W H I T E P A P E R A N e w G e n e r a t i o n o f T i e r 1 E n t e r p r i s e S t o r a g e

Transcription

1 Global Headquarters: 5 Speen Street Framingham, MA USA P F W H I T E P A P E R A N e w G e n e r a t i o n o f T i e r 1 E n t e r p r i s e S t o r a g e Sponsored by: IBM Benjamin Woo December 2011 Amita Potnis I D C O P I N I O N The nature of business has changed dramatically in the past decade. Over time, technological advancements place unprecedented importance on the speeds of conducting business transactions while having very low tolerance for latency. Today's huge explosion in data requires block storage solutions to be scalable, simple to deploy and manage, and highly available with minimal latency. Tier 1 applications are critical to an organization's ability to generate revenue. These applications demand the highest performance and reliability. The workloads, I/O, and bandwidth requirements vary greatly. These same applications also grow and change quickly; thus, they command a complementary management platform to enable these changes. At the same time, organizations are very cost sensitive to the capital intensiveness of these storage systems. The IBM XIV Storage System is designed to address these challenges specifically for tier 1 applications. Augmenting a differentiated architecture and design with a wellstoried history of software and services, the IBM XIV third-generation storage system platform can provide organizations with the ease of use and performance needed for tier 1 applications. In this white paper, IDC analyzes the third generation of the IBM XIV Storage System and its use cases as tier 1 primary storage for enterprises. S I T U A T I O N O V E R V I E W Recently, much of the focus on storage systems has been on their ability to deal with the data explosion caused by the increase in structured and unstructured data, particularly as it pertains to companies that need to comply with regulatory or legislative requirements. Comparable focus has been placed on the ability of storage to store, maintain, and preserve data for archival purposes or for future cost avoidance or revenue opportunities. While important, the focus on long-term data preservation assumes that an enterprise is a sustainable entity. However, the sustainability of the enterprise is driven by its ability to transact its daily business. The data needed for an enterprise's daily production is generally placed on what is considered to be primary, or what is often considered tier 1, storage.

2 For the purposes of this white paper, a tier 1 application is an application that is mission critical to the revenue generation of an organization. These applications may include OLTP databases, applications, financial applications, or vertical-specific applications. In these systems, high performance and reliability are two key factors to success. Other features should include: Ease of use Cost-efficiency High availability In addition to these attributes, tier 1 storage now has to contend with virtual server and desktop environments that run mixed workloads and applications. While the past decade brought about physical server sprawl, this decade is all about virtual server sprawl. IDC research shows that in the past several years, since the hypervisor has become a core component of datacenter design, the number of virtual servers that have been created now exceeds the number of physical servers being shipped. Whereas prior to the introduction of hypervisor technologies such as VMware's vsphere 4, many virtualized servers were running second tier (or lower) application workloads, now many critical applications are being virtualized, including OLTP and collaborative workloads. With that, the need to address the increasing use of virtualized servers, along with the budget constraints brought on by volatile macroeconomic indicators (that lead to shrinking budgets and smaller IT staff), is driving IT organizations to seek out a storage system that can handle the technical requirements listed in the following section. T h e T e c h n i c a l R e q u i r e m e n t s o f T i e r 1 S t o r a g e The list of technical requirements demanded of top tier storage systems includes: Support for mixed workloads running on virtual server environments Highest performance for various I/O profiles (high IOPS and high bandwidth) Simplicity in capacity management, provisioning, configuration, and tuning Scalability to meet growing demands over time Ability to evolve into a service-centric, private cloud infrastructure Inclusion of data-efficient technologies to maximize utilization (and, therefore, return on investment) 2 # IDC

