White Paper: EMC Infrastructure for VMware Cloud Environments

White Paper

EMC INFRASTRUCTURE
FOR VMWARE CLOUD ENVIRONMENTS
EMC Symmetrix VMAX 40K, EMC Symmetrix FAST VP, EMC SRDF,
and VMware vSphere 5
• Simplified storage management with FAST VP
• Remote replication with assured performance
• Simplified storage provisioning with EMC Unisphere for VMAX

EMC Solutions Group

Abstract
This white paper describes an automated storage tiering solution for multiple
mission-critical applications virtualized with VMware vSphere® on the EMC®
Symmetrix® VMAX® 40K storage platform. EMC SRDF® coordination with EMC
FAST™ VP provides site-to-site replication for disaster recovery and assured
performance by automatically monitoring and tuning storage at the sub-LUN
level at both sites.

June 2012

Copyright © 2012 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

EMC believes the information in this publication is accurate as of its
publication date. The information is subject to change without notice.

The information in this publication is provided “as is.” EMC Corporation makes
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Use, copying, and distribution of any EMC software described in this
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For the most up-to-date listing of EMC product names, see EMC Corporation
Trademarks on EMC.com.

VMware, ESX, vMotion, VMware vCenter, and VMware vSphere are registered
trademarks or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other
jurisdictions

All trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners.

Part Number H10568

EMC Infrastructure for VMware Cloud Environments 2
EMC Symmetrix VMAX 40K, EMC Symmetrix FAST VP, EMC SRDF, and VMware vSphere 5

Contents
Executive summary............................................................................................................................... 7
Business case .................................................................................................................................. 7
Solution overview ............................................................................................................................ 7
Key results ....................................................................................................................................... 8

Introduction.......................................................................................................................................... 9
Purpose ........................................................................................................................................... 9
Scope .............................................................................................................................................. 9
Audience ......................................................................................................................................... 9

Solution overview ............................................................................................................................... 10
Overview ........................................................................................................................................ 10
Key components ............................................................................................................................ 10
Physical architecture ...................................................................................................................... 10
Hardware resources ....................................................................................................................... 11
Software resources ........................................................................................................................ 12

Storage environment .......................................................................................................................... 13
EMC Symmetrix VMAX 40K ............................................................................................................. 13
EMC Virtual Provisioning ................................................................................................................ 13
EMC FAST VP .................................................................................................................................. 13
EMC Symmetrix Remote Data Facility (SRDF) .................................................................................. 14
EMC Unisphere for VMAX ............................................................................................................... 14

EMC Symmetrix FAST VP ..................................................................................................................... 16
FAST VP overview ........................................................................................................................... 16
FAST VP components...................................................................................................................... 16
FAST VP performance measurement and data movement ............................................................... 17
FAST VP allocate by policy .............................................................................................................. 17
FAST VP with OLTP workload .......................................................................................................... 18
FAST VP with DSS workload ............................................................................................................ 18
FAST VP with SRDF ......................................................................................................................... 18

VMware vSphere 5.............................................................................................................................. 20
VMware vSphere 5 overview .......................................................................................................... 20
VMware vSphere configuration ...................................................................................................... 20
VMware virtual machine configuration ........................................................................................... 21


Overview of mission-critical applications deployed in this solution ................................................... 24
Overview ........................................................................................................................................ 24
Microsoft SQL Server ...................................................................................................................... 24
Oracle Database 11g Release 2...................................................................................................... 24
SAP ERP and NetWeaver ................................................................................................................. 24
Application profile ......................................................................................................................... 25

Storage design for consolidation of applications on VMAX 40K ......................................................... 26
Overview ........................................................................................................................................ 26
Front-end port usage and zoning .................................................................................................... 26
Thin pool configuration .................................................................................................................. 27
FAST VP configuration .................................................................................................................... 27
Storage design considerations for mission-critical database applications with FAST VP ................. 28

Configuring EMC Symmetrix FAST VP with Unisphere for VMAX ......................................................... 29
Overview of FAST VP configuration ................................................................................................. 29
Step 1: Enable the FAST controller and set the control parameters ................................................. 29
Step 2: Create storage tiers ............................................................................................................ 30
Step 3: Create FAST policies ........................................................................................................... 30
Step 4: Associate storage groups with FAST policies and enable RDF coordination ........................ 31
Step 5: Configure FAST VP monitoring and move windows ............................................................. 32
Cascaded storage groups ............................................................................................................... 33
Site protection with SRDF ............................................................................................................... 33

Performance testing and validation results ........................................................................................ 34
Overview ........................................................................................................................................ 34
Validation ...................................................................................................................................... 34
Test scenarios ................................................................................................................................ 34

End-to-end validation with FAST VP under normal conditions ............................................................. 35
Objectives...................................................................................................................................... 35
Application workloads ................................................................................................................... 35
Storage performance overview ....................................................................................................... 35
FAST VP capacity use by storage group........................................................................................... 37
SAP test result overview ................................................................................................................. 38
Oracle OLTP test results overview ................................................................................................... 39
SQL OLTP test result overview ........................................................................................................ 40
SQL DSS test result overview.......................................................................................................... 41
Summary of results ........................................................................................................................ 42


FAST VP workload tuning validation ................................................................................................... 43
Objectives...................................................................................................................................... 43
Configuration ................................................................................................................................. 43
Policy tuning results and analysis .................................................................................................. 44
Summary of results ........................................................................................................................ 47

RDF coordination with continuous production workload ..................................................................... 48
Objectives...................................................................................................................................... 48
RDF coordination overview ............................................................................................................. 48
Test summary ................................................................................................................................ 49

Failover with performance continuity.................................................................................................. 50
Objectives...................................................................................................................................... 50
Failover test results ........................................................................................................................ 50
Test summary ................................................................................................................................ 52

Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 53
Summary ....................................................................................................................................... 53
Findings ......................................................................................................................................... 53

References.......................................................................................................................................... 54
White papers ................................................................................................................................. 54
Product documentation.................................................................................................................. 54
Other documentation ..................................................................................................................... 54

Appendix A: Detailed application design and LUN layout ................................................................... 55
Overview ........................................................................................................................................ 55
SAP overview ................................................................................................................................. 55
SAP ERP 6.0 ................................................................................................................................... 55
SAP IDES ........................................................................................................................................ 55
HP LoadRunner .............................................................................................................................. 55
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP applications ......................................................................... 56
SAP system architecture................................................................................................................. 56
SAP landscape ............................................................................................................................... 57
LoadRunner landscape .................................................................................................................. 59
SAP LUN Configuration ................................................................................................................... 59
Oracle Database 11g R2 ................................................................................................................. 59
Oracle ASM .................................................................................................................................... 60
Oracle grid infrastructure ............................................................................................................... 60
Oracle database and workload profile ............................................................................................ 60
Oracle workload description .......................................................................................................... 61
Oracle database schema................................................................................................................ 61


