EMC INFRASTRUCTURE FOR MICROSOFT APPLICATIONS IN THE PRIVATE CLOUD

Transcription

1 White Paper EMC INFRASTRUCTURE FOR MICROSOFT APPLICATIONS IN THE PRIVATE CLOUD Automated performance optimization Centralized and simplified management Efficient, automated disaster recovery EMC Solutions Group Abstract This white paper describes a validated reference architecture for Microsoft's most common business-critical applications, consisting of Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, SharePoint Server 2010, and SQL Server 2012 on the Microsoft Hyper-V virtualization platform and EMC Symmetrix VMAX 10K storage platform. Continuous availability and multi-site protection is achieved with EMC RecoverPoint/Cluster Enabler that replicates and manages the entire infrastructure to a remote EMC VNX 5700 array. June 2012

2 Copyright 2012 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. EMC believes the information in this publication is accurate as of its publication date. The information is subject to change without notice. The information in this publication is provided as is. EMC Corporation makes no representations or warranties of any kind with respect to the information in this publication, and specifically disclaims implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Use, copying, and distribution of any EMC software described in this publication requires an applicable software license. For the most up-to-date listing of EMC product names, see EMC Corporation Trademarks on EMC.com. All trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners. Part Number H

3 Table of contents Executive summary... 6 Business case... 6 Solution overview... 6 Key results... 7 Introduction... 8 Purpose... 8 Scope... 8 Audience... 8 Terminology... 9 Technology overview Overview EMC Symmetrix VMAX 10K EMC VNX EMC RecoverPoint EMC Cluster Enabler EMC Storage Integrator Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager Microsoft System Center Operations Manager Solution architecture and configuration Configuration overview Solution architecture Hardware resources Software resources Application design and configuration Overview Exchange Server Exchange Server 2010 user requirement Exchange Server 2010 building block design Exchange Server 2010 DAG design Hyper-V virtual machine design for Exchange Server SharePoint Server SharePoint Server 2010 user requirement SharePoint Server 2010 farm and component design Hyper-V virtual machine design for SharePoint Server SQL Server

4 SQL Server 2012 user requirement Hyper-V virtual machine design for SQL Server Hyper-V cluster FAST VP storage design Symmetrix FAST VP VMAX 10K storage and FAST VP design guidelines FAST VP configuration in this solution System management design and configuration Overview SCVMM 2008 R ESI SCOM 2007 R RecoverPoint/CE design and configuration Overview VMAX 10K preparation for RecoverPoint/CE RecoverPoint CRR configuration RecoverPoint journal sizing EMC Cluster Enabler configuration Hyper-V cluster preparation for disaster recovery Test methodology Overview Microsoft Exchange Load Generator SQL Server TPC-E like workload Microsoft SharePoint 2010 VSTS generated custom workload How the sample documents were created VSTS test client and test mechanism SharePoint user profiles FAST VP performance test results Overview Test objectives Test scenarios Hyper-V root servers Exchange Server SharePoint Server SQL Server VMAX 10K storage RecoverPoint replication impact Application performance with RecoverPoint replication

5 RecoverPoint performance under 25 ms latency RecoverPoint performance under 85 ms latency Failover and disaster recovery test results Overview Planned failover Virtual machine live migration time Live migration impact on SharePoint Site disaster recovery Site disaster recovery time Site disaster recovery impact on SharePoint Conclusion Summary Findings References White papers Product documentation Other resources

