basic knowledge of VMware virtualization technologies and products:
− VMware vCenter Server 5.0
− VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0
• Basic knowledge of the IBM SONAS storage system

Solution components
This section briefly describes the essential components used in this solution.

VMware vSphere
In order for Storage DRS to function correctly, the environment must meet the following VMware
vSphere basic product requirements.

• VMware vCenter Server 5.0
• VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0

• VMware vCenter Cluster (recommended)

• VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus License

4

• Shared Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) or NFS data store volumes

− Shared data store volumes accessible by at least one ESXi host inside the
cluster

− Data stores must be visible in only one data center

• All hosts associated with the data store cluster must run ESXi 5.0 or higher versions.

IBM SONAS overview
IBM SONAS is an enterprise-class, modular, scalable, NAS solution designed to meet rapidly
growing storage needs. Delivering seamless scalability for the high performance and massive
capacity that healthcare providers require, it builds on a distributed architecture to reduce
management complexity and eliminate any single point of failure that might impede data
availability.

SONAS scales to capacities over 21 PB to store large and small files generated by businesses
today and to meet the storage needs anticipated for the future. To keep these huge volumes of
data safe and to remove interruptions from business operations, SONAS provides built-in high
availability and fault tolerance for dependability, resiliency, and flexibility.

IBM SONAS provides a globally clustered NAS file system built upon IBM General Parallel File
System (IBM GPFS™). The global namespace is maintained across the cluster of multiple
storage pods and multiple interface nodes. This capability permits all interface nodes and all
storage nodes share equally in the cluster to balance workloads dynamically and provide parallel
performance to all users and storage, which also ensures high availability (HA) and automated
failover.

The IBM SONAS storage system offers the following features:

• IBM SONAS provides extreme scalability to accommodate capacity growth for up to 21
PB

• Manages multiple petabytes of storage and billions of files in a single file system

• Excellent performance within a single file system

• Enables ubiquitous access to files from across the globe quickly and cost effectively with
IBM Active Cloud Engine™

• Operational efficiency with automated, policy-driven tiered storage

• Automated lifecycle management and migration to tape

• Satisfies bandwidth hungry applications with scale-out performance
• Supports varied workloads including random access and streaming

• Disaster recovery and business continuity with asynchronous replication

• Fileset snapshots and file cloning for increased availability
• Simple to use and manage with an intuitive GUI

5

Solution architecture

Figure 1: Intelligent storage management solution architecture for IBM SONAS

Figure 1 illustrates the architecture of the intelligent storage management solution for the VMware
vSphere 5.0 virtual cloud infrastructure, constructed on the IBM SONAS storage system for
enterprise cloud virtual environment. This solution is made up of VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0
hosts, VMware vSphere vCenter 5.0 servers, and IBM SONAS storage system.

There are two separate VMware vSphere 5.0 High Availability (HA) clusters configured for this
solution in the lab validation environment. Each VMware vSphere 5.0 HA cluster is active with
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0 hosts running Microsoft® Windows® and Linux® VMs. VMs of each
cluster, resides on the NFS (NAS) data store cluster provisioned on the IBM SONAS storage
system.
NFS (NAS) data store cluster: The NFS (NAS) data stores consists of file-based data stores
created using the NFS protocol.
In the lab solution setup, the VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0 hosts in each cluster setup can access
the NFS (NAS) data store cluster to host several VMs.

6

Material list for solution setup in the lab
Table 1 lists the hardware and software used in this solution architecture.

Infrastructure Vendor Quantity Details
components
For more information, refer to the VMware
compatibility guide at:
Servers running VMware IBM 4 http://www.vmware.com/resources/compatib
vSphere ESXi 5.0 (IBM System x® ility/search.php
3650 M3)
Example:
ibm.com/systems/x/hardware/rack/x3650m
3/specs.html

IBM SONAS
Storage system IBM 1
ibm.com/systems/storage/network/sonas/

Network (Ethernet) Cisco Catalyst 1
Switch 6509

Network adapter Two 10 Gbps
(Per ESXi host and IBM
SONAS interface nodes) Four 1 Gbps

IBM IBM SONAS Version 1.3

VMware VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0 or higher
Software
VMware VMware vCenter Server 5.0 or higher

Table 1: List of hardware and software material used in the lab to set up the solution

7

Basic configuration requirement for the solution
After correctly configuring the new virtual cloud infrastructure using the VMware vSphere ESXi
5.0 hosts, and vSphere vCenter server 5.0, the solution requires at least one NFS data store
configured on each vSphere ESXi 5.0 host on the configured vSphere 5.0 HA cluster. These data
stores must be provisioned on the IBM SONAS storage system.