Oracle database services ............................................................................................................... 62
Oracle LUN configuration ............................................................................................................... 62
Microsoft SQL Server ...................................................................................................................... 62
SQL Server 2012 DSS workload...................................................................................................... 62
SQL Server 2012 DSS LUN configuration ........................................................................................ 63
SQL Server 2012 OLTP workload .................................................................................................... 63
SQL Server 2012 OLTP LUN configuration ....................................................................................... 63
SQL Server 2012 and Windows 2008 R2 settings for DSS and OLTP workload ................................ 64

Appendix B: Configuring Symmetrix remote replication ..................................................................... 65
Configuring SRDF for remote replication ......................................................................................... 65


Executive summary
Business case As today’s enterprises look to increase workforce productivity and transform their
business, they are moving their database and applications to the private cloud. As a
result, IT organizations face more demanding business objectives for more efficiency
and improved quality of service, including:
• Maximizing the use of storage assets
• Maintaining performance levels at both production sites and business
continuity sites
• Reducing capital expenditures and ongoing costs

To meet this challenge, IT organizations are evolving to provide more agile service
delivery and to design their architecture for the future. At the same time, they must
still cost-effectively manage their business requirements and service levels. To
achieve this, organizations are beginning to offer IT-as-a-Service (ITaaS) by taking
advantage of:
• Resource pooling
• Virtualization
• Dynamic and virtual provisioning
• Commodity computing

Solution overview EMC® Symmetrix® VMAX® 40K with Enginuity™ 5876, along with Unisphere® for
VMAX, EMC Fully Automated Storage Tiering for Virtual Pools (FAST™ VP), and EMC
Symmetrix Remote Data Facility (SRDF®), are ideally suited to support the demands of
the evolving enterprise infrastructure. By simplifying storage management and
improving capacity use, these tools provide an infrastructure foundation that meets
real business needs, including:
• Automated performance tuning—With FAST VP enabled, the storage array
continuously tunes the application based on the access patterns, allowing you
to monitor performance using Unisphere’s performance analyzer.
• Simplified storage—The FAST VP allocate-by-policy feature simplifies the
capacity management of FAST VP environments. It allocates storage based on
performance metrics, or from any tier in the FAST policy that has space.
• Assured performance at the disaster recovery (DR) site—FAST VP coordination
with SRDF supports SRDF for tiering on the remote array, enabling optimized
performance at both sites.
• Ease of management—Unisphere for VMAX provides an intuitive task-
orientated interface for configuring and monitoring VMAX arrays, enabling
simplified provisioning.


Key results Our testing shows that this solution, based on EMC Symmetrix VMAX with
Enginuity 5876, FAST VP, and SRDF, provides the following performance results:
• Sustained high performance levels for multiple critical database applications
deployed on virtual storage, managed and automatically tuned by EMC
FAST VP.
• FAST VP responds quickly to workload changes. Flexible policies are a powerful
tool to further enhance performance when required.
• In the event of a failover to remote site, FAST VP SRDF coordination ensures
performance at the DR replication site, bringing the benefits of FAST to the
remote site.


Introduction
Purpose This white paper describes the design, testing, and validation of an enterprise
VMware infrastructure using the EMC Symmetrix VMAX 40K storage platform with
Enginuity 5876, EMC FAST VP, and EMC SRDF as its foundation. This solution
demonstrates the performance, scalability, and application-specific functionality of
the solution using multiple, representative application environments including
Microsoft SQL, Oracle, and SAP.

Specifically, this solution:
• Validates the performance and scalability of the test environment based on
industry-standard online transaction processing (OLTP) and decision support
system (DSS) benchmarks.
• Demonstrates simpler management using FAST VP allocation to a FAST policy.
This allows data to be written to any pool defined by a FAST policy, simplifying
capacity management.
• Demonstrates how FAST VP SRDF-coordination enables enterprise applications
to seamlessly replicate virtual provisioned devices under FAST VP control at the
production site to the replicated site.

• Demonstrates the responsiveness of FAST VP to changing performance
requirements. You can tune FAST VP policies to enable storage administrators
to dynamically increase performance for applications from storage on request.

Scope This white paper discusses multiple EMC products as well as those from other
vendors. Some general configuration and operational procedures are outlined.
However, for detailed product installation information, refer to the user
documentation for provided with those products.

Audience This white paper is intended for EMC employees, partners, and customers including IT
planners, virtualization architects and administrators, and any other IT professionals
involved in evaluating, acquiring, managing, operating, or designing infrastructure
that leverages EMC technologies.

Throughout this white paper we assume that you have some familiarity with the
concepts and operations related to enterprise storage and virtualization technologies
and their use in information infrastructures.


Solution overview
Overview EMC solutions are validated architectures that are designed to reflect real-world
deployments. This section describes the key components, resources, and overall
architecture that make up the solution and its environment.

Key components The key elements used in this solution include:
• EMC Symmetrix VMAX 40K storage array
• EMC FAST VP
• EMC Unisphere for VMAX
• VMware vSphere®

These elements are described in more detail in subsequent sections.

Physical Figure 1 depicts the physical architecture for the solution described in this white
architecture paper.

Figure 1. Physical architecture diagram


This solution is built on EMC Symmetrix VMAX 40K arrays running Enginuity 5876.
Both source and target arrays provide a mix of Flash, FC, and SATA/SAS drives.
FAST VP continually monitors and tunes performance by relocating data across
storage tiers based on access patterns and predefined FAST policies. This continuous
tuning occurs on both sites using the FAST VP SRDF coordination feature.

We provisioned Microsoft SQL Server 2012 (two OLTP and one DSS), Oracle 11g R2
(OLTP), and a full SAP landscape running on Oracle. These applications ran on virtual
machines in a VMware vSphere5 environment on EMC VMAX 40K storage, replicating
to a DR site using SRDF.

Load generation tools drove each of these applications simultaneously to validate the
infrastructure and function of the FAST VP RDF coordination. We replicated the
environment to a remote site within synchronous RDF distance over two 8-Gb/s FC
links. Failover was performed to verify the performance of applications at the remote
site.

The effects of applying the FAST policy are documented in Performance testing and
validation results.

Hardware Table 1 lists the hardware resources used in the solution environment.
resources
Table 1. Hardware resources

Equipment Quantity Configuration
EMC Symmetrix VMAX 40K 2 3-engine, 128-GB cache per engine
Enginuity 5876 33 Flash 200 GB (including 1 HS)
132 × 600-GB 15k FC drives (including 6 HS)
70 × 2 TB 7.2k SATA/SAS drives (including 3
HS)

Production site servers 2 Production Site (Site A)
8 CPUs (10 C/2.40 GHZ/30 MB cache)
1 TB RAM
4 GbE IP Ports
4 × 146-GB 2.5-in. 15k SAS Disks
1 × internal RAID controller
12 × 8 PCIe slots/2 × 16 PCIe slots
2 × dual-port 8-Gb/s HBAs (4 FC)
1 × quad GbE NIC

Disaster recovery site 2 2 CPUs (10 C/2.40 GHZ/30 MB cache)
servers 384 GB memory
2 x dual-port 8-Gb/s HBAs (4 FC)
1 x quad GbE NIC

SAN 1 8 Gb SAN backbone


Software resources Table 2 lists the software resources used in the solution environment.