6 Executive summary Business case Integrating Microsoft and EMC technologies can help organizations implement private clouds with increased ease and confidence. Among the benefits of leveraging Microsoft virtualization and management tools, teamed with EMC's powerful, trusted, and efficient storage technologies, are: Faster deployment End-to-end architectural and deployment guidance Streamlined infrastructure planning due to predefined capacity Enhanced functionality and automation through deep knowledge of infrastructure Integrated management for virtual machine and infrastructure deployment Higher availability End-to-end infrastructure protection from the rotating spindles, through the caching boards to the database instance Automated availability within a site or between sites with dissimilar infrastructure components using EMC advanced replication technologies Reduced risk Tested, end-to-end interoperability of compute, storage, and network Predefined, out-of-box solutions based on a common cloud architecture that is already tested and validated High degree of service availability through automated load balancing Lower cost of ownership A cost-optimized platform and software-independent solution for rack system integration Fully automated and cost efficient storage tiering High performance and scalability with Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system, advanced platform editions of Hyper-V technology, and the EMC Symmetrix VMAX 10K storage array Solution overview This solution showcases the EMC Symmetrix VMAX 10K platform as a viable, trusted storage array to service a mixed workload of Microsoft applications including: Exchange Server 2010 for messaging SharePoint Server 2010 for collaboration SQL Server 2012 as the Tier-1 database Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 with Hyper-V provides the virtualization platform EMC Fully Automated Storage Tiering for Virtual Pools (FAST VP) provides high performance and efficient storage tiering for the Microsoft applications. In addition, 6

7 EMC RecoverPoint/Cluster Enabler (CE) enables a common platform for disaster recovery (DR) across all applications with a minimal recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO). The solution also showcases the ability to enable a more cost-effective DR storage solution by using the EMC VNX midrange series platform as the target storage. Furthermore, the solution eases provisioning and simplifies management of the infrastructure environment using: Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) EMC Storage Integrator (ESI) Key results The solution offers the following key benefits: Desired performance results achieved for the following Microsoft application profiles on Symmetrix VMAX 10K storage (Enginuity version 5875 was used in this solution). FAST VP provides efficient storage tiering and flexible configurations for customers who want custom control for different application requirements. 10,000 Exchange concurrent users at a 0.10 IOPS profile More than 35,000 active SharePoint users at 10 percent concurrency 60,000 SQL Server users configured for a SQL OLTP TPC-E-like environment with more than 4,000 SQL transactions processed and 9,000 IOPS achieved Ease of provisioning and simplified management of the whole infrastructure Simplified RecoverPoint implementation with the in-array splitter technology, and disaster recovery standardization across all Microsoft applications. In this solution, RecoverPoint protects the production infrastructure to a remote site over an extended distance, for example, 8,500 km from the west to east coasts in the United States, with an RPO of around three seconds. RecoverPoint achieves 3x compression ratio to help reduce the network bandwidth needed for data replication Together with RecoverPoint, Cluster Enabler (CE) provides a comprehensive data protection solution for the entire data center, with a completely automatic site failover, significantly reducing operational complexity. With a site failure over an extended distance of 8,500 km, RecoverPoint/CE can bring all virtual machines online within five minutes. All application services come back online automatically, with a downtime of no more than 18 minutes (worst case) for users to connect to the Exchange mailboxes, SharePoint farm, and SQL services. 7

8 Introduction Purpose This white paper presents a validated reference architecture and design guidelines for shared Microsoft application workloads, including Exchange Server 2010, SharePoint Server 2010, and SQL Server 2012 on the EMC Symmetrix VMAX 10K storage platform, with FAST VP. Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 with Hyper-V provides the virtualization platform and ESI, together with Microsoft SCVMM and SCOM, provides ease of provisioning and management. Building on the base solution, local high availability (HA) was extended to also enable remote site-level recovery in an automated, common platform for applications through EMC Cluster Enabler, integrated with Windows Failover Clustering. Scope Audience The scope of this white paper is to document: A design methodology for Microsoft applications on Microsoft s Hyper-V virtualization platform and the VMAX 10K storage array System functionality and overall performance under active user loads Protection of the infrastructure environment using EMC RecoverPoint integrated with Cluster Enabler Simplified management and storage provisioning using ESI Discovery and health monitoring of the Microsoft Hyper-V and application environment through Microsoft Systems Center products The target audience for this white paper is business executives, IT directors, and infrastructure administrators who are responsible for their company s storage and Microsoft application landscape. The target audience also includes professional services groups, system integration partners, and other EMC teams tasked with deploying a Microsoft private cloud in a customer environment. A high-level understanding of Exchange, SharePoint and SQL server landscapes is beneficial. Familiarity with virtualization concepts is also beneficial. 8

