HP LeftHand SAN Solutions Support Document - Application Notes - Virtualization SAN - Performance

Overview

The LeftHand Networks Virtualization SAN

is an ideal platform to build robust storage

clusters running the LeftHand Networks

SAN/iQ

software. LeftHand’s SAN/iQ

software platform delivers enterprise-class

SAN functionality on industry standard

hardware. This document provides an

overview of the performance characteristics

your applications can rely on with the

LeftHand Networks Virtualization SAN.

The LeftHand Networks SAN architecture enables aggregating of any number

of expansion nodes to increase the size of the Virtualization SAN. Increasing

the number of SAN Expansion nodes used in a SAN increases the total

number of disks, processors, controllers, network connections and cache used

in the SAN, allowing performance to scale along with capacity.

In addition, SAN/iQ Network RAID dynamically load balances data across the

nodes in the SAN and eliminates bottlenecks as the cluster grows. This

dramatically increases data availability since data is now striped and

mirrored across multiple storage nodes. The disks, processors, controllers,

network connections and caches in the Virtualization SAN were selected to

maximize throughput, IOPS, and scalability.

Contents

Virtualization SAN . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Performance Tuning Tips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Performance Test Environment for Realistic Application Benchmarks . . . . . . 2

Maximum Performance Metrics (Cache Hit Performance) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Real-World Application Benchmarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Virtualization SAN Performance Results. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

Additional References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9