Table 2. Software resources

Software Version
EMC Symmetrix VMAX Enginuity code 5876

EMC Power Path®/VE for VMware 5.7

EMC Unisphere for VMAX 1

EMC Solutions Enabler 7.4

VMware vSphere 5 (Enterprise Plus) 5.0.1

SAP 6.4

Oracle ASMlib 2.0.5

Oracle Database 11g R2 11.2.0.3

Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1

Microsoft SQL Server 2012 RTM

Microsoft MSTPC E Toolkit 1.12.0

Quest Benchmark Factory 5.8.1

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 5.7

SwingBench 2.3


Storage environment
EMC Symmetrix EMC Symmetrix VMAX 40K with Enginuity version 5876 provides the tiered storage
VMAX 40K configuration used in the test environment. The two primary Symmetrix VMAX
features employed were FAST VP and SRDF.

Built on the strategy of simple, intelligent, modular storage, the solution incorporates
a highly scalable Virtual Matrix Architecture™ that enables Symmetrix VMAX arrays to
grow seamlessly and cost-effectively from an entry-level configuration into the world’s
largest storage system. Symmetrix VMAX supports Flash drives, FC drives, and SATA
drives within a single array, as well as an extensive range of RAID types.

The EMC Enginuity operating environment controls all components in the Symmetrix
VMAX array. Enginuity 5876 for Symmetrix VMAX offers:
• More efficiency: New zero-downtime technology for migrations (technology
refreshes) and lower costs with automated tiering
• More scalability: Up to two times more performance, with the ability to manage
up to 10 times more capacity per storage administrator
• More security: Built-in encryption, RSA-integrated key management, increased
value for virtual server and mainframe environments, replication
enhancements, and a new e-licensing model

EMC Virtual EMC Virtual Provisioning™ is EMC’s implementation of thin provisioning. It is
Provisioning designed to simplify storage management, improve capacity utilization, and enhance
performance. Virtual Provisioning provides for the separation of physical storage
devices from the storage devices as perceived by host systems. This enables
nondisruptive provisioning and more efficient storage use. This solution uses virtually
provisioned storage for all deployed applications.

For detailed information on virtual provisioning, refer to the EMC Solutions Enabler
Symmetrix Array Controls CLI v7.4 Product Guide.

EMC FAST VP EMC FAST VP is a feature of Enginuity version 5875 and higher that provides
automatic storage tiering at the sub-LUN level. Virtual pools are Virtual Provisioning
thin pools.

FAST VP is a key component of the solution described in this white paper. For a
detailed overview, see EMC Symmetrix FAST VP.


EMC Symmetrix The EMC Symmetrix Remote Data Facility (SRDF) family of software is a suite of remote
Remote Data storage replication solutions for DR and business continuity. The SRDF family offers
Facility (SRDF) deployment flexibility and scalability, delivering distance-replication capabilities and
helping customers meet mixed service-level requirements with minimal effect on
operations. SRDF features include:
• Massively-parallel high performance that delivers unsurpassed recovery point
objectives (RPOs) and recovery time objectives (RTOs), with little effect on
servers.
• Zero data exposure, very long-distance capability, and multi-hop functionality
that enable you to optimize resources while meeting mixed service levels.
• Coordinated processing across multiple sets of data and systems that
enhances enterprise-wide application restart.
• Seamless integration with hundreds of leading enterprise, storage, and backup
applications that enables faster deployment and simpler management.
• Flexible, automated, and easy-to-use management options to ensure
continuous protection of your data.
• Integration with FAST VP for coordinating performance movement at the source
and target sites.

EMC Unisphere for EMC Unisphere for VMAX is an advanced graphical user interface (GUI) for managing
VMAX Symmetrix VMAX arrays. Unisphere for VMAX enables you to provision, manage, and
monitor any Symmetrix VMAX array from one screen and significantly reduces storage
administration time.

As shown in Figure 2 (page 15), Unisphere for VMAX uses the same GUI framework as
the unified EMC VNX® platforms. For customers who use Symmetrix VMAX and VNX in
the same data center, Unisphere provides a consistent look and feel that simplifies
management operations.

Unisphere provides a web browser interface that enables the following operations:
• Access management
• Configuration management
• Replication management
• Monitoring and alerts, performance analysis, and reporting


Figure 2 shows the Unisphere for VMAX user interface.

Figure 2. Unisphere for VMAX interface


EMC Symmetrix FAST VP
FAST VP overview FAST VP provides support for sub-LUN data movement in thinly provisioned
environments. It combines the advantages of Virtual Provisioning with automatic
storage tiering at the sub-LUN level to optimize performance and cost, while radically
simplifying storage management and increasing storage efficiency.

FAST VP data movement between tiers is based on performance measurement and
user-defined policies, and is executed automatically and nondisruptively by FAST VP.

This section provides an overview of FAST VP features and functionality. Configuring
EMC Symmetrix FAST VP outlines the main steps for configuring FAST VP on
Symmetrix VMAX and the settings defined for the solution.

FAST VP As shown in Figure 3, configuring FAST VP involves three types of components—
components storage groups, FAST policies, and storage tiers:
• A storage group is a logical grouping of storage devices used for common
management. A storage group is associated with a FAST policy that determines
how the storage group’s devices are allocated across tiers.
• A FAST policy is a set of tier usage rules that is applied to associated storage
groups. A FAST policy can specify up to three tiers and assigns an upper usage
limit for each tier. These limits determine how much data from a storage group
can reside on each tier included in the policy.
Administrators can set high-performance policies that use more Flash drive
capacity for critical applications, and cost-optimized policies that use more
SATA drive capacity for less-critical applications.

• A storage tier is made up of one or more virtual pools. To be a member of a tier,
a virtual pool must contain only data devices that match the technology type,
drive speed, and RAID protection type of the tier.

Figure 3. FAST VP components


In summary, by simply pooling storage resources, defining a policy, and applying it to
the application, FAST VP automatically and dynamically moves application data to the
tier that best suits the level of service required.

FAST VP FAST VP works at the sub-LUN level, introducing finer granularities of both
performance performance measurement and data movement, and can spread the data from a
measurement and single thin device across multiple tiers.
data movement
The sub-LUN metrics collected for thin devices under FAST VP control contain
measurements that enable FAST VP to make separate data movement requests for
every 7,680 KB unit of storage that makes up the thin device. This unit of storage
consists of 10 contiguous thin device extents and is known as an extent group.