3 T h e V i r t u a l P r o b l e m Virtualization is the key to managing a pool of resources simultaneously across applications and hardware. Virtualization can cause I/O bottlenecks, as it interlaces multiple I/O streams together onto a single bus. Each I/O stream may demand differing quality of service (QoS). Therefore, the ability to isolate application performance and group applications by performance class becomes a critical factor in storage system selection. H i g h e s t P e r f o r m a n c e f o r V a r i o u s I / O P r o f i l e s ( H i g h I O P S a n d H i g h B a n d w i d t h ) The ability to support multiple, high-performing applications with differing I/O profiles (some applications may require high IOPS, such as OLTP databases or Microsoft Exchange, while other applications may require high bandwidth, such as the delivery of rich media) is also a key factor in storage system selection. End users should look to find solutions that can deliver both types of I/O profiles at high performance simultaneously. S i m p l i c i t y i n C a p a c i t y M a n a g e m e n t, P r o v i s i o n i n g, C o n f i g u r a t i o n, a n d T u n i n g Given the high number of applications, and the virtual machine sprawl highlighted earlier, self-tuning storage systems allow IT staff to concentrate on matters that affect user experiences and meeting service levels rather than spending time on data placement. Finding storage solutions that can automatically place data across disk resources to deliver balanced performance and avoid "hot spots" that can often occur with demanding applications returns valuable staff resources to the IT organization. If a storage system can be self-tuning, and relatively self-managing, the accompanying management tool for the storage system should be equally simple because much of the work is already handled by the underlying system. At the same time, simplifying management should also lead to simplification of provisioning and configuration. Simplicity goes beyond ease of use. It is equally necessary for management software to provide the necessary instrumentation, monitoring, and reporting that enable administrators to properly and quickly diagnose and remedy resource allocation. This is critical in differentiating one storage system's total cost of ownership from that of another storage system IDC #

4 S c a l a b i l i t y t o M e e t G r o w i n g D e m a n d s o v e r T i m e In more recent years, the focus has shifted from scale-up storage (which can be viewed in the context of acquiring bigger and more powerful storage controllers) toward scale-out storage (which can be viewed as the addition of equally powerful storage controllers). Scale-out storage has the added benefit of adhering to the pay-as-you-grow model that many organizations prefer, as they no longer have to make very large capital investments and attempt to recoup the return over time. They can now make smaller investments when they need to. A b i l i t y t o E v o l v e i n t o a S e r v i c e - C e n t r i c, P r i v a t e C l o u d I n f r a s t r u c t u r e With the onslaught of cloud-based business services, including those that offer human resource information systems (HRIS), managed , as well as cloud-based CRM, IT organizations are under pressure to emulate the acquisition models offered by service providers. Traditional chargeback models that are centered around IT metrics such as dollar per gigabyte or dollar per CPU are no longer acceptable. Instead, chargeback models should be articulated in business metrics, such as cost per employee or percentage of revenue. As a result, IT organizations are evolving themselves to a service provider model, much like their cloud-based counterparts, and creating private clouds to serve their clients (namely, the business units). Therefore, the combination of cost, power, capacity, and management efficiency becomes a prime factor in the selection of a storage system that needs to be able to be flexible, dynamic, and scalable enough to meet the ever-changing needs of a service provider. I n c l u s i o n o f D a t a - E f f i c i e n t T e c h n o l o g i e s t o M a x i m i z e U t i l i z a t i o n ( a n d, T h e r e f o r e, R e t u r n o n I n v e s t m e n t ) Data-efficient technologies are no longer considered a desired feature; rather, they are considered a necessary feature. Utilization rates have been too low for too long, and the need to drive up the utility from all IT investments is requiring IT organizations to look for datacenter components that can provide thin provisioning as well as efficient approaches to data protection. Efficient snapshots and efficient data mirroring become other features that are now requisite in considering storage systems. 4 # IDC