In the lab solution setup, the NFS data stores configured on all the vSphere ESXi 5.0 hosts are
configured on both the clusters.

NFS data store configuration
This section describes the steps to configure the NFS data store.

Create a file set on a specific file system for the NFS data store
The first step is to create an appropriate file set on a specific file system for the NFS data
store configuration.

You can find more information about that file set at:

http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/sonasic/sonas1ic/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.ibm.sonas.doc%
2Fmng_t_filesys_create.html

Perform the following steps to create a file set.
1. Click the Files icon and then click the File Sets option from the pop-up menu from the
GUI, as shown in the Figure 2.

Figure 2: Selecting the File Sets option

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2. Click New File Set.

Figure 3: Option to create a new file set

3. Provide the appropriate parameters to create the new file set and click OK.

Figure 4: New file set parameters

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4. Validate the file set creation status and click Close.

Figure 5: File set creation status information

Creating NFS share (export) with the newly created file set
Perform the following steps to define an NFS share export on the newly created file set.
1. Click shares on the pop-up menu.

Figure 6: Shares option to initiate NFS share creation

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2. Click New Share.

Figure 7: Clicking the New Share option

3. Select NFS share and provide the appropriate parameters for the new NFS share. In this
example, the newly created file set path, NFS share name, and appropriate NFS client
option are updated. Click OK.

Figure 8: NFS share configuration with parameters

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After the appropriate NFS share has been created for the newly created file set, it is time to
create and configure the NFS data store in the ESXi host using vCenter as show in the lab
setup in Figure 9.

Figure 9: NFS data store configured in the lab setup

Data store clusters
The data store clusters form the basis of vSphere 5.0 Storage DRS and it can be described as a
collection of data stores aggregated into a single unit of consumption from an administrator
perspective. An administrator no longer needs to be concerned about individual data stores. Data
store clusters are managed rather than individual data stores.

Administrators can use data store cluster, during the provisioning process or during a manual VM
migration to the storage destination.
Note:

The provisioning process not only refers to the creation of a virtual machine, but also to adding a
disk to an existing virtual machine, cloning a virtual machine, or performing a Storage vMotion
operation.

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Data store cluster constraints
A data store cluster has the following constraints:
• Must be NFS-based data stores on the same data store cluster for IBM SONAS
storage system
• Maximum of 32 data stores per data store cluster
• Maximum of 256 data store clusters per vSphere vCenter Server 5.0
• Maximum of 9000 VMDKs per data store cluster

Best practices before creating the data store clusters
The following best practices need to be followed before creating the data store clusters.
• Set Storage DRS to manual and review the recommendation before accepting
them.
• All data stores in the cluster must use the same type of disk (SAS, SATA, or
nearline SAS)
• All data stores in the cluster must group with disks with similar characteristics
(RAID 5 with RAID 5, mirror or replicated with mirror or replicated, 15 K rpm with
15 K rpm and so on).
• All data stores in an SDRS cluster must be NFS data stores for IBM SONAS
storage systems.
• Data stores cannot be shared between different sites.
• All data store hosts within a data store cluster must be ESXi 5 hosts.

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Steps to create a data store cluster
This section illustrates the steps for creating the data store cluster. The example shows the
the lab test creation of the data store cluster, Class1_DatastoreCluster (Gold).
1. Go to the vSphere vCenter Server 5.0 home page.
2. Click Datastores and Datastores Clusters.

Figure 10: Datastores and Datastore Clusters option

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3. Right-click the cluster and then click New Datastore Cluster.

