An Oracle White Paper February Storage and the Private Cloud: Taking Virtualization to the Next Level

Transcription

1 An Oracle White Paper February 2012 Storage and the Private Cloud: Taking Virtualization to the Next Level

2 Introduction... 2 Waves of Virtualization Drive Increasing Benefits... 3 Second Wave Extending to Storage and Desktops... 3 Cloud Wave Is Now Emerging... 4 Oracle s Approach: Integration and Interoperability... 5 Examples: Real Solutions for Today s Virtualization Challenges... 7 Case 1: Consolidated Storage for Virtualization and Private Cloud Infrastructures... 7 Case 2: Data Protection/Disaster Recovery... 9 Case 3: Storage for Virtual Desktop Provisioning Case 4: Meeting SLAs When Consolidating Enterprise Applications Conclusion Learn More... 14

3 Introduction Technological innovation tends to come in waves, particularly for transformative concepts such as virtualization. The business advantages of virtualization have continued to drive its adoption as well as spur new advances and new usages, including enabling an efficient infrastructure for the cloud. This has resulted in multiple waves of virtualization, each building on the capabilities and business drivers of the previous wave. This paper describes how these trends have affected storage technologies and how Oracle s storage solutions enable organizations to reduce IT costs, accelerate provisioning of private cloud services, and achieve higher service levels. Oracle s vision for storage virtualization is based on a vision for cloud computing in which storage technologies enable a simplified design of private cloud infrastructures and a more efficient implementation. Virtualized storage not only provides a layer of abstraction by associating storage volumes with virtual machines (rather than with physical servers), but it also includes the necessary tools for efficient provisioning and management of storage in virtualized private cloud infrastructures. Oracle s approach to designing products for such infrastructures leverages both integration and interoperability as follows: Integration Deployment and management are greatly simplified with engineered solutions and an integrated hardware and software stack that is optimized by Oracle. Interoperability Data center investments are protected by using standards-based interoperable components that deliver increased automation and can be easily integrated with an existing infrastructure. This paper reviews key storage and virtualization solutions from Oracle and provides example scenarios that demonstrate how today s virtualization and cloud computing challenges can be addressed with real solutions from Oracle that deliver business value. 2

4 Waves of Virtualization Drive Increasing Benefits The initial focus of virtualization was as part of a data center consolidation effort aimed at reducing server and application sprawl and the associated out-of-control IT costs and operational challenges. Virtualization made it possible to replace the traditional application-server model of one application per server with a more efficient paradigm in which multiple applications could run on virtual machines within the same physical server. As highlighted in Figure 1, this first wave of virtualization enabled organizations to extend the IT infrastructure lifecycle, recapture data center rack and floor space, and reduce power and cooling expenses. It also led to lower operational expenditures (OPEX) through application consolidation and reduced administrative burden for physical systems. Figure 1.Waves of virtualization innovations create new business benefits and opportunities. Second Wave Extending to Storage and Desktops The success of first-wave virtualization technologies generated significant momentum and business benefits, which then served as catalysts for additional advancements including the extension of virtualization concepts into the storage and desktop arenas. As virtualized servers and storage systems began to host more business-critical applications, some new priorities became clear: Protecting these IT resources against unplanned outages and the resulting disruption to business operations became a critical objective. Highly scalable virtualization solutions became necessary in order to take full advantage of the cloud. 3

5 Second wave virtualization technologies therefore focus on delivering business continuity, greater availability and scalability, improved storage efficiency, and optimization of resources. Technology advancements enabled virtualization to address a broader scope of IT functions as well as further reduce both IT labor (OPEX) and hardware capital expenditures (CAPEX). Specifically, second-wave virtualization solutions are making it possible to do the following: Integrate storage into private cloud infrastructures, empowering organizations to speed deployment of large-scale private cloud services, cut OPEX and CAPEX, and support application agility. Radically improve data protection and disaster recovery capabilities so that the enterprise can maintain a durable and robust foundation for its critical business applications. Deploy a virtual desktop infrastructure that s integrated with storage, making it possible to standardize the desktop software architecture, provide desktop data protection services, and reduce desktop administrative complexity. Cloud Wave Is Now Emerging In the face of the these advancements, questions still linger about how to further automate provisioning and management of virtualized infrastructures and how to best use storage to support virtualized server environments. For example: How can IT costs be cut even further in the face of explosive data growth? How can virtualized environments be expanded to a much larger scale in support of cloud services? How can platform infrastructure services be used as a building block for cloud services? How can data protection and application availability be improved simultaneously? How can IT get better insight into how applications are actually being used and improve the management of those applications based on what s learned? How can desktop virtualization take advantage of recent advancement in storage provisioning and data protection technologies? How can storage be more tightly integrated with a cloud infrastructure so that cloud-based services can be further automated and easily orchestrated? How can late adopters and small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) take advantage of advanced storage support in virtualized server environments without ripping and replacing the infrastructure they ve already invested in? Cloud computing offers a vision for dealing with these issues while also enabling IT organizations to keep IT costs down and deliver consistent service levels in the face of rapidly changing user requirements. The cloud model enables organizations to leverage Platform as a Service (PaaS) solutions and technology building block frameworks for much faster application deployment. Growth in cloud adoption is also fueling new technology advancements such as automated and orchestrated 4