FAST VP algorithms perform two types of moves:
• Compliance movement: Initially, FAST VP distributes data across the different
tiers to enforce compliance with the data’s associated FAST policy.
• Performance movement: When compliance with the policy is achieved, FAST VP
continues moving data between tiers to optimize performance, while
maintaining compliance with the policy.

FAST VP automatic analysis identifies the busiest extent groups and moves them to
the highest-performing Flash tier. It also identifies inactive extent groups and moves
them to the SATA tier.

This results in the thin device’s data being distributed across multiple thin pools.
Because the most active data is residing on the highest-performing storage devices,
application response times are unaffected.

FAST VP continuously tunes the storage resources to ensure that the right data is
placed on the right tier at the right time with automatic analysis and data re-tiering
happening at all times

Configuring EMC Symmetrix FAST VP outlines the main steps for configuring FAST VP
on Symmetrix VMAX and the settings defined for the solution.

FAST VP allocate To further simplify the management and capacity planning of FAST VP environments,
by policy Enginuity 5876 and Solutions Enabler 7.4 provides FAST VP allocation by policy. This
system-wide setting ensures that new allocations for thin devices associated with
FAST VP policies no longer only come from the pool to which a thin device is bound
but from any one of the tiers associated with the FAST policy. FAST VP attempts to
allocate new writes in the most appropriate tier first, based on available performance
metrics. If no performance metrics are available, the allocation is attempted in the
pool the device is bound to. If the bound tier cannot service a new allocation because
it is full, the tracks are allocated from one of the remaining tiers.

EMC recommends that you enable the VP allocation by FAST policy.

Note: For more information on the decision-making process of the VP allocation by
FAST policy feature, see the “Advanced FAST VP features” section of
Implementing Fully Automated Storage Tiering for Virtual Pools (FAST VP) for
EMC Symmetrix VMAX Series Arrays—Technical Notes.


FAST VP with OLTP FAST VP is an enabling technology for workloads with small, random I/O and
workload relatively small working sets that fit into the higher-performing tiers of a FAST policy.
OLTP databases tend to be highly random in nature, with small working sets
compared to the total database size. Additionally, OLTP databases have inherent
locality of reference with varied I/O patterns, for the following reasons:
• The relative importance of data changes from object to object. Some tables
tend to be accessed more than others.
• The number of IOPS per object size in gigabytes, also known as object
intensity, changes quite significantly. A good example is a database index
compared with a database table. The relative IOPS received by a database
block occupied by an index object can be very high compared to the IOPS
received by a database block consumed by a table object.

Note: Database redo logs have a very predictable sequential write workload, and
this type of activity does not benefit significantly from tiering up to Flash. EMC
recommends that you either exclude these logs from any FAST policy or pin
them to their existing tier so that FAST VP will not include them in its analysis.

FAST VP with DSS FAST VP is also an enabling technology for DSS workloads. Data warehouses often
workload grow into very large database environments due to the growth of application data and
increased regulatory requirements. The value of business data stored in the data
warehouse can change over time, and availability as well as performance change
accordingly.

Data warehouse applications tend to issue scan-intensive operations that access
large data portions of the data at a time and also commonly perform bulk loading
operations. These operations result in larger I/O sizes than OLTP workloads do and
they require a storage subsystem that can provide the necessary throughput. This
makes throughput, or megabytes per second (MB/s), the critical metric.

Although Flash disk storage can provide more than 100 MB/s of throughput,
generally it is best suited to serving a small portion of the database’s hot data.
Therefore, in this solution, we used a two-tier policy consisting of FC and SATA
storage to provide a cost-efficient mix of storage to satisfy the needs of a DSS
workload.

FAST VP with SRDF A core feature of Enginuity 5876 is the SRDF enhancement to consider remote devices
(for example, R2) in a FAST VP policy. Previously, FAST VP operated independently on
each side of the SRDF link.

Before Enginuity 5876, FAST VP promotion and demotion decisions were based on
the workload seen by each individual device. While a source device (R1) would
typically undergo a read and write workload mix, the corresponding target device
would only see a write workload. Reads against the R1 were not reflected across the
link. As a result, the R2 device data might not be located on the same tier as the
corresponding data on the R1 device.

Enginuity 5876 introduces SRDF awareness for FAST VP. The performance metrics
collected for R1 devices are periodically transmitted across the link to the
corresponding R2 devices. On the R2 device, the R1 performance metrics are merged


with the actual R2 metrics. FAST VP takes into account the workload on the R1 device
and then makes promotion and demotion decisions for the R2 device data. In an
SRDF swap operation, which reverses the direction of replication, FAST VP statistics
are automatically transferred to the new target site. SRDF coordination must be
enabled at both sites.

FAST VP SRDF coordination can operate in synchronous, asynchronous, and adaptive
copy modes. It also supports concurrent SRDF configurations.

For detailed information on this feature, see the “Advanced Features” section of
Implementing Fully Automated Storage Tiering for Virtual Pools (FAST VP) for EMC
Symmetrix VMAX Series Arrays—Technical Notes.
Figure 4 illustrates FAST VP coordinated movement with SRDF.

Figure 4. FAST VP SRDF coordination


VMware vSphere 5
VMware vSphere 5 For the solution, the Microsoft SQL, Oracle, and SAP application servers are fully
overview virtualized using VMware vSphere 5. This section describes the virtualization
infrastructure, which uses the following components and options:
• VMware vSphere 5.0.1
• VMware® vCenter™ Server
• VMware vSphere vMotion®
• EMC PowerPath/VE for VMware vSphere Version 5.7

VMware vSphere 5
VMware vSphere 5 is a complete, scalable, and powerful virtualization platform, with
infrastructure services that transform IT hardware into a high-performance shared
computing platform, and application services that help IT organizations deliver the
highest levels of availability, security, and scalability.

VMware vCenter Server
VMware vCenter is the centralized management platform for vSphere environments,
enabling control and visibility at every level of the virtual infrastructure.

VMware vSphere vMotion
VMware vSphere vMotion supports the live migration of virtual machines across
servers with no disruption to users or any loss of service.

Storage vMotion is VMware technology that enables live migration of a virtual
machine’s storage without any interruption in the availability of the virtual machine.
This allows the relocation of live virtual machines to new data stores.

EMC PowerPath/VE
EMC PowerPath/VE for VMware vSphere delivers PowerPath multipathing features to
optimize VMware vSphere virtual environments. PowerPath/VE installs as a kernel
module on the VMware ESXi™ host and works as a multipathing plug-in (MPP) that
provides enhanced path management capabilities to ESXi hosts.

VMware vSphere VMware vCenter Server provides a scalable and extensible platform to centrally
configuration manage VMware vSphere environments, providing control and visibility at every level
of the virtual infrastructure.

In this solution’s virtual environment, we configured four VMware vSphere 5.0 servers
to host virtual machines at the production and DR sites. A fifth ESXi sever hosted the
management virtual machines and vCenter servers.