Figure 11: New Datastore Cluster option to create the data store cluster

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4. Enter an appropriate name for the data store cluster and select the Turn on Storage
DRS check box, and click Next.

Figure 12: General data store cluster creation page

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5. Select the No Automation (Manual Mode) option and click Next.

Figure 13: SDRS automation page

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6. Accept the default settings (as shown in the Figure 14) and click Next.

Figure 14: SDRS Runtime Rules page

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7. Select the hosts and the clusters in the solution to add to the new data store cluster (as
shown in Figure 15) and click Next.

Figure 15: Selecting the hosts and clusters

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8. From the Show Datastores list, select Connected to some hosts to view all the
configured data stores and select the appropriate data stores to form the new data store
cluster (as shown in the Figure 16) and click Next.

Figure 16: The Select Datastores page

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9. Validate the selected configuration and click Finish.

Figure 17: Ready to Complete page

In the lab test environment, the test team created the following data store clusters.
• NFS based Tier1_DatastoreCluster (Gold)
• NFS based Tier2_DatastoreCluster (Silver)

Profile-Driven Storage
vSphere 5.0 introduces Profile-Driven Storage which allows rapid and intelligent placement of
virtual machine based on predefined storage profiles. This feature automates matching the SLA
requirements of virtual machines with appropriate data stores or data store clusters. The
predefined storage profiles usually represent a storage tier and are created through a vCenter
feature called VM Storage Profiles.

In the lab solution setup, characteristics such as RAID level and performance are considered to
define different tires. The following list of storage tiers are used in the lab solution setup.
• Tier1_Gold, RAID-6, SAS drive 15000 rpm, NFS data stores, NDMP backup enabled,
Active Cloud Engine enabled

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• Tier2_Silver, RAID-6, nearline SAS 7200 rpm, NFS data store, NDMP backup enabled,
Active Cloud Engine enabled
In the lab solution setup, these VM storage profiles are user-defined and are manually
associated.

Create user-defined storage capabilities
You need to perform the following steps to create user-defined storage capabilities.
1. On the vSphere vCenter 5.0 window, click the VM Storage Profiles icon.

Figure 18: vSphere vCenter 5.0 VM storage profiles

2. Click Manage Storage Capabilities to add user-defined storage capabilities (or business
tags), as shown in Figure 19. Here is how the user-defined storage capability Tier1-Gold
is created in the lab solution setup.

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Figure 19: Adding storage capability

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In the lab solution setup, the test team created storage capabilities as Tier1-Gold and Tier2-
Silver, as shown in Figure 20.

Figure 20: Solution lab setup showing user-defined storage capabilities

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Create a VM storage profile
This section illustrates the steps to create a VM storage profile.
1. Click Create VM Storage Profile in the VM Storage Profiles view. Enter a name and
description, as shown in Figure 21.

Figure 21: Creating a new VM storage profile

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2. Select the storage capabilities for the newly created profile, as shown in Figure 22.

Figure 22: Manually assigning storage capabilities with VM storage profile

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In the lab solution setup, two VM storage profiles are created for each tier of storage, as
shown in Figure 23.

Figure 23: Lab solution setup of VM storage profiles

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Assign the user-defined VM storage profiles to the data stores
This section illustrates the steps to manually assign the newly created VM storage profiles to
the data stores within the data store clusters.
1. Right-click the data store within the data store cluster and click Assign User-Defined
Storage Capability.

Figure 24: Manually assigning the user-defined storage capability

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2. Select the predefined storage tier capability for the selected data store within the data
store cluster (as shown in Figure 25) and click OK.
Note: Make sure to manually assign the same storage capability to all individual data
stores within the data store cluster. A data store cluster must not have data stores
with different types of storage capabilities.

Figure 25: Selecting the appropriate user-defined storage capability from the list

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3. In the Summary tab of the data store, a new section named, Storage Capabilities now
displays both the options: System Storage Capability (VASA) and User-defined Storage
Capability. Click the bubble icon next to the capability to view additional details, as shown
in Figure 26.