5 I B M X I V G E N 3 IBM has been shipping XIV since Currently in its third generation, IBM XIV is being utilized by clients for traditional mission-critical tier 1 workloads such as databases, ERP, , and virtualized server environments. Vertical industries including finance, government, and healthcare are among the satisfied users of XIV technology. The IBM XIV has been designed specifically to meet each of the six technical requirements listed earlier. Given the high-performance design that was created especially for the XIV platform with a view toward eliminating complexity and fully utilizing system resources, IBM XIV has the ability to support multiple workloads, running on either physical or virtual servers. XIV delivers high IOPS and, according to IBM, can support up to 10GBps sequential throughput. The use of InfiniBand as its internal interconnect minimizes latency between XIV modules to optimize performance. The XIV architecture enables system performance to increase along with capacity expansion. This is made possible by the grid design, which scales out through the addition of disk modules that include CPUs as well as disk drives. With Gen3, IBM is also introducing "transparent" XIV solid state drive (SSD) caching (available in the first half of 2012) that will leverage SSDs as a caching layer between each XIV module's RAM and the underlying SAS connected disk drives. SSD cache can be included without the need for IT to manage it as a separate disk tier. The IBM XIV automatically distributes data evenly across the disk drives within the XIV system, relieving IT staff from manual intervention and tuning and automatically eliminating hotspots. Data is automatically redistributed in the event of component additions or replacements. Additionally, XIV's architecture leverages the parallelized data distribution to enable rapid disk drive rebuilds. This feature, combined with XIV's active-active N+1 redundancy of system components, and the standard suite of snapshot and mirroring functions provide the high reliability and availability required in a tier 1 system. Right from the initial design concept, XIV was designed to be exceptionally easy to set up and use. It has no RAID groups or differing disk types to define and manage, which reduces much of the inherent complexity of traditional storage configuration and management. IBM claims that it requires minimal training, and the "breakthrough GUI," as IBM describes it, provides all the necessary management capabilities with a minimalist visualization of the XIV system (see Figure 1). The XIV can also be monitored on the go using a free ipad application called IBM XIV Mobile Dashboard IDC #

6 F I G U R E 1 X I V G U I Source: IBM, 2011 The same management tool provides the ability to manage up to 64 XIV systems at a time and, critically, in context with each other (see Figure 2). This is important for scalability. F I G U R E 2 C o n t e x t u a l M a n a g e m e n t Source: IBM, # IDC

7 Given this capability, users can simply add additional XIV systems into the context when needed, supporting the pay-as-you-grow model. Additional XIV systems can also be added to increase capacity and/or performance. This flexibility and dynamism enables users to evolve their storage infrastructure to cater to the demands of a service-centric, private cloud architecture over time. XIV was designed in an era where thin provisioning and efficient snapshot technologies have become a basic requirement in all storage systems. Each XIV system comes with both technologies embedded and is further enhanced by the availability of data-efficient replication technologies that enable data protection in support of disaster recovery and business continuity. C A S E S T U D I E S N o r t h A m e r i c a n F i n a n c i a l S e r v i c e s F i r m This leading financial services customer has depended on IBM XIV since May Today, this customer has around 10PB under management. Prior to its deployment of IBM XIV, this customer had 90% of its capacity on systems from other leading storage vendors. For this customer, the IBM XIV data dispersion model was key. Before the customer installed IBM XIV, RAID rebuilds were proving to be untenable. Enabling tier 1 applications using low-cost disk drives provided a very high return on investment. From the initial deployment, this customer has implemented IBM XIV thin provisioning, which is fully integrated into the IBM XIV. Another driver for implementing IBM XIV is the support IBM provided. In this customer's view, IBM is the gold standard for support. Today, all the core applications trading, accounting and finance, and online archiving of financial transactions and phone conversations are running on IBM XIV. Performance is also a major driver for the success of IBM XIV at this customer. For example, one of its core applications needs a sustained response time of 10 milliseconds. Despite the lower number of SATA hard disk drives, compared with a higher number of more costly Fibre Channel drives offered by another storage vendor, the customer was able to gain a 2.5x performance improvement in response time. Not even SSDs were able to meet the performance requirement due to the sequential nature of the batch processing of some of the applications. To date, the customer has observed and recorded savings in terms of millions of dollars through the use of IBM XIV. N o r t h A m e r i c a n W h o l e s a l e D i s t r i b u t o r In 2001, this distributor launched an initiative to migrate from a proprietary mainframe solution to SAP. As a wholesale distributor, the company has higher transaction rates than other companies of its size. Currently, the company has over 10TB in an SAP ECC (R/3) database and demands close to 16 million SAP interactions and background tasks a day IDC #