At Site A, two ESXi5 hosts connect to the VMAX 40K array. Host A runs virtual
machines for Oracle and SAP applications, and Host B runs the Microsoft SQL OLTP
and DSS virtual machines serving as the production environment (R1).


At Site B, separate ESXi 5 hosts connect to the DR environment (R2) and are used to
mount the virtual machines in the event of a failover. Figure 5 shows an excerpt from
vCenter with the VMs running at the production site and the standby hosts at Site B.

Figure 5. Production (Site A) and DR (Site B) shown in vCenter

VMware virtual All virtual machines in this configuration use virtual machine disks (VMDK) from
machine VMware Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) data store volumes. Each VMFS data
configuration store hosts a single VMDK disk, ensuring high performance and zero contention. This
practice also ensures you have the ability to restore at an application level with EMC
TimeFinder Clone/Snap on the VMAX 40K array.

Table 3 shows the virtual machines CPU and memory allocation for each application
virtual machine.

Table 3. Virtual machine CPU and memory allocation

Application Virtual machine name CPU count Memory size
Oracle ORACLEDB 12 54,272 MB

SAP SAPDI1 8 16,384 MB

SAPDI2 8 16,384 MB

SAPASCS 2 4,096 MB

SAPCI 8 16,384 MB

SAPDB 16 32,768 MB


Application Virtual machine name CPU count Memory size
Microsoft SQL DSS SQLTPCH01 32 131,072 MB

Microsoft SQL OLTP SQLTPCE01 16 32,768 MB

SQLTPCE02 16 32,768 MB

Domain controller 4 4,096 MB

Because the virtual machines are replicated to Site B, the virtual machine CPU and
memory configuration is identical at both sites.

Full details of the LUNS provisioned for each virtual machine are found in Appendix A:
Detailed application design and LUN layout.

Selecting the SCSI driver type for data LUNs
VMware Paravirtual SCSI (PVSCSI) adapters are high-performance storage drivers that
can improve throughput and reduce CPU use. PVSCSI adapters are best suited for
SAN environments, where hardware or applications drive high I/O throughput.

As show in Figure 6, the SCSI controller’s type changed to paravirtual to improve the
driver efficiency. The default SCSI controller driver is LSI Logic SAS. LUNs are spread
across all available SCSI drivers.

Figure 6. SCSI controllers

EMC Virtual Storage Integrator
EMC Virtual Storage Integrator (VSI) provides enhanced visibility into Symmetrix
VMAX 40K directly from the vCenter GUI. Figure 7 shows the data store and storage
pool information, which provides information about virtual pool usage for the
Oracle_SOE1_1 data store.


Figure 7. Data store and storage pool information viewed from VSI

VMAX 40K volumes host the VMFS data stores for this solution. Figure 7 shows the
ESXi server and the Symmetrix VMAX 40K storage mapping with details about VMFS
data stores and the LUNs. The Storage Viewer identifies details about VMFS data
stores such as the VMAX storage volumes hosting the data store, the paths to the
physical storage, pool usage information, and data store performance statistics.

Figure 8 shows the LUN view from VSI. From here, administrators can identify the
Symmetrix device ID for LUNs and data stores, if user-defined labels are set on VMAX
LUNs. Administrators can export these listings to CSV files for manipulation with
VMware PowerCLI scripts for rapid provisioning of data stores to ESXi hosts.

Figure 8. EMC Virtual Storage integrator LUN view


Overview of mission-critical applications deployed in this solution
Overview This section gives a brief overview of the applications deployed in the test
environment, including:
• Microsoft SQL Server
• Oracle Database
• SAP ERP

Detailed configuration information is included in Appendix A: Detailed application
design and LUN layout.

Microsoft SQL Microsoft SQL Server 2012 is the latest version of the Microsoft database
Server management and analysis system for e-commerce, line-of-business, and data
warehousing solutions.

In the test environment, we engaged two applications, each with different workload
patterns running on the Microsoft SQL Server 2012 enterprise class platform. The
applications are a TPC-H-like application (acting as a typical DSS application), and a
TPC-E-like application (acting as a typical OLTP application).

Oracle Database Oracle Database 11g Release 2 Enterprise Edition delivers industry-leading
11g Release 2 performance, scalability, security, and reliability on a choice of clustered or single
servers running Windows, Linux, or UNIX. It provides comprehensive features for
transaction processing, business intelligence, and content management
applications.

This solution deploys a single OLTP database instance using Oracle Automatic
Storage Management.

SAP ERP and SAP ERP 6.0, powered by the SAP NetWeaver technology platform, is a fully-integrated
NetWeaver enterprise resource planning (ERP) application that fulfills the core business needs of
midsize companies and large enterprises across all industries and market sectors.
SAP ERP 6.0 delivers a comprehensive set of integrated, cross-functional business
processes and can serve as a solid business process platform that supports
continued growth, innovation, and operational excellence.

SAP IDES (Internet Demonstration and Evaluation System) systems support demos,
testing, and functional evaluation based on preconfigured data and clients. IDES
contains sample application data for various business scenarios, with business
processes that are designed to reflect real-life business requirements and have
access to many realistic characteristics. This solution uses IDES to represent a model
company for testing purposes, running an Oracle 11g Release 2 database fully
virtualized on VMware ESXi5. We provisioned and optimized the architecture
according to EMC and SAP recommended practices. For more information, see
Appendix A: Detailed application design and LUN layout.


Application profile Table 4 summarizes the profile for each of the four applications deployed in this
solution.

Table 4. Application profiles

Application VM configuration DB configuration Workload configuration

SAP 3 SAP ERP 6 IDES 1 Oracle DB 1,000 LoadRunner Update
EHP 4 instances, instance at 845 GB users + local client copy
16 vCPUs with 32 capacity simulation, 80:20 R/W ratio
GB RAM

Oracle OLTP DB instance, 12 1 Oracle DB per SwingBench order entry
vCPUs with 53 GB virtual machine, workload with 400 heavy
RAM 2 TB capacity access users, 60:40 R/W Ratio

SQL OLTP 2 SQL instances, 1 DB per virtual Mixed workloads to simulate
16 vCPUs with 32 machine, 1 TB hot, warm applications, 85:15
GB RAM capacity R/W ratio

SQL DSS 1 SQL instance, 1 DB per virtual 2 concurrent loads, 100%
32 vCPUs with machine, 2 TB Read
128 GB RAM capacity

We provisioned and optimized virtual machine resources for load-testing purposes,
according to the recommended practices specific to each application.


Storage design for consolidation of applications on VMAX 40K
Overview This section describes the storage configuration and provisioning for this solution
and is structured as follows:
• Front-end port usage and zoning
• Thin pool configuration
• Application LUN layout
• FAST VP policy design

Front-end port The application workloads were logically separated using masking views within the
usage and zoning VMAX 40K and HBAs. Figure 9 shows the front-end port use for each application.