Figure 26: Storage capability summary tab

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Using the VM Storage Profile
At this point, the VM profile is created and the user-defined capabilities are added to the data
store. Use the profile to select the correct storage for the VM, as shown in Figure 27.

Figure 27: Applying the VM storage profile

The profile is automatically attached to the VM during the deployment phase. Validate if the data
store on which the VM is placed has the same capabilities as the profile. If it does, then the VM is
said to be compliant. If not, the VM is said to be non-compliant, as shown in Figure 28.

Figure 28: Storage selection with appropriate VM storage profile

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Notice the way that the data stores are now split into (Compatible and Incompatible) in the lab
solution test environment. Compatible data stores are those which have the same storage
capabilities as those defined in the Gold profile.

Note: It is also possible to deploy the Gold VM on to one of the incompatible data stores.

Checking compatibility
To check individual VMs, go to the Summary tab of the VM and validate the new VM Storage
Profiles window. This indicates whether the VM is compliant or not, as shown in Figure 29.

Figure 29: VM Storage Profiles window

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Also check the VM storage profile view to validate the storage compliance all the VMs, as
shown in Figure 30.

Figure 30: VM Storage Profiles view

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Guiding Storage DRS recommendations for the solution
Fundamentally, when creating a virtual machine, it is required to select the destination storage for
the virtual machine.

In the lab solution test environment, both the vSphere 5.0 HA clusters are connected to at least
one data store cluster, as shown in Figure 31.

Figure 31: VM destination storage selection page

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After selecting the data store cluster, vCenter displays initial placement recommendations for
SDRS, which need to be applied by the administrator (as shown in Figure 32).

Figure 32: VM initial placement recommendations page

Affinity and anti-affinity rules
By default, SDRS applies an intra-VM affinity rule (VMDK affinity), storing all files that belong
to a virtual machine to one data store. The SDRS supports three kinds of rules that are
enforced during the initial placement and during ongoing migrations for load balancing.

• Intra-VM VMDK affinity rule is used to keep a VM’s VMDKs together on the same data
store.

• Intra-VM VMDK anti-affinity rule is used to keep a VM’s VMDKs on a different data store.

• Inter-VM VM anti-affinity rule is used to keep VMs on different data stores.

Intra-VM VMDK affinity rule
SDRS applies a VMDK affinity rule to each virtual machine by default. This default rule is
commonly referred to as the intra-VM affinity rule, as shown in Figure 33.

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Figure 33: Intra-VM VMDK affinity

The user can change the data store cluster settings so that VMs in the cluster do not have an
intra-VM VMDK affinity rule set by default (as shown in Figure 34).

Figure 34: Overriding the intra-VMDK affinity rule

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If an existing virtual machine is moved into a data store cluster, the application of an intra-VM
affinity rule depends on the disk layout configuration of the virtual machine and the method of
introduction.

Note: A virtual machine can be moved into a data store cluster by either Storage vMotion or
by adding the data stores containing its disk to a data store cluster.

Table 2 shows the application of the default SDRS intra-VM affinity rule. Be aware of the
result of these actions when migrating to a data store cluster.

Disk layout source Method Rule activate Disk layout
destination
All VMDKs on a single Storage vMotion Yes All VMDKs on a single
data store data store
VMDKs on multiple Storage vMotion Yes All VMDKs on a single
data stores data store
All VMDKs on a single Add storage Yes All VMDKs on a single
data store data store
VMDKs on multiple Add storage No VMDKs on multiple
data stores data stores

Table 2: Applying the default intra-VM affinity rule

Intra-VM VMDK anti-affinity rule
The intra-VM VMDK anti-affinity rule keeps the specified VMDKs belonging to a virtual
machine on separate data stores, as shown in the Error! Reference source not found..

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Figure 35: VMDK anti-affinity rule

This rule can be useful for separating log and data disks of database VMs.

Recommendation: It is recommended to apply this rule sparingly as it might affect the
opportunities available for SDRS to find appropriate locations to place the virtual machine
and still be able to load balance workloads inside the data store cluster.

Inter-VM anti-affinity rule
The inter-VM anti-affinity rule keeps the specified virtual machines on different data stores, as
shown in Figure 36.

