Accelerating Application Performance -- Tier-0 · Accelerating Application Performance – Tier-0 • Traditional tiered storage or Information Lifecycle Management (ILM), approaches

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Accelerating Application Performance -- Tier-0Richard GillettAcopia Networks

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Accelerating Application Performance - Tier 0© 2007 Storage Networking Industry Association. All Rights Reserved. 2

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Abstract

Accelerating Application Performance – Tier-0• Traditional tiered storage or Information Lifecycle Management

(ILM), approaches seek to move lower priority files to lower performing, less expensive disk in an effort to save on storage and backup costs.

• Users can expand this conventional cost savings approach to include tiering of data for the specific purpose of optimizing application performance.

• By utilizing a “Tier-0” approach, specific data sets can be moved to higher performance, memory-based platforms, resulting in dramatic improvement in application performance

This tutorial introduces the general concept of Tier-0 storage and then discusses the use of Tier-0 storage to accelerate the performance of applications that access storage using NAS protocols.

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Agenda

• Context• Traditional tiered storage• A new kind of tiered storage• High-performance storage options• Application characteristics• Solution example• Summary

• Q&A

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Context

• “Application Acceleration” is a term used in many contexts

• This tutorial discusses the application of fast storage (called “Tier-0”) to make applications run faster

• Tier-0 storage can be used to accelerate applications that use either block or NAS protocols

• This tutorial focuses on the use of Tier-0 storage to make applications accessing storage over NAS protocols (e.g. NFS and CIFS) run faster

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Traditional NAS Tiered Storage

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• Traditionally, NAS tiered storage has been used to integrate a lower cost storage pool for the purposes of off-loading Tier-1 storage of infrequently accessed data– In a simple world: “FC” = Tier-1 and “SATA” = Tier-2

• Simple policies based on file access or modify time can be used to identify candidates for migration to Tier-2

• Assuming Tier-2 can be integrated without impact to the existing storage users, the cost savings are significant

• On the next slide, we will describe ways Tier-2 NAS storage can be integrated with existing Tier-1 NAS storage

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Applications

Tier-1

DefaultNAS

(FC)

Tier-2

Cost-focusedNAS

(SATA)

Typically 2-4x savings on

CapEx

Additional savings on

backup OpEx

Option1Applications see another mount

Option 2Tier-2 appears

behind Tier-1 stubs

Virtualize

Option 3Virtualize Tier-1 and Tier-2 into a

single pool

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A new kind ofNAS Tiered Storage

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A New Tier of NAS Storage

Applications

PerformanceOptimized

(Memory)

Tier-0 Tier-1

DefaultNAS

(FC)

Tier-2

Cost-focusedNAS

(SATA)

Tier-3Capacity

OptimizedStorage

(CompressedSATA)

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Definition of Tier-0

• “Tier 0” is a storage tier – optimized and intelligently managed – for the purpose of high-performance – and deterministic serving – to critical applications

• “Tier-0” NAS is focused on accelerating applications that access storage over NAS protocols

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Tier-0 NAS Building Blocks

• The basic requirement is that it be able to serve NAS protocols

• Though it sounds strange, a “Tier-1” NAS system, intelligently managed specifically to accelerate application performance meets the definition of Tier-0

• The specific application requirements will generally suggest the right building blocks– “Cache” memory in the server and solid-state storage are the

primary building blocks for memory-based Tier-0• On the next slide, we discuss the emerging opportunity

to use mainstream servers with large memory configurations as Tier-0 servers

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The Memory Opportunity

• Over the last year, the alignment between several important parameters has greatly increased:– Cost of high-performance memory– Size of the memory in a mainstream server– Performance of the memory in mainstream servers– Performance of the network in mainstream servers– Size of an application’s “critical working set”

• More details on this concept in a few slides…

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A Mainstream Server of 2007

• 2 fast processor cores• 16GB memory• 5 GBytes/sec memory bandwidth• 500MB/sec network bandwidth• 500MB/sec NAS serving bandwidth

• Cost from a mainstream server supplier: ~$5000

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Achille’s Heel

• An Achilles heel of any modern storage system is disk performance when the application has a randomly-accessed working set larger than cache memory

