Deploying Silver Peak VXOA with EMC Isilon SyncIQ. February

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1 Deploying Silver Peak VXOA with EMC Isilon SyncIQ February

2 Table of Contents Table of Contents Overview... 3 Solution Components... 3 EMC Isilon...3 Isilon SyncIQ... 3 Silver Peak Appliances...3 Deployment Considerations... 4 Performance...4 Recommended Versions...5 Deployment Architectures...5 EMC Isilon SyncIQ Configuration... 6 SyncIQ Performance Rules...6 Files Per Second Performance Rule... 6 Network Usage Performance Rule... 6 Silver Peak VXOA Configuration... 7 Monitoring Performance... 8 Silver Peak Performance Monitoring...8 Isilon Performance Monitoring...9 Conclusion Links... 10

3 Overview Silver Peak develops data center class network appliances that maximize WAN performance while minimizing WAN costs. Offered in both physical and virtual (software) options, Silver Peak s WAN optimization solutions scale from Mbps to Gbps of WAN capacity. By optimizing primarily at the network layer, Silver Peak can optimize all IP traffic, regardless of transport protocol. These features provide a great deal of flexibility for EMC Isilon deployments and allow replication and remote file access to be stretched around the world over any WAN connection. Solution Components EMC Isilon EMC Isilon scale-out NAS is a high performance, highly scalable solution that helps enterprises solve the most pressing storage challenges. EMC Isilon NAS utilizes a single file system and supports the needs of I/O intensive applications while acting as primary, secondary or archive storage. The OneFS operating system powers all EMC Isilon nodes and creates a unified pool of storage with a proven utilization rate of 80 percent. 3 Isilon SyncIQ SyncIQ is a policy-based replication solution that enables files to be replicated across the LAN and WAN. The SyncIQ architecture provides fast replication with the ability to move millions of files and terabytes of data. Replication policies can be set at the cluster, directory or file level, providing administrators with the utmost flexibility. SyncIQ also allows replication jobs to be distributed across a NAS cluster, eliminating the bottleneck that is present with single node NAS systems. Silver Peak Appliances While EMC Isilon NAS provides fast local file access and replication over short distances, as the distance increases performance is impacted by latency and WAN bandwidth quality. Silver Peak VXOA can help solve the problems inherent in replicating across long distances or lower quality bandwidth. Silver Peak appliances are application and protocol independent and can optimize Isilon SyncIQ replication as well as remote CIFS and NFS access. Silver Peak s core technologies benefit EMC Isilon in the following ways: Network Memory eliminates duplicate data patterns from the WAN, reducing the Isilon replication and file traffic by over 80%. EMC Isilon customers shorten replication times and can lower WAN costs with smaller, less expensive WAN connections. Network Integrity eliminates packet loss that causes data to be resent, reducing the throughput of storage applications. EMC Isilon customers can then use lower cost, shared WAN

4 infrastructure that typically have higher rates of packet loss, such as Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) networks and IP Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), for replicating data between sites. Advanced quality-of-service (QoS) techniques further guarantee that NAS traffic will receive the necessary bandwidth when the WAN is shared with other applications. Network Acceleration mitigates the impact of latency, which when combined with packet loss, can undermine replication and file access performance. EMC Isilon customers can then safely stretch the distance between data centers while maintaining RPOs and Recovery Time Objective (RTOs). Network Visibility and Monitoring is made dramatically simpler with the Silver Peak Global Management System (GMS) and Silver Peak dashboards, which collect and display network conditions and associated Isilon traffic across the WAN. EMC Isilon customers can then quickly diagnose and resolve any Isilon or application-layer throughput issues as a result of WAN conditions. Security of the data traveling across the WAN and within the Silver Peak appliance is also ensured by using the latest in data security techniques. Silver Peak secures data replicated across the WAN with IPSec and encrypts all data stored on Silver Peak devices with AES encryption. 4 Deployment Considerations Performance Silver Peak and EMC Isilon have performed extensive testing to guarantee interoperability and performance. During the testing, varying degrees of latency and loss were used to determine the impact on SyncIQ performance, both with and without Silver Peak optimizing the WAN. During the testing, Silver Peak VXOA was able to mitigate the impact of latency on throughput, repair out-of-order and lost packets, and reduce the amount of bandwidth required for replication. As the distance between the Isilon clusters increases, the performance of SyncIQ will decrease due to the affects of latency on TCP. On a 155Mbps WAN with a simulated cross-country connection (80ms of latency) and 0.1% of loss, typical for MPLS networks, SyncIQ throughput is reduced by 95%. With slightly more packet loss (1.0%), performance is reduced by 99%. With Silver Peak VXOA performance can be maintained at 100% even with 1.0% of packet loss over longer distance WAN connections When Silver Peak Network Memory is into account, SyncIQ throughput increases by over 800%, transmitting 975Mbps over a 155Mbps WAN regardless of the quality or distance of the link.