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Figure 36: VM anti-affinity

The benefit of this rule is to help maximize the availability of a collection of related virtual
machines. In this rule, the availability of a set of critical virtual machines is increased by not
allowing SDRS to place the critical virtual machines on the same data store (for example,
VMs running web servers in a load-balance cluster or VMs running domain controllers).
Recommendation: Similar to the intra-VM anti-affinity rules, apply VM anti-affinity rules
sparingly. Anti-affinity rules place limitations on SDRS and reduce the possibilities that it has
to reach a steady and balanced state.

Different VMFS block sizes
Recommendation: Avoid mixing data stores with different block sizes.

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SDRS data store maintenance mode
Storage DRS offers data store maintenance mode, which automatically evacuates all virtual
machines and virtual disk drives from the selected data store to the remaining data store in
the data store cluster, as shown in Figure 37.

Figure 37: Enter SDRS data store maintenance mode

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You can click Apply Recommendation to formally take the data store to the maintenance
mode, as shown in Figure 38.

Figure 38: SDRS Maintenance Mode Migration Recommendations page

Caution: SDRS cannot migrate the VMware Fault Tolerance (FT) enabled virtual machines.
The workaround is to temporarily turn off FT for the FT virtual machine, perform migration,
then re-enable FT. Similarly, virtual machine templates cannot perform Storage vMotion and
they introduce problems for placing data stores in the maintenance mode.

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Summary
vSphere Storage DRS continuously monitors storage space and I/O utilization across the SONAS
storage system resources (file systems) and intelligently aligns storage resources to meet
business objectives including:

• Ability to specify how storage resources of the SONAS storage system will be allocated
to virtual machines with rules and policies

• Providing IT autonomy to business organizations by assigning dedicated SONAS storage
infrastructure to business units while still achieving higher storage utilization through
pools of storage volumes

• Empowering business units to build and manage virtual machines within their SONAS
storage while giving central IT control over the SONAS storage resources.
VMware Storage DRS continuously balances SONAS storage resources and storage I/O load
and avoids resource bottlenecks to meet application service levels, and increases manageability
of storage at scale.
To help you make the most of your IT investments, IBM together with VMware can deliver a
complete virtualization platform that can be tailored to meet an organization’s needs and
environment. In partnership with VMware, IBM commits resources and establishes programs for
ongoing testing, validation, and interoperability. Together, IBM and VMware can offer:

• The broadest platform of proven virtualization solutions, giving organizations the
flexibility and choice

• Deep integration between products for enhanced usability and advanced features

• Comprehensive service and support to protect your virtualization investments over
the long term
As established leaders in the virtualization space, IBM and VMware are uniquely positioned to
help organizations achieve their virtualization goals, while minimizing business risk. This unique
combination of hardware and software solutions enables organizations to dramatically reduce the
complexity of IT, significantly lower IT costs, and increase IT flexibility for improved business
agility.

Note: This paper is not intended to be a definitive implementation or solutions guide for VMware
vSphere 5.0 virtual infrastructure solutions using the Storage DRS feature with the SONAS
storage system. Many factors related to specific customer environments are not addressed in this
paper. You can contact IBM for support from one of the IBM virtualization solutions experts for
any deployment requirement.

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Appendix A: Glossary
• IBM Scale Out Network Attached Storage (SONAS) - Build on IBM high-performance
computing experience, and based upon IBM General Parallel File System (IBM GPFS™),
the 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 – Is one of the industry-leading virtualization platforms for building
cloud infrastructures. vSphere accelerates the shift to cloud computing for existing data
centers, while also underpinning compatible public cloud offerings, paving the way for the
only hybrid cloud model.

• VMware ESXi – Are bare-metal embedded hypervisors. They are enterprise software
hypervisors from VMware for servers that run directly on server hardware without
requiring an additional underlying operating system.

• VMware vCenter Server – Delivers centralized management, operational automation,
resource optimization, and high availability to IT environments.

• Storage Distributed Resource Scheduler (SDRS) – Is an aggregate of storage
resources of several storage volumes in to a single pool and simplifies storage
management at scale. It intelligently places workloads on storage volumes during
provisioning based on the available storage resources.