Although physically running on the same server as Oracle, SAP is segregated to use
different front-end ports and HBAs, using zoning and masking. Both MS SQL OLTP
workloads running similar workloads use the same ports and are separated from DSS
workloads.

Figure 9. Logical grouping of ports to applications


Thin pool EMC Virtual Provisioning greatly simplifies the storage design. Because this
configuration configuration involves remote replication with SRDF, both source and target arrays are
configured in exactly the same manner. We created four thin pools on each array,
based on the drive types available.

Table 5 shows the thin pool definitions.

Table 5. Thin pool configuration

Drive size/ RAID
Thin pool name No. of drives TDAT size No. of TDAT Pool capacity
technology/RPM protection
FLASH_3RAID5 200 GB Flash RAID5 3+1 32 68.8 GB 64 4.2 TB

FC10K_RAID1 600 GB FC 10k RAID1 126 66 GB 504 32 TB

FC15K_RAID1 450 GB FC 15k RAID1 64 49.2 GB 256 12.2 TB

SATA_6RAID6 2 TB SATA 7.2k RAID6 6+2 72 240 GB 256 60 TB

For this solution, the SAP, Oracle, and MS OLTP applications are bound to the
FC10K_RAID1 pool. The MS DSS application is bound to the FC15K_RAID1 pool which
is backed by a smaller number of drives.

FAST VP VMAX administrators can set high-performance policies that use more Flash drive
configuration capacity for critical applications, and cost-optimized policies that use more SATA
drive capacity for less-critical applications.

The ideal FAST VP policy would be to specify 100 percent for each of the included
tiers. Such a policy would provide the greatest amount of flexibility to an associated
storage group, as it would allow 100 percent of the storage group’s capacity to be
promoted or demoted to any tier within the policy.

In this implementation, we designed the FAST policies to prevent any single
application from consuming high portions of Flash storage to ensure a cost-effective
mix of storage with consistently high performance. Conversely, we set the SAP policy
to limit SATA usage to ensure minimum levels of performance during periods of low
activity.

EMC offers an analysis service for customers to estimate the performance and cost of
mixing types of drive technologies (Flash, FC, and SATA) within Symmetrix VMAX
storage arrays.

Table 6 shows the FAST VP policies used for the application workloads in this
solution for Oracle, SAP, SQL OLTP, and SQL DSS.


Table 6. FAST VP policy for Oracle, SAP, SQL OLTP, and SQL DSS

Storage group FAST policy name Flash FC SATA
MSSQL1_OLTP MSSQL_OLTP 5% 40% 100%

MSSQL2_OLTP MSSQL_OLTP 5% 40% 100%

MSSQL_DSS MSSQL_DSS 0% 100% 100%

Oracle Oracle 15% 35% 50%

SAP SAP 10% 80% 10%

The policies set for this solution (as shown in Table 6) are a result of the workload
analysis and dynamic tuning to ensure that application workload performed within
acceptable performance boundaries. Further tuning for enhanced performance is
discussed in FAST VP workload tuning.

Storage design The design incorporates the following recommended practices:
considerations for
• Use separate storage volumes for data files and log files
mission-critical
database • Use separate file groups for large databases
applications with • For ASM, EMC recommends separate ASM disk groups for DATA, REDO, FRA,
FAST VP and TEMP when replicating with SRDF
• Bind all thin devices to the FC tier.
• Log devices and temp files should be pinned to the FC tier

Figure 10 shows an overview of how each critical application is configured for FAST
VP. In this implementation, only data LUNs are managed by FAST VP. LUNs for OS and
LOG are pinned to the FC tier, excluding them from FAST decisions and movement.

For full details of LUN layout and sizing for each application refer to Appendix A:
Detailed application design and LUN layout.

Figure 10. General view of FAST VP configuration for mission-critical applications


Configuring EMC Symmetrix FAST VP with Unisphere for VMAX
Overview of This section outlines the steps for configuring FAST VP on a Symmetrix VMAX array.
FAST VP
1. Enable the FAST controller and set the control parameters.
configuration
2. Create the storage tiers.
3. Create the FAST policies.
4. Associate each storage group with the relevant FAST policy and enable
FAST VP RDF coordination.
5. Configure performance and move time windows.

To complete these steps, you can use the Unisphere FAST Configuration Wizard, the
Unisphere menu commands, or the SYMCLI.

Step 1: Enable the You can access FAST VP settings through the Storage tab in Unisphere under FAST.
FAST controller Figure 11 shows the settings used in the test environment.
and set the control
parameters

Figure 11. FAST VP settings

Note that Allocate by FAST Policy is checked. This ensures that FAST VP will use all
tiers for new allocations based on performance and capacity restrictions.

For further information on the control parameters used by FAST VP, see the EMC
Solutions Enabler Symmetrix Array Controls CLI Product Guide.


Step 2: Create When creating a storage tier, specify the following attributes:
storage tiers
• The tier name, which uniquely identifies the storage tier
• The disk technology on which the tier will reside
• The RAID protection type for the tier
• The names of the virtual pools that belong to the tier

The solution defines four storage tiers as shown in Figure 12. Unisphere guides
administrators through the process of creating the necessary VP tiers. In this solution,
four virtual pools reside on the array.

Tiers can be deleted and renamed as required.

Figure 12. Defined storage tiers

Note: When possible, EMC recommends that you configure each FAST VP tier with a
single virtual pool, to ensure that all pools within a tier have the same overall
performance capabilities. For example, if a tier contains one pool spread over
128 drives and another pool spread over 16 drives, the number of spindles
making up the underlying storage will be different for each pool. This could
result in unbalanced use of each pool’s performance capabilities.

Step 3: Create When creating a FAST policy, specify the following attributes:
FAST policies
• The policy name, which uniquely identifies the policy
• The name of each tier to be added to the policy
• The upper limit (percent) of each tier that an associated storage group can
occupy under the specified policy

Figure 13 shows how to create the FAST policy for this solution, using the FAST
Configuration Wizard.


Figure 13. Creating a FAST policy

Step 4: Associate To apply a FAST policy to a schema, associate the schema’s storage group with the
storage groups FAST policy. Figure 14 shows how to associate the Oracle policy with the Oracle
with FAST policies storage group.
and enable RDF
coordination

Figure 14. Associating a FAST policy with a storage group

Under the Advanced options check Enable FAST VP RDF Coordination. This enables
the feature allowing for R1 and R2 to send and receive performance statistics for
FAST VP movement for the associated storage group.


Step 5: Configure Time windows are used by FAST VP to specify when data can be collected for
FAST VP performance analysis and when data movements can be executed. FAST VP shares
monitoring and monitoring windows with FAST and Symmetrix Optimizer. However, FAST VP requires
move windows a separate data movement window.

Performance time windows define the days and times when FAST VP performs
analysis. Data movement windows define the days and times when FAST VP moves
data between tiers.