5 LAN-Side Throughput (Mbps) Incremental SyncIQ Synchronization 155 Mbps WAN 0% loss 0.1% loss 1.0% loss Latency (ms) Unoptimized Optimized Figure 1: SyncIQ performance with Silver Peak VXOA Throughput (Mbps) Incremental SyncIQ Synchronization Bandwidth Reduction, 155 Mbps WAN 0% loss 0.1% loss 1.0% loss LAN WAN Ratio Latency (ms) Figure 2: Silver Peak bandwidth reduction with SyncIQ Recommended Versions Silver Peak VXOA and greater is recommended for deployment with EMC Isilon. EMC Isilon OneFS and greater is recommended for use with Silver Peak VXOA. Deployment Architectures Silver Peak VXOA can be deployed in the network in two different methods, Bridge mode or Router mode. In Bridge mode, Silver Peak appliances are deployed as a bump in the wire between the LAN infrastructure and the WAN router. In Router mode, Silver Peak appliances are deployed in one-

6 armed, or lollipop, fashionwithasingleconnectiontothewanrouter.whenrouter asingleconnectiontothewanrouter.whenroutermodeisused,a to the When is used, a redirectionmethodlikepolicybasedroutingorwebcachecommunicationsprotocol or Communications Protocol is used to direct traffic to the appliance. ance.forredundancy,policybasedroutingdeploymentsusethevirtual redundancy, deployments use the Router RedundancyProtocoltofailoverbetween over appliances. ReviewtheSilverPeakWANOptimizationAppliancesNetworkDeploymentGuideformore Appliances Network moreinformation on deployment methods. EMC Isilon silonsynciqconfiguration SyncIQpoliciesshouldbeconfigured should configured according to the Isilon OneFS User Guide. SyncIQ Performance Rules SyncIQ performance rulesenabletheadministratortocontroltheamountofnetwork enable administrator to amount of network bandwidth used and/or the number of files persecondthatwillbereplicated.havingnetworkbandwidth replicated. network bandwidthor files per second set to a low owvaluewillimpact will impact replication performance. FilesPerSecondPerformanceRule Performance Thefilespersecondperformancerule second performance ruleisusedtocontroltheamountofcpuand used the of and hard driveusage allowed for SyncIQ operations. Ifthe thefilespersecondruleissettoalowvalue second rule is set to low value, CPUand anddriveoperationsdrive will be conserved but SyncIQ Qreplication performance will be reduced. 6 Figure 3: SyncIQ files per second Performance Rule NetworkUsagePerformanceRule ThenetworkusagerulecontrolstheamountofbandwidththatSyncIQwillconsumefor rule the amount of that will consume for replication. If thenetworkusageruleisused,theeffectsofsilverpeaknetworkmemorymustbetaken rule used, effectsofsilverpeaknetworkmemorymustbetakenintoaccount. must takenintoaccount. account. Silver rpeaknetworkmemorycanreducethesynciqtrafficbyover80%,greatlyreducing reduce the traffic over reducingtheamountof of bandwidth required. For most Silver Peak and EMC Isilon deployments, thenetworkusage Performance Rule will not be needed. It isrecommendedthatthisruleonl this rule only ybeusedwhenreplication bandwidth needstobelimitedduringcertainhours during hoursoftheday. of