6 provisioning, integrated physical and virtual management, virtualization-aware storage, and virtualization services that can deliver any server application to any device. When it comes to storage technologies, specific advancements that simplify private cloud implementations and drive greater business value include: Storage efficiency features such as deduplication, thin provisioning, replication, snapshots and clones are now out-of-the box features that enable big cost reductions for private cloud data. Shared storage in a private cloud environment now offers prioritization of application I/O based on business priorities, which means that service levels for business-critical applications can be maintained even during peaks in activity for non-critical applications. Integrated data protection and disaster recovery features greatly simplify the task of protecting private cloud data. Provisioning control is moving closer to user departments, as virtualization managers are now able to directly provision user storage rather than requiring a storage administrator for all provisioning tasks. This approach to storage management enables greater scalability of the virtualized infrastructure by enabling distributed management. Oracle s Approach: Integration and Interoperability Oracle s approach for providing storage for virtualized server environments is to offer a complete, feature-rich, integrated virtualization portfolio that includes solutions for virtualizing and managing the full hardware and software stack. Servers, storage, operating system, and virtualization software are no longer completely separate point products. Oracle has done the work to integrate many different components so that customers can benefit from faster implementation and optimized performance. Yet Oracle s offerings also enable integration with third party components so that customers can easily deploy Oracle solutions within their existing infrastructure. Two examples of Oracle s ability to deliver an integrated offering are Oracle Optimized Solutions and Oracle engineered systems. Oracle Exalogic and the SPARC SuperCluster are representative engineered systems that address cloud and private cloud infrastructure requirements. These highly integrated solutions combine server, network, and storage into a single offering that has been optimized by Oracle to accelerate deployment, reduce risk, and deliver up to 10X performance gains. The Oracle Optimized Solution for Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure provides a slightly different approach by defining a virtualized architecture consisting of blade servers and storage along with recommended best practices for deploying and optimizing the virtualized cloud infrastructure. Organizations can leverage these comprehensive integrated offerings to provide a foundation for cloud deployments or they can build their own private cloud infrastructure using interoperable virtualization and storage component solutions from Oracle that protect investments in existing IT infrastructures while also greatly simplifying the build out and management of virtualized storage. Both methods can take advantage of sophisticated offerings available today as well as provide a foundation that will enable the use of new virtualization technologies as they emerge. As shown in 5

7 Figure 2, Oracle's virtualization portfolio consists of virtualization technologies that span the following areas: Server virtualization Oracle s full range of server virtualization technologies provides varying degrees of isolation, resource granularity, and flexibility. The technologies can be used separately or together to tackle specific deployment challenges. Desktop virtualization Oracle offers a full complement of desktop virtualization products, including software and thin clients, enabling organizations to transcend the limitations of conventional desktop computing with a virtualized desktop infrastructure. Storage virtualization Oracle s integrated virtualization and storage solutions deliver storage efficiency, data protection, and business agility. Figure 2. Oracle offers the industry s most complete virtualization portfolio. The following are examples of some of the interoperable product offerings from Oracle that can simplify build out of a virtualized infrastructure while adding increased automation and efficiency: Sun ZFS Storage Appliances Sun ZFS Storage Appliances provide an ideal storage consolidation platform for virtualized servers and private cloud environments by combining enterprise-class NAS capabilities with optional fibre channel connectivity, industry-leading performance, efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and ease of use. Pillar Axiom 600 Storage Systems Pillar Axiom 600 is the only storage system that is truly application-aware. It provides unique quality of service features that emphasize business-centric storage prioritization by enabling high-value applications to have priority access to key storage resources. For example, business-critical applications can be given more cache and faster drives than 6

8 other applications and their I/O requests can be automatically executed before those of lower priority applications. Oracle VM 3 Oracle VM 3 is a server virtualization solution that provides not only virtualization capabilities, but also features than can help organizations improve agility and simplify management for cloud or private cloud infrastructures. A new approach to storage administration in Oracle VM 3 enables administrators to control and provision both storage and compute resources from within Oracle VM Manager and Oracle Enterprise Manager. Examples: Real Solutions for Today s Virtualization Challenges Below are just a few examples of how Oracle s focus on integration and interoperability, combined with advanced capabilities in Oracle s virtualization and storage offerings, can help organizations solve today s challenges and create business advantages. Case 1: Consolidated Storage for Virtualization and Private Cloud Infrastructures Virtualization has become the foundation of the cloud computing model. By delivering on-demand, self-service access to pools of resources, the cloud has empowered real-world companies to increase flexibility and efficiency while cutting costs. Storage consolidation, in tandem with the requisite server consolidation, is a vital first step to reaping the business advantages of virtualization and cloud computing. Consolidation of storage assets for virtualized environments makes it possible to improve server and storage utilization efficiencies, simplify management, improve data protection, and implement high availability and disaster recovery plans for multiple applications. Adopters of cloud computing have already deployed virtualization platforms such as Oracle VM, Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix, VMware, and others. For example, the Sun ZFS Storage Appliance product line integrates and interoperates with Oracle VM, Citrix, and VMware, providing a solution for that is ideal for deploying computing and storage resources in a private cloud infrastructure. The recent release of Oracle VM 3 further simplifies cloud management by enabling organizations to provision and manage their storage platforms using data center management tools such as Oracle VM Manager or Oracle Enterprise Manager. Traditionally, storage management has been performed by a specialized storage administrator who is involved in every user request for storage access or configuration changes. Oracle VM 3 changes this paradigm and enables a virtualization administrator to handle most storage provisioning requests. This reduces the traditional reliance on specialized storage administrators and enables more pieces of the storage provisioning process to be automated. Oracle VM 3 also helps organizations deliver high service levels using dynamic resource scheduling that expands and contracts the available compute resources based on both CPU load and network load. This helps to assure that a virtual machine is not starved because a neighbor VM is consuming all the network or CPU resources. The Sun ZFS Storage Appliance interoperates with dynamic resource scheduling capabilities in both Oracle VM 3 and VMware, and supports true application portability meaning applications are no 7

9 longer tied to specific server hardware. The storage associated with each application adheres to the application, not the application s physical server during virtual machine migration activities associated with dynamic resource management. The result is an unprecedented level of storage agility as well as the ability to keep applications up and running during scheduled outages. This capability is delivered by integration with the Oracle VM Dynamic Resource Scheduler and the Live Migration feature as well as VMware vsphere features such as VMware Dynamic Resource Scheduler, vmotion and Storage vmotion. Working together, these technologies enable administrators to move an entire running mission-critical application instantaneously from one server to another without disruption. Figure 3. The Sun ZFS Storage Appliance offers consolidated storage that is integrated with Oracle VM 3. Sun ZFS Storage Appliances also include several key storage efficiency features such as thin provisioning, in-line deduplication and real-time compression that work in concert with Oracle VM and VMware to allocate storage as it s needed, eliminate duplicate data blocks, and compress the resulting data. When using an all Oracle stack with the Oracle Database, support for Hybrid Columnar Compression in Sun ZFS Storage Appliances and Oracle VM also enables up to 10x reductions in storage footprint and associated storage costs. These features help organizations avoid purchasing excessive storage capacity and over-allocating resources, significantly reducing CAPEX while improving data protection. Together, these and other features of the Sun ZFS Storage Appliance deliver significant competitive advantages. For example, compared with solutions from Network Appliance, the Sun ZFS Storage Appliance enables 36% savings in operational costs while providing advanced capabilities such as 8

10 inline deduplication, greater formatted efficiency, greater performance, and a high level of data integrity. 1 Case 2: Data Protection/Disaster Recovery The Sun ZFS Storage Appliance line provides a solution for IT Managers who wish to improve data protection, backup and recovery data services, and disaster recovery plans through consolidation of applications and associated storage. For example, triple-parity RAID and triple mirroring provide industry-leading data protection and maximum data availability even in the presence of multiple drive failures allowing customers to minimize the risk of application outages and maintain performance. Built-in replication services can be used to create a copy of mission-critical data and to provide continuous synchronization between systems at remote locations. The data stored on a Sun ZFS Storage Appliance at the primary site is automatically and continuously replicated to a second Sun ZFS Storage Appliance at the standby site, providing a consistent copy that can be used in the event of a failure. Figure 4 shows an example of replicating an Oracle Database and Oracle Fusion Middleware infrastructure to a remote site. The Oracle Fusion Middleware infrastructure is automatically replicated to the remote site using the remote replication feature of the Sun ZFS Storage Appliance. Oracle Data Guard is also used to provide a transactionally complete standby database that can be quickly activated to limit downtime in the event of a system failure or disaster. The standby site operates in a passive mode and is synchronized with the primary site database on a continuous basis. This provides a rock-solid yet simple solution for disaster recovery to protect against catastrophic events. Built-in replication also reduces application recovery time in case of a complete system failure since businesscritical data can be accessed from an online replicated copy. 1 Source: Oracle Sun ZFS Storage Appliance Comparative Management Costs Study. Edison Group, August