EMC recommends that you configure both the monitoring and data movement
windows to be always open so that FAST VP can use the most recent analysis and
metrics to optimize data placement.

Figure 15 shows the definition of a monitoring window for this solution.

Figure 15. Creating/managing time windows

Note that both source and target arrays were configured with the same FAST VP
policies and storage groups.

Table 6 (page 28) shows the FAST policies assigned to the each application.


Cascaded storage Enginuity 5876 supports cascaded storage groups, which is the ability to nest storage
groups groups within storage groups. A parent storage groups is associated with a masking
view, and contains a number of nested child groups.

Cascaded storage groups make it easier to manage ESXi clusters with FAST VP
enabled storage. Figure 16 shows the cascaded storage group MSSQL_OLTP_Apps,
with three child storage groups, two of which are associated with FAST policies.

Figure 16. Cascaded storage groups

Site protection Both the source and target Symmetrix VMAX 40K arrays in this solution have the
with SRDF same number of disks and storage tiers. We created devices and storage groups
using the processes described in the previous sections. For continuity, we used the
same names for the storage groups and FAST VP policies on the arrays at both sites,
and provisioned the DR mount servers that connected to the target array.

All application environments are protected with SRDF. SRDF is configured using the
Solutions Enabler command line interface (CLI). The steps used to configure SRDF
protection for this configuration are detailed in Appendix B: Configuring Symmetrix
remote replication.


Performance testing and validation results
Overview This section describes how we tested the applications in our solution environment.

Each test is described in more detail in later sections.

Notes: • Benchmark results are highly dependent upon workload, specific
application requirements, and system design and implementation.
Relative system performance will vary as a result of these and other
factors. Therefore, this workload should not be used as a substitute for a
specific customer application benchmark when critical capacity planning
and/or product evaluation decisions are contemplated.

• All performance data contained in this report was obtained in a rigorously
controlled environment. Results obtained in other operating environments
may vary significantly.
• EMC Corporation does not warrant or represent that a user can or will
achieve similar performance expressed in transactions per minute.

Validation To validate the environment, we deployed all applications and populated them with
test data. Each of the four applications (SAP, Oracle, SQL OLTP, and SQL DSS) was
deployed at the production location, Site A, and workloads were driven against each
application running simultaneously on the VMAX 40K storage array.

Each application is associated with a FAST policy, and replicates to the remote
location, Site B, using SRDF.

We used Unisphere’s Performance Analyzer module to monitor and gather storage
performance data in addition to application performance monitoring tools.

Test scenarios The test contains following scenarios:
• End-to-end validation with FAST VP under normal conditions
• FAST VP workload tuning
• RDF coordination with continuous production workload
• Failover with performance continuity


End-to-end validation with FAST VP under normal conditions
Objectives The objective of this test was to validate the solution build under normal operating
conditions for a normal work day, with FAST VP storage tiering enabled. Each
application performs within the defined boundaries, which are the basis for an
acceptable service-level agreement.

We evaluated all aspects of the solution, including the VMware vSphere server and
virtual machine performance, SAP, Oracle, SQL OLTP, and SQL DSS server and client
experience, with FAST VP policies applied to each application.

Application For each application, we used load generation tools to simulate real world user
workloads interactions. The details are as follows:
• We used an MSTPCE toolkit on the client virtual machines to generate TPC-E-
like loads simultaneously for SQL Server OLTP databases. This emulated warm
and hot workloads.
• We used Quest Benchmark Factory to generate a TPC-H-like load for the SQL
Server DSS database.
• We generated a SwingBench TPC-C-like order entry workload with 400 users
and ran it against the Oracle database.
• For SAP, using four LoadRunner generators, we programmed 1,000 virtual
interactive/dialog users to log on to SAP and perform real-life update
transactions simultaneously. Additionally, a test client copy was performed to
simulate generation of reports (such as month-end closing).
• LoadRunner produces a constant database write workload by having virtual
users perform “update” transactions at a fixed pace. Conversely, the client
copy simulation reads several tables of varying sizes simultaneously. Therefore
the IOPS workload varies just as much, depending on the set of tables being
read in parallel at any given time.

Storage Each of the workloads for the four applications (SAP, Oracle, SQL OLTP, and SQL DSS)
performance were run together and stabilized within three hours. We measured each application’s
overview performance to ensure it was within predefined KPIs and that all workloads co-
existed without a negative impact on each other.

Figure 17 shows the running workload on the source array for the Oracle, SAP, and
Microsoft OLTP applications.


Figure 17. Host IOPS as shown in Unisphere for VMAX

The MSSQL DSS workload issued typical online analytical processing queries, one
after another. Each query generated a large quantity of table/index scans with an
average bandwidth of just over 800 MB/s as shown in Figure 18.

Figure 18. MSSQL DSS bandwidth during baseline test (MB/s)


FAST VP capacity Figure 19 shows a capacity breakdown of each application’s storage by tier. This
use by storage output from Unisphere FAST demonstrates how each application storage group is
group spread out on the underlying FAST tiers and whether the storage group is compliant
with the policy set.

Figure 19. Capacity breakdown of storage groups under FAST control

Figure 19 shows the usage of each storage group. MSSQL_DSS is spread across the
FC and SATA tiers. Oracle, SAP, and MSSQL_OLTP are using capacity from three
storage tiers.

You can use Tier Usage reports from Unisphere to monitor tier usage and FAST VP
demands to ensure that sufficient capacity exists on the array for more applications.
Figure 20 shows the Tier Demand report for the FLASH_3RAID5 tier. The purple
triangle shows the maximum demand placed on the tier by FAST VP storage groups,
the blue area shows the capacity currently used, and the green area indicates the
remaining capacity for future use.

Figure 20. Tier Demand Report for the FLASH_3RAID5 tier

You can configure alerts based on usage thresholds through Unisphere to email or
send SNMP traps to administrators if usage reaches the defined thresholds. You can
also set up audit level accounts for users who need to monitor storage usage without
giving the ability to make changes.


SAP test result Figure 21 shows the number of users who logged on from SAP. LoadRunner generated
overview a user load of 1,000 active users. Users tend to spawn multiple remote (RFC) users as
needed, resulting in a higher user count across the servers. Figure 21 shows 1,352
users.

Figure 21. SAP logged-on user sessions

Table 7 shows the different KPIs that were checked to verify SAP stability.

Table 7. KPIs for SAP and observed values

Metric Description Ideal value Recorded value
Dialog response time An SAP KPI that measures the total time from when 1,100 ms or 929.93
SAP receives a request until a result or output less
screen is presented to the user.

User utilization Actual front-end usage. < 50% - 60% 21%

System use System/OS usage. < 20% 1%

Idle time Unused resources. >20% 78%

I/O wait Time when SAP work processes are placed on hold, 0% - 10% 0%
waiting for an I/O response; usually an indicator of a
hardware issue if neither client copy nor an upgrade
is running.