7 Figure 4: :SyncIQnetworkusagePerformance network Rule SilverPeakVXOAConfiguration Thefollowingsettingsneedtobeconfigured need to configuredonthesilverp Peak appliance: WAN Bandwidth = environment dependent FEC = 1:5, 1:20 or auto (see notebelow) Network Memory = Balanced Window Scale Factor = 8 Congestion Control = optimized 7 ThefollowingCLIcommandsareusedtosetcongestioncontrolandwindowscale are set congestion control window scalefactor per tunnel: interface tunnel <tunnel name> acceleration tcp congest-control optimized interface tunnel <tunnel name> acceleration tcp window-scale <tcp-ws-factor> ForwardErrorCorrection(FEC)issetpertunnelandshouldbebasedontheamount issetpertunnelandshouldbebasedontheamountoflossset tunnel should based on the amountoflossof presentonthewan.forwanconnections the connectionswitha consistent lowtomoderate amountoflossof loss, a FECvalueof1:20shouldbeused. used.whenthereis a consistent high loss on thewan, a value of 1:5 should be used. IftheWANhas hasintermittent or zero loss, thedefaultsetting ofautoshould be used.

8 Figure 5: :ConfiguringSilverPeaktunneloptions options 8 Figure 6: Configuring SilverPeakNetwork Memory MonitoringPerformance SyncIQ and WAN performance can be measured in several places. The Silver erpeakappliance appliancewill report currentandhistoriclanandwanbandwidth,reductionratio,latencyandpacketloss. reduction ratio, loss. Silver Peak Performance ncemonitoring Figure 7: Silver Peak Bandwidth Performance Graph

9 Figure 8: :SilverPeakLatencyandLossMonitoring and Loss IsilonPerformanceMonitoring TheIsilonGUIprovidesreportingonnetworkperformance,clusterfilesystemthroughput reporting network performance, cluster file system throughput and replication job performance. Clusterfilesystemthroughputandnetworkperformance system throughput network performance are reported in realtime,andhistorical,valuesofmb/s and of and Gb/s. 9 Figure 9: :IsilonClusterFileSystemThroughput Monitoring ThenetworkperformancechartshowsarealtimeorhistoricalviewofIsilonLANtraffic. chart a real time historical of traffic. This chart will differ from the Silver Peak WAN throughput chart due to the optimizations provided rovidedby Network Memory. Figure 10: :IsilonNetworkPerformanceMonitoring

10 TheIsilonGUIalsoprovidesdetailedreportingonSyncIQreplicationjobs.SyncIQreports detailed reporting replication reports show job start and stop time, total duration, amountofdatat of transferred, ransferred,synctype,sourceandtarget. sync source and target. Figure 11: Isilon SyncIQ Reporting Conclusion SilverPeakVXOAprovidessignificantbenefitsforEMCIsilondeployments.SyncIQ significant for deployments. SyncIQreplication and remote file access can both be accelerated, maintainingperformanceandhigh and throughput inthepresenceoflinkdelayandpacketloss.silverpeakalsoreducesthewan and packetloss.silverpeakalsoreducesthewanbandwidth also reduces requirementforsynciqandremotefileaccesstoafractionofwhatisrequired remote file access to a fraction of is required without optimization. Together Silver Peak kandemcisilonallowhighlyscalableandhigh allow scalable performing file servicestobedeployedanywhere and over any WAN link. Links Silver Peak documentation: 10 Silver Peak information: EMC Isilon information: EMC Isilon documentation: