Fully Automated Storage Tiering

Fully Automated Storage Tiering (FAST) automates the identification of active or inactive data for the purposes of relocating application data across different performance/capacity tiers within an array. The primary benefits of FAST include: Elimination of manually tiering applications when workload characteristics change over time Automating the process of identifying data that can benefit from Enterprise Flash Drives or that can be kept on higher-capacity, less-expensive SATA drives without impacting performance Improving application performance at the same cost, or providing the same application performance at lower cost. Cost is defined as: acquisition (both HW and SW), space/energy, and management expense Optimizing and prioritizing business applications, allowing customers to dynamically allocate resources within a single array Delivering greater flexibility in meeting different price/performance ratios throughout the lifecycle of the information stored

The need for FAST

Due to advances in drive technology, and the need for storage consolidation, the number of drive types supported by Symmetrix has grown significantly. These drives span a range of storage service specializations and cost characteristics that differ greatly. Several differences exist between the three drive technologies supported by the Symmetrix VMAX EFD, FC, and SATA. The primary areas they differ in are: Response time Cost per unit of storage capacity Cost per unit of storage request processing At one extreme are EFDs, which have a very low response time, but with a high cost per unit of storage capacity. At the other extreme are SATA drives, which have a low cost per unit of storage capacity, but high response times and high cost per unit of storage request processing. In between these two extremes lie Fibre Channel drives. Based on the nature of the differences that exist between these three drive types, the following observations can be made regarding the most 4 Fully
Automated Storage Tiering Implementing FAST VP for EMC Symmetrix VMAX Series Arrays Technical Notes

suited workload type for each drive. Enterprise Flash Drives EFDs are more suited for workloads that have a high back-end random read storage request density. Such workloads take advantage of both the low response time provided by the drive, and the low cost per unit of storage request processing without requiring a lot of storage capacity. SATA drives SATA drives are suited towards workloads that have a low back-end storage request density. Fibre Channel drives FC drives are the best drive type for workloads with a back-end storage request density that is not consistently high or low. This disparity in suitable workloads presents both an opportunity and a challenge for storage administrators. To the degree it can be arranged for storage workloads to be served by the best suited drive technology, the opportunity exists to improve application performance, reduce hardware acquisition expenses, and reduce operating expenses (including energy costs and space consumption). The challenge, however, lies in how to realize these benefits without introducing additional administrative overhead and complexity. The approach taken with FAST is to automate the process of identifying which regions of storage should reside on a given drive technology, and to automatically and non-disruptively move storage between tiers to optimize storage resource usage accordingly. This also needs to be done while taking into account optional constraints on tier capacity usage that may be imposed on specific groups of storage devices.

Slide 30 1998-2005 FMJO LLC dba Infinity I/O. All rights reserved. Any reproduction or use without written permission of Infinity I/O is prohibited 30 INFINITY I/O 30 Virtual SANs VSAN 3 VSAN 2
Virtual SANs (VSANs) are a proprietary feature of Cisco MDS 9000 switches that allows a single SAN fabric to be partitioned into multiple logical SANs. This implementation is well-suited to Ciscos large enterprise customers, who typically deploy large SAN fabrics and invest in director-class switches with high port counts. VSANs allow redundant fabrics to be configured on a single physical infrastructure, eliminating the need to physically partition the SAN. VSANs enable more robust security, availability, and scalability in FC fabrics. The preceding graphic shows an example of a single physical SAN fabric divided into two VSANs. VSANs can be used to isolate traffic based on the unique requirements of each organization: Different customers in storage provider data centers Production and test environments in an enterprise network Low and high security requirements Backup and data replication traffic on separate VSANs Dedicated resources and bandwidth for priority applications The primary architectural difference between VSANs and zones is that VSANs are completely isolated from each other, while zones share some common traffic (such as fabric service messages) and share fabric services (such as the Domain Manager and Name Server). Each VSAN effectively functions like a separate SAN, with its own Domain Manager, Name Server, and so on. This means that a reconfiguration or fault in one VSAN will not affect traffic in any other VSAN.

Slide 31 1998-2005 FMJO LLC dba Infinity I/O. All rights reserved. Any reproduction or use without written permission of Infin VSANs provide the following features: Traffic isolation: All traffic, including multicast and broadcast traffic, is contained within VSAN boundaries. Each device resides in only one VSAN, ensuring absolute separation between user groups. Scalability: VSANs are overlaid on top of a single physical SAN. The ability to create several logical VSAN layers increases the scalability of the SAN. Per-VSAN fabric services: Each instance of a fabric service within each VSAN runs as a separate thread. Replication of fabric services on a per-VSAN basis provides increased scalability and availability. Redundancy: Several VSANs created on the same physical SAN ensure redundancy. If one VSAN fails, redundant protection is provided by a pre-configured backup path between the host and the switch. Ease of configuration: Nodes can be added, moved, or changed between VSANs without changing the physical structure of a SAN. Moving a device from one VSAN to another only requires configuration at the port level, not at a physical level.