• On the next slide, we show the results of a benchmark that highlights this behavior

• The benchmark uses 24 gigabit connected clients to perform random 4KB reads within a defined working set

• The tests were run against two servers– NAS server with 3GB memory and a high-performance FC array– Mainstream server configured as a file server with 16GB memory

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Benchmark Results

Working SetNAS Server with

3GB memory(single 1Gb link)

Server with 16 GB memory

(4x1Gb channel)

1 GB 120(limited by 1Gb link)

450 (limited by 4x1Gb channel)

5 GB 21 450

10 GB 18 450

15 GB 17 450

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Application Characteristics

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Application Critical Working Set (ACWS)

• First a definition…– ACWS is the total size of the unique storage space that an

application “needs” served at high-performance to avoid being bottlenecked by I/O

• How do you measure ACWS ?– The easiest way is often empirical….

• Serve your application with storage from a memory-based server(s)

• Repeat runs while shrinking the memory size until the application experiences I/O bottlenecks

• This is an approximation of the application’s ACWS– There are analysis/simulation based approaches but the details

are beyond the scope of this tutorialCheck out

SNIA Tutorial:StoragePerformance Testing

Check outSNIA Tutorial:

StoragePerformance Testing

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ACWS Across Applications

Trading Decisions

Large Scale Software

Compilations

Major Movie Rendering

Large Scale Semiconductor

Simulations

10

100+

ACWS(GB)

Note:These values are estimates for various types of applications. The actual ACWS can vary greatly even within the same application space.

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Placement Challenge

• In the general case, the position of a file within the namespace hierarchy and the corresponding optimal placement across Tier-1 and Tier-0 storage is unrelated

• For example, at a specific time “file3” in “dir2” is part of the application’s critical working set (and therefore will be served from Tier-0) while other files within the same directory are not critical

• The example on the next slide will help to clarify this concept

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Ideal Placement Example

dir1

dir2 dir-3 dir-4

file1

file2file3

file4

file7file6file5

Tier-1Tier-0

file3 file4 file1 file2 file5 file6 file7

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An Integrated Tier-1 and Tier-0

Solution

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Desirable Characteristics

• Transparent integration with existing Tier-1– Applications see a logical view decoupled from physical location

• Analysis service to determine application characteristics (including CWS) and best placement policy– Humans don’t have to guess the best policy

• Flexible file-level placement capability– Individual files can be dynamically placed anywhere within the

Tier-0 and Tier-1 resources

• Ability to transparently scale Tier-0 capacity across the range of working set requirements– 10 to 100GB is a good place to start…

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Application Acceleration Flow

Application Servers

Analysis

SophisticatedAccess Analysis

Fast Big Safe Other

Access Stream

Policy Stream

Fastest

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Application Acceleration Example

Application Servers

SophisticatedAccess Analysis

Fast Big Safe Other

Access Stream

Policy StreamMove file1 to “Fastest”

file1…file2…file1ContinuousAnalysis

Fastest


FANFile Area Networks


FANFile Area Networks

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Three-Tier Solution

Acopia ARX Virtualization

Applications

Real-time matching of application/business needs and storage capability

Tier-1

DefaultNAS

(FC)

Tier-2

Cost-focusedNAS

(SATA)

Tier-0

PerformanceOptimized

(Memory)

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Summary

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Summary

• Tier-2 and Tier-0 are both approaches to better align storage and business needs

• Tier-0 focuses on making applications run faster and more predictability

• While almost any NAS server can be used as a Tier-0 server, mainstream servers with large memory configurations are very attractive building blocks for many applications

• Integrating Tier-0 into existing infrastructure is a challenge– Network-based virtualization is one way to address this

challenge

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Q&A / Feedback• Please send any questions or comments on this presentation to

SNIA: [email protected]

Many thanks to the following individuals for their contributions to this tutorial.

SNIA Education Committee

Nigel BurmeisterWoody HutsellRobert PeglarKirby WadsworthCheng Wu

mailto:[email protected]

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Accelerating Application Performance -- Tier-0 · Accelerating Application Performance – Tier-0 • Traditional tiered storage or Information Lifecycle Management (ILM), approaches

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