11 Figure 4. Remote replication example for Oracle Database and Oracle Fusion Middleware infrastructure. Intuitive, easy-to-use fail-over and fail-back capabilities keep the storage architecture up and running reliably so business-critical applications remain available. And the Sun ZFS Storage Appliance line is integrated and tested with VMware vcenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM), which keeps data at the business-critical site coherent with the remote site. Sun ZFS Storage Appliances also enable administrators to take point-in-time copies of a specific virtual machine's data, making it easy and fast to restore the data. Sun ZFS Storage Appliances uses a copy-on-write approach for snapshots so that no storage space is allocated to the snapshot until the original data is changed, saving valuable disk space. Case 3: Storage for Virtual Desktop Provisioning The Sun ZFS Storage Appliance line provides an excellent solution for businesses that wish to take advantage of virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) for rapid provisioning and support of large numbers of desktop users. Oracle's integrated desktop virtualization and storage solution with the Sun ZFS Storage Appliance (Figure 5) can help reduce costs, improve productivity, and simplify data center management. Storage efficiency features such as thin provisioning, compression, and de-duplication work with Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure software to reduce the total storage capacity needed, thereby delaying or avoiding the need to purchase additional storage resources. 10

12 Figure 5. Oracle s integrated desktop virtualization and storage solution architecture. By combining Oracle VDI, Oracle VM VirtualBox, and the Sun ZFS Storage Appliance, organizations can deploy virtual desktops quickly and give VDI users access to their full desktop environment from nearly any client device at any time and from any location with strong security, and without installing software on the desktop systems. This capability makes desktop consolidation possible, enabling organizations to cut the cost of acquiring and maintaining multiple desktops for specific purposes. Oracle s VDI solution also improves security, because data is stored on the Sun ZFS Storage Appliance rather than on the client device. So if a laptop is lost or stolen, data security is not compromised. Oracle VDI configuration data and runtime information are stored in a database, which can be shared across multiple Oracle VDI instances when a highly available configuration is desired. For auditing or compliance purposes, Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure also provides tools for tracking access and usage information. For enterprises that have an existing implementation of Citrix XenDesktop, it is supported in Oracle s integrated desktop virtualization and storage solution. Also supported is Citrix XenApp, an application delivery system that offers client-side and server-side application virtualization. Citrix XenApp, which is included in the Citrix XenDesktop Enterprise and Platinum Editions, enables enterprise applications 11

13 such as Oracle E-Business Suite, Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise, and Oracle Seibel CRM to be quickly deployed across a variety of devices. User access times and therefore user productivity can also be improved because the Sun ZFS Storage Appliance uses intelligent storage algorithms to stage application data into in-memory cache or into Flash SSD-enabled Read Cache where read performance is much faster than hard disk drives. Oracle s approach to desktop VDI improves both deployment timeframes and desktop performance. Desktop deployment is accelerated by faster provisioning via Oracle VDI and Sun ZFS Storage Appliance integration, while desktop performance is improved by increasing user and application productivity via Hybrid Storage Pools. Moreover, the unique storage analytics capabilities in the Sun ZFS Storage Appliance provide observability into business-critical desktop storage workloads, so that storage resources can be easily monitored and optimized for user demand. Case 4: Meeting SLAs When Consolidating Enterprise Applications When consolidating enterprise applications in a large data center, service level management and resource utilization become critically important. It's easy to deliver high service levels by simply over-provisioning resources. However, in today's environment of tight IT budgets, IT managers must find better ways to deliver performance and availability. To take virtualization to the next level, IT organizations are looking for new ways to optimize resource utilization while also protecting their service level agreements. They are looking to reduce OPEX by making administrators more effective and they are looking to reduce CAPEX by using server and storage resources more efficiently. When consolidating applications using Oracle VM, the virtualized servers and related storage environments can be easily managed from a high-level management tool. Oracle VM 3 supports integration with Oracle Enterprise Manager, which enables comprehensive management of the full hardware and software stack from applications to disk. For example, Oracle Enterprise Manager enables administrators to have complete visibility of all Oracle Database instances running within the enterprise, including those managed by Oracle VM 3. This means that if the Dynamic Resource Scheduling facility in Oracle VM 3 moves an Oracle Database instance to a different virtual machine in order to help balance out the load and improve service levels, the administrator can see where that database instance is now running and can view metrics about its performance. Another key advantage to managing service levels in a consolidated environment comes from Oracle's Pillar Axiom 600 storage systems. With their patented QoS architecture, Pillar Axiom 600 storage systems enable administrators to define priorities for storage I/O for each application accessing the storage system. The business value this provides is twofold. Mission-critical applications get priority and thus have minimal risk of storage I/O bottlenecks getting in the way of service level performance. Figure 6 illustrates how priority queues in the Pillar Axiom 600 differ from the first-in-first-out (FIFO) approach used by traditional storage array. The numbered bubbles in the figure represent I/O requests where the lower numbered requests represent those that came into the queue before the higher numbered requests. In the FIFO queue, I/O requests from high priority applications can get stuck waiting for earlier I/O requests from low priority applications. Priority queues in the Pillar Axiom 600 make sure that this does not happen since the high priority queues are always serviced first. 12