Wait time Time spent waiting for database response. < 10% of 0.04%
response time

Heap memory usage The final level of memory that a dialog work process 0% 0%
can consume before it is terminated. Its use
indicates a memory bottleneck.

Program/PXA buffer Measure of a buffer’s efficiency by counting how ≥ 95% 99.96%
hit ratio much of the data requested is already loaded on the
buffer versus what must still be read from the disk.
The higher the value, the more efficient it is.


Oracle OLTP test We generated a SwingBench order entry workload with 400 users and ran it against
results overview SOE1 schema with FAST VP enabled. The test procedure was carried out with the four
application (SAP, Oracle, SQL OLTP, and SQL DSS) workloads running together.

The performance metrics for 400 users were:
• The Oracle I/O pattern is 8 KB read and 8 KB write, with a read/write ratio of
60/40 percent, respectively.
• 7,656 IOPS, with an average disk read latency of 5.5 ms and a disk write
latency of 7 ms.

Table 8, Table 9, Table 10, and Table 11 list the Oracle performance for the test.

Table 8. Oracle OLTP performance

Oracle OLTP performance Recorded value

TPM 97,017

SwingBench response time 36 ms

Table 9. Oracle storage performance

Storage performance Ideal value Recorded value
IOPS – 7,656

Disk read response time < 10ms 5.5 ms

Disk write response time < 10ms 7 ms

Table 10. Oracle foreground events

Oracle top 5 timed foreground events Average wait (ms) % DB time

DB file sequential read 9 80.05

Log file sync 6 11.80

DB CPU – 5.66

Library cache: mutex X 1 0.09

Read by other session 9 0.07

Table 11. Oracle background wait events

Oracle top timed background events Average wait (ms) % Background time

Log file parallel write 3 46.66


The test results included the following Oracle events:
• DB file sequential read: The session waits while a sequential read from the
database is performed. This event is also used for rebuilding the control file,
dumping the data file headers, and getting the database file headers.
• Log file parallel write: The writing of redo records to the redo log files from the
log buffer.

The acceptable value for average database I/O latency (the Oracle measurement DB
file sequential read) is less than or equal to 20 ms. Log file parallel write should be
no more than 15 ms. For the test we implemented, with FAST policy in place, both DB
file sequential read and log file parallel write (9 ms and 3 ms) exceeded the
acceptable values.

SQL OLTP test We performed the baseline SQL OLTP performance test with the four application (SAP,
result overview ORACLE, SQL OLTP, and SQL DSS) workloads running together with FAST VP enabled.
A performance baseline was defined to represent the OLTP environment before
applying the FAST VP policies as follows:
• This configuration represented the database performance characteristics after
FAST VP was enabled and the workload had stabilized.

• Running the simulated user load with this configuration showed that the ESX
server had no CPU or memory constraints, and the client application emulated
the varying workload.

• The SQL OLTP application I/O pattern is typically 8 KB read/write, with a
read/write ratio of 85:15 percent, respectively.

• The SQL Server processed 176,940 transactions per minute and the client
processed 47,760 transactions per minute, including TempDB transactions.

• The drives supported a workload of 6,802 IOPS in total.

• The average disk latency is less than 20 ms.

• The average CPU use of SQL VM was less than 75 percent.

Table 12 lists the performance results for the SQL OLTP load test.

Table 12. Performance data with SQL OLTP load

OLTP performance Ideal value Value

Average CPU use (%) SQL01 < 75% 3.5%

SQL02 < 75% 15.3%

Client transactions per minute SQL01 – 9,240

SQL02 – 38,520

SQL Server transactions per second SQL01 – 37,920

SQL02 – 139,020


OLTP performance Ideal value Value

Average IOPS SQL01 – 1,646

SQL02 – 5,156

OLTP data LUN average latency SQL01 < 20ms 9/4/10
(milliseconds) (read/write/transfer)
SQL02 < 20ms 11/7/11

OLTP log LUN average latency SQL01 < 5ms 0/2/2
SQL02 < 5ms 0/3/3

TempDB data LUN average latency SQL01 < 20ms 0/0/0
SQL02 < 20ms 3/0/3

TempDB log LUN average latency SQL01 < 5ms 0/3/3
SQL02 < 5ms 0/3/3

SQL DSS test We performed the baseline SQL DSS performance test with the four applications
result overview (SAP, ORACLE, SQL OLTP, and SQL DSS) workload running together with FAST VP
enabled on the Flash, FC, and SATA tiers. We defined a performance baseline to
represent the DSS environment after applying the FAST VP policies, which stabilized
the workload as follows:
• The SQL DSS I/O pattern is a typical 64k read/write, with a read/write ratio of
100:0 percent for the data LUN.
• The SQL Server TempDB read/write ratio is 1:1.5, with a total of 1,141 IOPS.
• The average CPU use of the SQL virtual machine was less than 75 percent.
• With a balanced workload, SQL DSS recorded 12,018 IOPS, and the average
bandwidth is at 808 Mb/s with a peak bandwidth of more than 1.1 Gb/s.

Table 13 shows the performance data with the SQL DSS workload.

Table 13. Performance data with SQL DSS load

DSS performance Ideal value Value

Average CPU use (%) < 75% 61.0%

Average disk bytes/sec (Mb/s) – 808

Maximum disk bytes/sec (Mb/s) – 1,141

DSS data LUN average IOPS – 10,896

TempDB data LUN average IOPS – 1,122


Summary of The test results indicated the following:
results
• All four mission-critical applications are able to coexist and perform within
service-level agreements.
• Although each application only used a small percentage of Flash storage, we
saw high performance levels that FAST VP continued to fine tune to meet the
application’s requirements.
• FAST VP data movements are nondisruptive and transparent to all applications.


FAST VP workload tuning validation
Objectives It is important to configure FAST VP policies to adapt to changing application
workloads. For example, a service provider may have customers who want higher
performance levels with minimal impact on other applications.

The purpose of this test is to tune FAST VP policies to meet the changing workloads of
SQL OLTP applications and their “on-the-fly” storage group changes. This test
validates how FAST VP rebalances the storage, making dynamic performance
improvements as a result of this rebalance.

Configuration The initial FAST VP policy for the SQL OLTP storage group is 5 percent Flash, 40
percent FC, and 100 percent SATA. The SQL OLTP storage group contains two child
groups—MSSQL1_OLTP and MSSQL2_OLTP. All four applications (SAP, Oracle, SQL
OLTP, and SQL DSS) ran at the same time. At 4 a.m., we increased the Flash
percentage for the MSSQL policy to 30 percent. The load generators were left running
on all applications and the environment was monitored.

We also changed the FAST policy for the MSSQL_OLTP on the remote array to ensure
the same performance impact was seen at the remote site.

We used Unisphere to make the policy change. Figure 22 shows the policy changes in
the FAST Policies management GUI.

Figure 22. SQL FAST policy changes


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