How a Cloud Computing Service Provider Used Utility Storage to Maximize Virtual Server and Desktop ROI Gary Collins – CTO & Co-founder
Aug 20, 2015
How a Cloud Computing Service Provider Used Utility Storage to Maximize Virtual Server and Desktop ROI Gary Collins – CTO & Co-founder
About Intercept
Company formed in 2002 Privately owned 45+ Employees £10m Annual Revenue First to market with onlinedesktop™ 2000 hosted users across 87 different companies
What We Do
On-premise Services
Optimising on-premise deployments using the latest in virtualisation technologies
OnlineServices
Enterprise IT with no capital outlay for a simple low cost
monthly subscription
ManagedServices
Proactive consultancy and specialist support to help
achieve your business goals
ServersDesktopsApplicatio
nsStorage
onlinecrm™onlinemail™
onlinecomms™onlinedesktop™
onlineworkspace™
Multi Vendor SupportRemote Monitoring
Pro-active DaysSelective Sourcing
The Journey to Utility Storage (2002 to 2005)
Service Launched mid 2002 2 Data Centres (London and Milton Keynes) Physical Servers Storage on DAS and Fibre Channel SAN Software based replication
Storage Architecture v1 (2002 to 2006)
Host Host Host
Drive Loop A Drive Loop BDrive Loop
A
Drive Loop B
LondonData Centre
Milton Keynes Data Centre
Software replication from primary to secondary Host Host Host
The Journey to Utility Storage (2006 to 2009)
January 2006 – Experienced a Situation…! Issue with an array reporting incorrect size Software solution replicated the changes
Breach of SLA, total customer rebates of £50,000+
Re-architected the storage infrastructure Maximum uptime and resilience Improved data protection levels Never lose any data
Storage Architecture v2 (2006 to 2009)
Host Host Host
IPStor01 IPStor02
Spare FC connectionsResumes the WWN name of IPStor 1 in
failover scenario
Spare FC connectionsResumes the WWN name of IPStor 2 in
failover scenario
Drive Loop A Drive Loop B
Drive Loop A Drive Loop B
Drive Loop
A
Drive Loop B
IPStor03
LondonData Centre
Milton Keynes Data Centre
Synchronous Mirroring
Writes from hosts in London are written to both London SAN’s at the same time (synchronously)
protecting against SAN/RAID or DISK failure.
Data from London is then sent asynchronously to a 3rd SAN in Milton Keynes
Timemarks are held at both London and Milton Keynes
The Journey to Utility Storage (2006 to 2009)
Data protection levels were excellent Management was extremely easy Growing Virtual Server Infrastructure Growing Storage Requirements VM’s have different behaviours (70% write / 30% read) Challenges balancing capacity against performance
Unpredictable workloads due to customer multi-tenancy Regularly reconfiguring arrays to improve performance Heavy over allocation of capacity
The Journey to Utility Storage (2009 to Current)
Scoped out requirements: Performance (IOPS) Capacity (TeraBytes) TCO / Management Costs / Budgets / ROI
Started conversations with existing Intercept suppliers (EqualLogic, HDS, NetApp, EMC)
3PAR recommended by existing Intercept customers
The Journey to Utility Storage (2009 to Current)
Why did we choose 3PAR? Guaranteed Performance Levels (IOPS & Latency) Thin Provisioning Thin Replication Thin Reclamation Wide Striping Dynamic Optimisation Adaptive Optimisation References from Carphone Warehouse and large Scottish Bank
Storage Architecture v3 (2009 to Current)
Host Host Host
LondonData Centre
Milton Keynes Data Centre
Continuous Data Replication + Periodic Snapshots
Sized for 20,000 IOPS with less than 10ms Latency
Benchmarked at 32,000 IOPS with less than 5ms Latency
Logical Solution Overview
Standby Nodes Hot DR Servers
Customer Site
MPLS
Snap shots
SAN 1
Regular Snapshots held in both data centres
Mirror to second data centre
Snap shots
Mirror at second data centre
Regular Snapshots held in both data
centres
Roaming / Home Users
Virtual Infrastructure (Application servers)
Replicated to DR
Application Resilient Clusters
SAN 2
Primary Data CentreBricklane
Virtual Infrastructure Replica
Secondary Data CentreMilton Keynes
Internet
What's Next?
"Over time, a small business will not have economies of scale to make it worth staying in the IT business. Within five years, a huge percentage of small businesses will get most of their computing resources from external cloud providers.” Source: Thomas Bittman, Gartner
Continual Storage Expansion (Capacity & Performance) Evaluation of Enterprise SSD’s Extra Nodes when we hit current limits
In Summary
Phenomenal Performance Levels Increased virtual machine density 67% Reduction in storage footprint
Thin Provisioning and Thin Reclamation 50% Reduction in storage-related power consumption Happy Customers Happy Staff Happy CTO
Any Questions?
Thank you for your time
Visit Intercept on Stand 459
www.intercept-it.com
Visit 3PAR on Stand 847
www.3par.com