14 Figure 6. Pillar Axiom 600 systems prioritize I/O requests so that business-critical applications don t have to wait. Secondly, because mission-critical applications are serviced on a priority basis, there is room to allow other non-critical applications to use storage resources when they are available. As a result, resource utilization levels of up to 80% are common with Pillar Axiom 600 storage systems whereas traditional storage environments often begin to experience performance bottlenecks at around 40% utilization 2 about half that of the Pillar Axiom 600. Pillar Axiom 600 systems can also add to efficiency when used for Oracle database environments. With support for Hybrid Columnar Compression with Oracle databases, Pillar Axiom 600 systems can deliver 3x to 5x greater reductions in storage footprint compared to competitive SAN solutions. This can mean dramatically lower CAPEX for enterprise OLTP applications as well as data warehouses and mixed application environments. By using the application-driven virtualization capabilities in Oracle VM 3 and a Pillar Axiom application-aware storage solution, organizations can achieve their service level objectives for enterprise applications while also reducing IT CAPEX and OPEX. 2 Source: "Big Data: The Enterprise Crisis," Forrester Research, 13

15 Conclusion The first wave of virtualization technologies helped solve the problem of IT sprawl and out-of-control OPEX and CAPEX. The second wave of innovation brought storage into the equation and delivered new levels of storage efficiency, operational integration, data protection, and business continuity. The emerging cloud wave offers another step forward in automated management and building complex, application-aware environments with maximum storage efficiency. Oracle is the one vendor that can offer a complete, feature-rich portfolio of solutions for virtualizing and managing the full hardware and software stack. Oracle s Sun ZFS Storage Appliance product line combines with virtualization management capabilities in Oracle VM 3 and application-aware storage in Pillar Axiom 600 storage systems to enable organizations to consolidate storage for a wide range of business needs and organization sizes. Oracle s integrated offerings provide a uniquely compelling solution to help organizations deploy efficient storage solutions for virtualized server environments and private cloud environments. These solutions can also deliver improved data protection and disaster recovery, a cost-effective virtualized desktop infrastructure, and increased efficiency for mission-critical applications that need consistent storage I/O performance. Learn More For additional information about Oracle storage and virtualization offerings, visit the Web sites in Table 1 or call ORACLE1 to speak to an Oracle representative. TABLE 1. WEB RESOURCES FOR FURTHER INFORMATION WEB RESOURCE DESCRIPTION Sun ZFS Storage Appliances Pillar Axiom 600 storage system Oracle VM 3.0 Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure WEB RESOURCE URL

16 Storage and the Private Cloud: Taking Virtualization to the Next Level February 2012 Oracle Corporation World Headquarters 500 Oracle Parkway Redwood Shores, CA U.S.A. Worldwide Inquiries: Phone: Fax: oracle.com Copyright 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is provided for information purposes only and the contents hereof are subject to change without notice. This document is not warranted to be error-free, nor subject to any other warranties or conditions, whether expressed orally or implied in law, including implied warranties and conditions of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. We specifically disclaim any liability with respect to this document and no contractual obligations are formed either directly or indirectly by this document. This document may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, for any purpose, without our prior written permission. Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. AMD, Opteron, the AMD logo, and the AMD Opteron logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices. Intel and Intel Xeon are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation. All SPARC trademarks are used under license and are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. UNIX is a registered trademark licensed through X/Open Company, Ltd. 1010