Eric Burgener VP, Product Management Alternative Approaches to Meeting VDI Storage Performance Req’ts July 2012.

Eric BurgenerVP, Product Management

Alternative Approaches to Meeting VDI Storage Performance Req’ts

July 2012

2

Agenda

The storage challenge in VDI environments

Profiling VDI workloads

Focus on SSD

An alternative approach: the storage hypervisor

Customer case studies

July 2012

VM

VM

VM

VM

❶ Poor performance• Very random, write-intensive workload• Spinning disks generate fewer IOPS• Storage provisioning trade-offs

Virtual Machines

❷ Poor capacity utilization• Over-provisioning to ensure performance• Performance trade-offs

❸ Complex management• Requires storage expertise• Imposes SLA limitations• Limits granularity of storage operations

The VM I/O Blender

Hidden Storage Costs of Virtualization

3July 2012

VM

VM

VM

VM

❶ Poor performance• Very random, write-intensive workload• Spinning disks generate fewer IOPS• Storage provisioning trade-offs

Virtual Machines

❷ Poor capacity utilization• Over-provisioning to ensure performance• Performance trade-offs

❸ Complex management• Requires storage expertise• Imposes SLA limitations• Limits granularity of storage operations

The VM I/O Blender

Hidden Storage Costs of Virtualization

Can decrease storageperformance by 30% - 50%

4July 2012

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VDI Environments Are Even Worse

July 2012

Windows desktops generate a

lot of small block writes

IOPS vs throughput needs

Even more write-intensive

due to many more VMs/host

Much wider variability be-

tween peak and average IOPS

Boot, login, application, logout

storms

Add’l storage provisioning,

capacity consumption issues

VIRTUAL DESKTOPS

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As If It’s Not Already Hard Enough…

July 2012

Thick VMDKsFixed VHDs

Fully provisioned

Thin VMDKsDynamic VHDs

Thin provisioned

Linked ClonesDifferencing VHDs

Writable clones

HIGH PERFORMANCESlow provisioning

Poor space utilization

SPACE-EFFICIENTRAPID PROVISIONING

Poor performance

RAPID PROVISIONINGSPACE-EFFICIENTPoor performance

Hypervisor storage options force suboptimal choices

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Thick, Thin, and Snapshot Performance

July 2012

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Sizing VDI Storage Configurations: The Basics

July 2012

1. PERFORMANCE (latency, IOPS)Steady state I/OPeak I/ORead/write ratiosSequential vs random I/O

RAID reduces usable capacityRAID increases “actual” IOPSAppropriate RAID levels

2. AVAILABILITY (RAID)

Logical virtual disk capacitiesSnapshot/clone creation/usageSecondary storage considerationsCapacity optimization technology

3. CAPACITY

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Single Image Management

How can we take advantage of many common images?

July 2012

vSphere: parent VMs, snapshots, replicas, linked clones

Parent VM Snapshot Replica

…

Linked Clones

• Reads from replica• Changes to delta disks• Space efficient• Poor performance

Compose, re-compose and refresh workflows

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Reads vs Writes in VDI Environments

July 2012

Understand read/write ratios forsteady state and burst scenarios

VDI is VERY write intensive (80%+)Read caches do not help hereLogs or write back cache help

Steady state XP Desktops 7 – 15 IOPS Steady state W7 Desktops 15 – 30 IOPSBurst IOPS 30 – 300 IOPS

VMware recommendations, May 2012

READ INTENSIVE: Boot, login, and application storms, AV scansWRITE INTENSIVE: Steady state VDI IOPS, logout storms, backups*GOLDEN MASTERS: Read only, great place to use “fast” storage

* Depending on how backups are done

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What Are My Options?

Adding spindles adds

IOPS

Tends to waste storage

capacity

Drives up energy, backup

costs

July 2012

BUY MORE STORAGE

Add to host or SAN

Promises tremendously

lower I/O latencies

Easy to add

Focus on $/IOPS

SOLID STATE DISK

Add higher performance

drives (if available)

Upgrade to a higher

performance array

Increased storage

complexity

BUY FASTER STORAGE

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Focus On SSD

Extremely high read performance

with very low power consumption

Generally deployed as a cache

where you’ll need 5% - 10% of total

back end capacity

Deploy in host or in SAN

Deployment option may limit HA support

3 classes of SSD: SLC, enterprise

MLC, MLC

SSD is expensive ($60-$65/GB) so

you’ll want to deploy it efficiently

July 2012

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Understanding SSD Performance

July 2012

100% read max IOPS 115,000100% write max IOPS 70,000100% random read max IOPS 50,000100% random write max IOPS 32,000

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What They Don’t Tell You About SSD

July 2012

The VDI storage performance problem is mostly about writes

SSD is mostly about read performance

But there are VDI issues where read performance helps

Write performance is not predictable

Can be MUCH slower than HDDs for certain I/Os

Amdahl’s Law problem: SSDs won’t deliver promised performance, it

just removes storage as the bottleneck

Using SSD efficiently is mostly about the software it’s packaged with

Sizing is performance, availability AND capacity

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Good Places To Use SSD

July 2012

Cache In host: lowest latencies but doesn’t support failover In SAN: still good performance and CAN support failover

Golden masters Where high read performance is needed for various “storms”

Tier 0 To primarily boost read performance If you don’t use SSD as a cache

Keep write performance trade-offs in mind when

deploying SSD

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The Storage Hypervisor Concept

July 2012

Server hypervisors increase

server resource utilization and

virtualize server resources

Increases resource utilization

and improves flexibility

Storage hypervisors increase

storage utilization and virtualize

storage resources

Increases storage utilization

and improves flexibility

SERVER HYPERVISOR

STORAGE HYPERVISOR

…

Performance, capacity and management implications

Introduction of a Dedicated Write Log Per Host

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Tier 1

Tier n

Tiered Storage

Optimizedasynchronous

de-staging

Log turns random writes into a

sequential stream

Storage devices can perform up to 10x faster

De-staging allows data to be laid out

for optimum read performance

Minimizes fragmentation issues

Requires no add’l hardware to

achieve large performance gains

The more write intensive, the better the speed up

Excellent recovery model for shared

storage environments

Dedicatedwrite log

Optimized WritesAcknowledgements

…

HYPERVISOR

OptimizedReads

HOST

July 2012

Log De-Couples High Latency Storage Operations

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…

HYPERVISOR

HOSTS

Shared Storage

Write Logs

Storage Pool

THIN PROVISIONING

ZERO IMPACT SNAPSHOTS

HI PERFORMANCE CLONES

INSTANT PROVISIONING

July 2012

THESE OPERATIONS

NO LONGER IMPACT

VM PERFORMANCE

The Virsto Storage Hypervisor

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Fundamentally changes the wayhypervisors handle storage I/O

Improves performance of existingstorage by up to 10x

Thin provisions ALL storage withNO performance degradation

Reduces storage capacity consumption by up to 90%

Enables almost instant provision-ing of high performance storage

Reduces storage provisioning timesby up to 99%

Allows VM-centric storage manage-ment on top of block-based storage

Enables safe provisioning and de-provisioning of VMs by anyone

July 2012

Virsto Architecture

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Integrates log architecture

transparently into hypervisor

Speeds ALL writes ALL the time

Read performance speedups

Storage tiering, optimized layouts

Instant provisioning of space-efficient,

high performance storage

Scalable snapshots open up

significant new use cases

Software only solution that requires

NO new hardwareJuly 2012

Hypervisor

Block Storage Capacity (RAID)

Server Host

Primary Storage

Slow, random I/O

Virsto vSpace

VirstoVSA

Sequential I/O

VirstovLogOptimized

de-staging

Multi Node Architecture For Scalability

21July 2012

Block Storage Capacity (RAID)

Multiple Different Arrays

Block Storage Capacity (RAID)

Virsto vSpace

Hypervisor

Host 1

VirstoVSA

Sequential I/O

VirstovLog

Hypervisor

Host 2

VirstoVSA

Sequential I/O

VirstovLog

Hypervisor

Host N

VirstoVSA

Sequential I/O

VirstovLog

…

Integrated Virsto Management

Install and configure through Virsto Console

Provision Virsto ONCE up front

Uses standard native workflows

vSphere, Hyper-V

Transparently uses Virsto storage

Higher performance, faster provisioning, lower capacity consumption, cluster-aware

Works with native tools so minimal training

July 2012 22

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Virsto And SSD

July 2012

Virsto achieves 10x performance speedups WITHOUT SSD

and with what you already own

But Virsto logs and storage tier 0 are great places to use SSD

Easily uses 50% less SSD than caching approaches to get

comparable speedups Logs are only 10GB in size per host We make random writes perform 2x+ faster on most SSD Very small tier 0 to get read performance (for golden masters, certain VMs)

