Best Practices and Guidelines for Integrating the Dell EqualLogic FS7600 and FS7610 into an Existing SAN A Dell EqualLogic Best Practices Technical White Paper Dell Storage Engineering February 2013
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Table of contents Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................................................................................... 4 Feedback ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 4 Executive summary ......................................................................................
Acknowledgements This best practice white paper was produced by the following members of the Dell Storage team: Engineering: Mike Kosacek Technical Marketing: Raj Hosamani Editing: Margaret Boeneke Feedback We encourage readers of this publication to provide feedback on the quality and usefulness of this information by sending an email to SISfeedback@Dell.com. SISfeedback@Dell.
1 Introduction The Dell EqualLogic FS7600 and FS7610 FS Series NAS Appliance add scale-out unified NAS capabilities to EqualLogic iSCSI SANs and enable management of iSCSI, CIFS, and NFS access from a single management console. The FS Series NAS Appliance integrates into an EqualLogic iSCSI SAN and can be deployed along with additional new arrays or it can leverage an existing EqualLogic iSCSI SAN deployment.
Term Definition File I/O Describes application or client access to a NFS mount point or CIFS share. Group A PS group consists of one or more PS Series arrays connected to an IP network. A group may contain up to 16 arrays. Local Area Network (LAN) Network usually used for client connectivity. Network Attached Storage (NAS) A network connected, file-level storage device that usually supports protocols such as CIFS and NFS.
2 Dell EqualLogic FS Series NAS Appliance The FS Series NAS Appliance is an active/active appliance cluster that consists of two controllers housed in a single 2U rack space enclosure. Each appliance provides 48 GB of RAM (24 GB in each controller) that is used for the system as well as the mirrored, battery protected cache memory. Up to two FS7600 or FS7610 can work together to provide file storage from one EqualLogic group.
3 Benefits of NAS The Dell EqualLogic PS Series storage is a leader in the iSCSI SAN market. With the addition of the FS Series NAS Appliance, EqualLogic SANs can also support NFS and CIFS based file access. Management of file access has been integrated into the EqualLogic Group Admin user interface transforming the EqualLogic platform into a robust unified storage platform. The EqualLogic FS Series NAS Appliance is built on the foundation of the Dell FluidFS.
4 Lab test objectives There are a few considerations that need to be made to ensure that the FS7600 and FS7610 can be properly integrated into an existing SAN. While the physical connections are very similar to any other host attached to the EqualLogic SAN, the SAN administrator also needs to consider the requirements of the FS Series appliance such as capacity and pool configuration as well as performance before and after integrating into an existing SAN.
5 Test topology and architecture To study the performance impact of integrating an FS7600 or FS7610 into an existing environment, Vdbench was used to generate a workload of both block and file I/O. Vdbench is an open-source I/O workload generation tool that is available for download on SourceForge.net. Vdbench can be controlled by a script, provides data verification, and allows flexible workload definitions for both block and file I/O.
was used for the client network. Some initial tests were run with both standard and jumbo frames but for the test cases, no significant difference was found so the standard MTU was used for all subsequent test scenarios. The standard MTU size of 1500 is also the most commonly used for typical client networks. The EqualLogic iSCSI SAN consisted of eight PS Series arrays configured for RAID 10. Initially a single pool with all eight array members was created.
6 Test methodology For the block I/O testing, Vdbench was configured to read and write from RAW disks (disks without a file system). A working file size of 99 GB was used for the block clients to use close to the full capacity of the attached volume and also to minimize the effect of client-side caching in the VM. For the file I/O tests, initially tests were run against both CIFS and NFS mount points.
Figure 2 Logical diagram for separate or shared pool The tests started with only block clients and scaled up from 2 to 16 clients. Then the tests were repeated with CIFS and NFS clients to verify that each set of clients would scale as expected. Next, the file clients were configured for NFS access and tests were run with both block and file I/O at the same time. Then block heavy scenarios were run that consisted of 67% block hosts and 33% NFS file clients.
7 Test results and analysis Note: The results provided in this paper are intended for the purpose of comparing the specific configurations used in our lab environment. The results do not portray the maximum capabilities of any system, software, or storage. 7.1 Small block results with shared versus separate pool design For the combined block and file tests, the tests were run at various block sizes from 4K to 256K.
When the same tests were run with the FS7600 configured in a separate pool (as shown in Figure 4), the block clients were able to scale slightly higher than with the shared pool, even though the separate pool only has half the number of arrays than were available with the shared pool design. This indicates that sharing the pool with the FS Series NAS Appliance can affect the performance of existing block hosts.
clients (in the block heavy workload mix). Even when the number of file clients doubled in the file heavy mix, the portion of file I/O did not increase, indicating that the file VM clients were limited and unable to provide additional throughput with this workload.