8 Management required the application response time average to be under 750 milliseconds to be adequately responsive to its customers. In 2008, as the economy turned down, the company examined all the technology updates on the horizon to determine where its IT budget could be reduced. Its analysis showed that it had an opportunity to refresh its entire storage infrastructure over the following two years. The distributor analyzed its I/O load and response time requirements by application and service-level objectives. Once the metrics were in place, it evaluated several first-tier and second-tier storage providers for performance, availability, and cost. Once the company fully understood its storage subsystem requirements and recognized its anticipated disk space consumption and its constrained budget, it found the capital investment, large storage capacity, and native features of IBM XIV attractive. Currently, the distributor deploys SAP ECC, SCM, BI, CRM, Enterprise Portal, and PI (with Oracle databases); Microsoft SQL Server, Exchange, and SharePoint; VMware guests and hosts for various enterprise applications; and IBM TSM disk pools and database snapshots on IBM XIV. The company reports that the IBM XIV continues to meet or exceed expected performance metrics while reducing IT expenses significantly. N o r t h A m e r i c a n C o n s u m e r D e v i c e M a n u f a c t u r e r This consumer device manufacturer had a heterogeneous storage environment consisting of multiple storage vendors. Senior management was questioning why licensing costs were increasing on a quarterly basis. With the IBM XIV, reports could be generated in seconds in terms of usage costs, and with the "all-in" licensing model, the manufacturer was able to eliminate the varying and increasing operational costs. For this company, performance was less of a concern than the seemingly out-ofcontrol costs. IBM worked with the customer to identify the workloads before deploying the IBM XIV. Today, the customer has deployed IBM XIV for 85% of its tier 1 applications. It has deployed 32 IBM XIVs. The major applications running on IBM XIV are Microsoft Exchange and virtual server environments based on VMware, Oracle, and Microsoft SQL. F U T U R E O U T L O O K The IBM XIV represents a new generation of scale-out block storage solutions, where scalability, simplicity of design and management, and high performance are the key expectations. The approach taken by XIV is unique. IDC believes that over time, other vendors will extend their scale-out block capabilities to match IBM's. This provides IBM with a great opportunity to introduce XIV into tier 1 applications while its competitors may have looked away. 8 # IDC

9 By proving itself through these applications, IBM not only stands to demonstrate technical design superiority against other solutions vying to be the storage of choice for top tier applications but also positions itself to be a top contender for other opportunities (including secondary and archival storage) over time. However, XIV is not without its challenges. It has a differentiated design that not only yields unique value but also can draw skeptics. Additionally, while XIV has been available from IBM for more than three years, with thousands of systems shipped, it does not yet have the history and market presence of some competitive solutions. IBM can better position the XIV system as a tier 1 product by emphasizing its enterprise capabilities and the Fortune 500 enterprise deployments for mission-critical applications. C O N C L U S I O N Since IBM introduced the XIV platform, it has been successful in becoming the storage of choice among leading enterprises across the globe. Many of these enterprises have chosen XIV to run their mission-critical applications based on the considerations of performance, simplicity, scalability, and reliability. The XIV system is suitable for running tier 1 enterprise applications. It meets the needs of today's mission-critical applications needs that have grown to include the challenges of virtualized servers, mixed workloads, and service-oriented applications in addition to the more basic high-performance and high-availability requirements. It also excels in the areas of management simplicity, ease of use, and cost-efficiency compared with alternative enterprise storage options. C o p y r i g h t N o t i c e External Publication of IDC Information and Data Any IDC information that is to be used in advertising, press releases, or promotional materials requires prior written approval from the appropriate IDC Vice President or Country Manager. A draft of the proposed document should accompany any such request. IDC reserves the right to deny approval of external usage for any reason. Copyright 2011 IDC. Reproduction without written permission is completely forbidden. This document was developed with International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) funding. Although the document may utilize publicly available material from various sources, including IBM, it does not necessarily reflect the positions of such sources on the issues addressed in this document IDC #