If you want to use SSD, you spend a lot less money to

implement it

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Proof Point: Higher Education

July 2012

Baseline Environment Performance with Virsto

341 IOPSNative VMDKs

3318 IOPSVirsto vDisks

10X more IOPS 24% lower latency

9x CPU cycle reduction

Virsto for vSphereDecember 2011 Results

2926 IOPSVirsto vDisk

165 IOPSNative VMDKs

Proof Point: State Government

18X more IOPS 1758% better throughput94% lower response time

July 2012 25

Proof Point: Desktop Density

July 2012 26

0 200 400 600 800 1000 12000

10000

20000

30000

40000

50000

60000

70000

80000

90000

Virsto vDisks vs Native Differencing VHDs

VSIIndex_avg - Virsto VSIIndex_avg - DVHD

VDI session count

Wei

ghte

d re

spon

se ti

me

With Virsto, each host supportsover 2x times the number of VDI

sessions, assuming the samestorage configuration

401830

2000

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Case Study 1: Manufacturing

July 2012

1200 Windows 7 desktops

Common profile Steady state: 12 IOPS

Read/write ratio: 10/90

Peak load: 30 IOPS

25GB allocated/desktop

Need vMotion support now HA as a possible future

Windows updates 4/year

Already own an EMC VNX 40U enclosure w/4 trays

10K rpm 900GB SAS

100 drives = 90TB

REQUIREMENTS Would like to maximize desktop density to minimize host count Target is 125-150 desktops/host Will be using vSphere 5.1

Spindle minimization could accommodate other projects

Open to using SSD in VNX 400GB EFDs

Asked about phasing to minimize peak load requirements

Asked about VFcache usage

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Comparing Options Without SSD

July 2012

Metric Storage Configw/o Virsto

Storage Config w/ Virsto

Virsto Savings

IOPS Needed: 36,000 IOPSDelivered: 36,010 IOPSDrive count: 277 drives(130 IOPS/drive)

Needed: 36,000 IOPSDelivered: 39,000 IOPSDrive count: 30 drives(1300 IOPS/drive)

247 drives

Capacity 249TB (raw)206.7TB (w/RAID 5)(34TB needed)

27TB (raw)22.4TB (w/RAID 5)Thin provisionedEasily looks like 80TB+

222TB (raw)184.3TB (w/RAID 5)

Provisioning time 83 hrs per compose1 min VM creation100MB/sec network

17 hrs per compose1 min VM creation

66 hrs savings per compose operation4 x 66 = 256 hrs/yr

Incremental Cost (list) $309,750 (177 add’l drives) + 5700 upgrade

$070 drives freed up

$309,750 + savings on other projects

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Virsto Single Image Management

July 2012

vSnap ofgolden master

25GB logical12GB (Windows)

vClones

vClone 0Stabilizes at 2GB*

12GB + 2TB = 2TBActual Space Consumed for Virsto

vClone 1Stabilizes at 2GB*

vClone 2Stabilizes at 2GB*

vClone 999Stabilizes at 2GB*

…

* Based on 8 different LoginVSI runs with 1000-2000 desktops

With EZT VMDKs, native consumption was 25GB x 1000 = 25TB

With thin VMDKs, native consumption would be 25GB + (14GBx1000) = 14TB And would require 5x as many spindles for IOPS Not workable, too many drives/arrays, etc.

With View Composer linked clones, space consumption would be the same as Virsto but you’d need 5x the spindle count

Virsto provides better than EZT VMDK performance with space savings of linked clones

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Virsto Single Image Management

July 2012

vSnap ofgolden master

25GB logical12GB (Windows)

vClones

vClone 0Stabilizes at 2GB*

12GB + 2TB = 2TBActual Space Consumed for Virsto

vClone 1Stabilizes at 2GB*

vClone 2Stabilizes at 2GB*

vClone 999Stabilizes at 2GB*

…

* Based on 8 different LoginVSI runs with 1000-2000 desktops

With EZT VMDKs, native consumption was 25GB x 1000 = 25TB

With thin VMDKs, native consumption would be 25GB + (14GBx1000) = 14TB And would require 5x as many spindles for IOPS Not workable, too many drives/arrays, etc.