Figure 6 Throughput (MB/sec) with 128K I/O request in separate pool For workloads consisting of mostly large files (128KB) and with random access patterns, configuring separate pools for block and file workloads delivers better aggregate performance and scalability. If more of the workload results from file clients, or if file clients are used exclusively, then a single shared pool may provide better performance.
8 Planning and design considerations 8.1 Network ports Each FS7600 controller contains a total of eight 1GbE ports that must be connected for optimal performance. A total of 16 network ports are required for each controller pair. Each FS7610 controller contains a total of four 10GbE ports or a total of eight ports for each controller pair. As a best practice for EqualLogic SANs, Dell recommends that the LAN and SAN should be physically separated.
Table 2 FS model Network port count requirement for FS Series appliances # LAN ports per controller # SAN ports per controller Per controller Per appliance Per controller Per appliance Total ports used FS7600 4 x 1Gb 8 x 1Gb 4 x 1Gb 8 x 1Gb 16 x 1Gb RJ-45 FS7610 2 x 10Gb 4 x 10Gb 2 x 10Gb 4 x 10Gb 8 x 10Gb SFP+ The FS Series controllers do not support VLAN tagging and VLANs are not required on either the LAN or SAN switch.
The internal network is used for communication between NAS controllers. FS Series controllers within the same appliance will communicate over their internal PCIe connection, while appliances extend cluster communications to the SAN switches. Each FS Series cluster requires its own unique block of IP addresses for this purpose.
Table 3 Pool configuration best practice summary Unified workload type Application Profile Small block I/O: OLTP database (SQL, Oracle), e-mail (Exchange) Block Heavy File Heavy Separate Shared Separate Shared Small file I/O: User home directories, general file share Large block I/O: Media streaming, Medical Imaging and records, CAD/CAM.
The size of the NAS Reserve space that is allocated determines the number of volumes that are created for each controller pair. A minimum of two volumes will be created for each NAS appliance. The maximum volume size supported by the EqualLogic arrays is 15 TB; therefore if the space allocated to the NAS Reserve is greater than 30 TB, an additional pair of volumes will be created. This process continues until the capacity requirement is satisfied.
Figure 8 23 SAN HQ data BP1038| Best Practices and Guidelines for Integrating the Dell EqualLogic FS7600 and FS7610 into an Existing SAN
9 Summary The Dell EqualLogic FS7600 and FS7610 can be deployed as part of a new installation or into an existing EqualLogic iSCSI SAN to provide a unified block and file storage solution. When deploying into an existing SAN, administrators should monitor the existing SAN to understand the availability of not only data storage capacity, but also of I/O capacity.
A Appendix – Vdbench script configuration A.1 Vdbench script used for block client: Note: The script was customized for each client to access a unique volume. ******************************************************************* * * 100% random, 70% read block I/O test.
rd=rd4,fwd=fwd4,elapsed=900,interval=30,fwdrate=max,format=no,pause=30,openflags =fsync rd=rd5,fwd=fwd5,elapsed=900,interval=30,fwdrate=max,format=no,pause=30,openflags =fsync rd=rd6,fwd=fwd6,elapsed=900,interval=30,fwdrate=max,format=no,pause=30,openflags =fsync rd=rd7,fwd=fwd7,elapsed=900,interval=30,fwdrate=max,format=no,pause=30,openflags =fsync ********************************************************************** B Appendix – Topology and configuration detail For clients, multiple VMware ESXi 5.
Table 6 Network switch configuration Network switch configuration Network Speed Switch Model Interconnect type Interconnect 1Gb Force 10 S60 Stack 10Gb Force 10 S4810 LAG Figure 9 24Gb Stack module 40Gb module Test topology diagrams The EqualLogic iSCSI SAN consisted of eight PS6100XV or PS6110XV arrays. Each array member was configured for RAID 10.
Table 7 iSCSI storage configuration iSCSI Storage Configuration SAN Speed Array model # of Arrays # Drives per array Drive Type Array Firmware 1Gb PS6100XV 8 24 600GB 15K RPM 6.01 10Gb PS6110XV 8 24 600GB 15K RPM 6.01 For file I/O (CIFS and NFS), we created two file system mount points (one each for CIFS and NFS access) on the FS7600/FS7610 which was then mounted from each of the VM clients.
Additional resources Support.dell.com is focused on meeting your needs with proven services and support. DellTechCenter.com is an IT Community where you can connect with Dell Customers and Dell employees for the purpose of sharing knowledge, best practices, and information about Dell products and your installations. Referenced or recommended Dell publications: • Dell EqualLogic PS Series Network Performance Guidelines: http://www.equallogic.com/resourcecenter/assetview.
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