• VMware High Availability (HA) – Provides easy to use, cost-effective high availability for
applications running in virtual machines.

• VMware Fault Tolerance (FT) – Provides continuous availability for applications in the
event of server failures by creating a live shadow instance of a virtual machine that is in
virtual lockstep with the primary instance.

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Appendix B: Materials used in the lab setup
The following table lists the materials used in the lab setup.

Infrastructure Vendor Quantity Details
components

IBM System x3650 M3
Servers IBM 4
(IBM System Intel® Xeon® processor (Intel VT) E5506
x3650 M3) 2.13 GHz
Memory: 128 GB in the cluster

IBM SONAS
Storage system IBM 1
ibm.com/systems/storage/network/sonas/

Network (Ethernet) Cisco Catalyst 1
Switch 6509

Network adapter Two 10 Gbps
(Per-ESXi host and IBM
SONAS Interface nodes) Four 1 Gbps

IBM IBM SONAS 1.3

VMware VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0
Software
VMware VMware vCenter Server 5.0

Table 3: Materials used in the lab setup

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Appendix C: Resources
The following 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 IBM 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/sona
s_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):
s_admin_guide.pdf

• IBM SONAS User's Guide (GA32-0714):
s_user_guide.pdf

• IBM SONAS Software Configuration Guide (GA32-0718):
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/sonasic/sonas1ic/topic/com.ibm.sonas.doc/confi
guration_guide.pdf

45

• IBM SONAS Troubleshooting Guide (GA32-0717):
s_pd_guide.pdf

VMware documentation

• VMware vSphere Basics
http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/topic/com.vmware.ICbase/PDF/vsphere-esxi-
vcenter-server-50-basics-guide.pdf

• vCenter Server and Host Management Guide
vcenter-server-501-host-management-guide.pdf

• vSphere Storage Guide
vcenter-server-501-storage-guide.pdf

46

About the author
Udayasuryan Kodoly is a Storage Technology Specialist in IBM Systems and Technology
Group (ISV Enablement) Organization. Uday has several years of experience on designing,
architecting storage solutions, and developing solution best practices on various NAS and SAN
appliance data protection (backup) solutions. Uday is an expert on virtualization technologies and
virtual machine data protection strategies. Presently, Uday is working on enabling various ISV
backup, disaster recovery, and virtualization solutions for IBM SONAS and IBM Storwize® V7000
Unified systems.

You can reach Uday at uakodoly@us.ibm.com.

47

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 available in every country.

IBM, the IBM logo, and ibm.com are trademarks or registered trademarks of International
Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. If these and other
IBM trademarked terms are marked on their first occurrence in this information with a trademark
symbol (® or ™), these symbols indicate U.S. registered or common law trademarks owned by
IBM at the time this information was published. Such trademarks may also be registered or
common law trademarks in other countries. A current list of IBM trademarks is available on the
Web at "Copyright and trademark information" at www.ibm.com/legal/copytrade.shtml.

Java and all Java-based trademarks and logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Oracle
and/or its affiliates.

Microsoft, Windows, Windows NT, and the Windows logo are trademarks of Microsoft
Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both.

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States, other countries, or both.
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Information is provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind.

All customer examples described are presented as illustrations of how those customers have
used IBM products and the results they may have achieved. Actual environmental costs and
performance characteristics may vary by customer.
Information concerning non-IBM products was obtained from a supplier of these products,
published announcement material, or other publicly available sources and does not constitute an
endorsement of such products by IBM. Sources for non-IBM list prices and performance numbers
are taken from publicly available information, including vendor announcements and vendor
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All statements regarding IBM future direction and intent are subject to change or withdrawal
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Some information addresses anticipated future capabilities. Such information is not intended as a
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48

announcements. The information 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
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no assurance can be given that an individual user will achieve throughput or performance
improvements equivalent to the ratios stated here.
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49

Intelligent storage management solution using VMware vSphere 5.0 Storage DRS: A technical report of the storage management solution using SDRS on the IBM SONAS storage system

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