With View Composer linked clones, space consumption would be the same as Virsto but you’d need 5x the spindle count

Virsto provides better than EZT VMDK performance with space savings of linked clones

Virsto 92% better than thick VMDKs

Virsto 86% better even than thin VMDKs

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Assumptions

July 2012

EMC VNX SSD performance 12K read IOPS, 3K write IOPS per SSD With 2 SPs, can max out a tray w/o limiting performance

VM creation time depends on busy-ness of vCenter Server Observed 30 sec - 1 min baseline across both Virsto and non-Virsto configs 5 min VM+storage creation time w/o Virsto, 1 min w/Virsto

Customer had chosen thick VMDKs for performance/spindle minimization Provisioning comparisons were EZT VMDKs against Virsto vDisks (which outperform EZTs handily)

Customer RAID 5 overhead was 17% (5 + 1) RAID

Pricing for EMC VNX 5300 200GB EFD $12,950 900GB SAS 10K RPM $1,750

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Case Study 1: Other Observations

July 2012

Virsto vClones do not have the 8 host limit View Composer linked clones in VMFS datastores limited to 8 hosts

Performance + capacity considerations limit applicability of SSD to this environment Using RAID 5, minimum capacity required is 33.9TB

Customer could not have met storage requirement with VNX 5300 Would have to upgrade to VNX 5700 or buy extra cabinets

Thin provisioned Virsto vDisks provide significant capacity cushion Virsto vClones expected to save 66 hours provisioning time for high

performance storage on each re-compose That’s up to 256 hours per year clock time for provisioning (4 Windows updates)

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Case Study 2: Financial Services

July 2012

1000 Windows 7 desktops

Common profile Steady state: 20 IOPS

Read/write ratio: 10/90

Peak load: 60 IOPS

30GB allocated/desktop

Need vMotion support now HA as a possible future

Windows updates 6/year

Would be buying new SAN

storage

REQUIREMENTS Would like to maximize desktop

density to minimize host count Target is 125-150 desktops/host Will be using vSphere 5.1

Spindle minimization could accommodate other projects

Wants to use a SAN and open to using SSDs

Asked about phasing to minimize peak load requirements

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Comparing Options

July 2012

Metric Storage Configw/o Virsto

Storage Config w/ Virsto

Virsto Savings

IOPS Needed: 60,000 IOPS18 x 200GB EFD 54K IOPS62 x 600GB 10K SAS 8060 IOPSDelivered: 62,060 IOPS

60,000 IOPS8 x 200GB EFD 48K IOPS16 x 600GB 10K SAS20,800 IOPSDelivered: 68,800 IOPS

4 x 200GB EFD26 x 600GB 10K SAS

Capacity 37.2TB (raw)30.9TB (w/RAID 5)(30TB needed)

10.4TB (raw)8.6TB (w/RAID 5)Easily looks like 35TB+

26.8TB (raw)22.3TB (w/RAID 5)

Provisioning time 100 hrs/compose1 min VM creation100MB/sec network

17 hrs/compose1 min VM creation

83 hrs savings percompose operation6 x 83 = 498 hrs/yr

Cost (list) $233,100 for EFDs$133,000 for array/SAS$366,100

$103,600 for EFDs$64,000 for array/SAS$167,600

$198,500

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Assumptions

July 2012

IBM DS5000 SSD performance 12K read IOPS, 3K write IOPS per SSD With 2 SPs, can max out a tray w/o limiting performance

VM creation time depends on business of vCenter Server Observed 30 sec - 1 min baseline across both Virsto and non-Virsto configs 6 min VM+storage creation time w/o Virsto, 1 min w/Virsto

Customer had chosen thick VMDKs for performance/spindle minimization Provisioning comparisons were EZT VMDKs against Virsto vDisks (which outperform EZTs handily)

Customer RAID 5 overhead was 17% (5+1) RAID

Pricing for IBM DS5000 200GB EFD $12,950 600GB SAS 10K RPM $1,500, DS5000 frame $40K

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Case Study 2: Other Observations

July 2012

Virsto makes SSD perform twice as fast Makes all writes sequential Need 50% less SSD 10GB log in RAID 1 across 8 hosts = 160GB for logs, leaves 1.4TB available for Fast Cache/tier 0 use

Virsto cuts required raw storage capacity by 78% And can accommodate an additional 300+ desktops w/o more storage hardware purchases

Space savings conservative at only 70% Generally we see 80% - 90% space savings over the long term

Virsto vClones expected to save 83 hours provisioning time for high performance storage on each re-compose That’s 498 hours per year across 6 Windows updates

Demonstrated Customer Value

July 2012 37