9 Terminology This paper includes the following terminology. Table 1. Terminology Term Background Database Maintenance (BDM) Continuous remote replication (CRR) Database availability group (DAG) EFD FAST VP Pass-through disk Recovery point objective (RPO) Recovery time objective (RTO) Virtual hard disk (VHD) Definition BDM is the process of Exchange 2010 database maintenance that involves check summing both active and passive database copies. CRR supports synchronous and asynchronous replication between remote sites over Fibre Channel (FC) and a wide-area network (WAN). Synchronous replication is supported when the remote sites are connected through FC and provides a zero RPO. Asynchronous replication provides crash-consistent protection and recovery to specific points in time, with a small RPO. A DAG is the base component of the HA and site resilience framework built into Microsoft Exchange Server A DAG is a group of up to 16 mailbox servers that hosts a set of databases and provides automatic database-level recovery from failures that affect individual servers or databases. Enterprise Flash Drive. Fully Automated Storage Tiering for Virtual Pools. EMC Symmetrix VMAX 10K FAST VP for virtually provisioned environments automates the identification of thin device extents to re-allocate application data across different performance tiers within a single array. FAST VP proactively monitors workloads at the sub-lun level to identify busy thin device extents that would benefit from being moved to higher performing drives. FAST VP also identifies less busy extents that could be moved to higher capacity drives, without affecting existing performance. A pass-through disk is where virtual machines have direct access to disks. It is only applicable to block devices such as iscsi or FC. RPO defines the maximum acceptable time period between the last available consistent image and a disaster or failure. RTO defines the maximum acceptable time to bring a system, service or application back to an operational state after a disaster or failure. VHD is a publicly available image format specification that allows encapsulation of the hard disk into an individual file for use by the operating system as a virtual disk, in all the same ways that physical hard disks are used. These virtual disks are capable of hosting native Windows file systems (NTFS, FAT, exfat, and UDFS) while supporting standard disk and file operations. 9

10 Technology overview Overview EMC Symmetrix VMAX 10K The solution is validated with the following hardware and software components: EMC Symmetrix VMAX 10K EMC VNX5700, part of the EMC VNX family of unified storage platforms EMC RecoverPoint EMC Cluster Enabler (CE) EMC Storage Integrator (ESI) Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager Microsoft System Center Operations Manager EMC Symmetrix is the world s most trusted storage platform. Enterprise customers have been deploying large mission-critical applications with Symmetrix for over 20 years. The Symmetrix VMAX 10K series provides enterprise storage that delivers efficient and cost-effective hardware design combined with built-in software and simplified installation, configuration, and management. VMAX 10K brings high-end storage array capabilities to service providers and IT organizations that have demanding virtual computing environments but limited storage expertise and IT resources. VMAX 10K uses 100 percent internal redundancy to deliver enterprise-class reliability, availability, and serviceability (RAS), and has an integrated write splitter to support RecoverPoint replication. The VMAX 10K series is designed for fast and efficient deployment and includes features that are particularly useful in small or crowded data centers: VMAX 10K uses an implementation of the Symmetrix Virtual Matrix Architecture that is optimized for rapid deployment and easier management. VMAX 10K systems are delivered preconfigured, 100 percent virtually provisioned, and ready for same-day installation and startup. High storage densities can be achieved, with a single-rack, single-engine VMAX 10K capable of supporting 120 drives. The system can scale to a six-bay, fourengine system with 960 drives and up to 1.3 PB of usable capacity. This enables customers to cost-effectively grow and upgrade their system to accommodate application and data growth. With the VMAX 10K array dispersion capability, bays can be separated up to 10 meters apart, enabling very flexible deployments. 10

11 EMC VNX5700 The VNX5700, a member of the EMC VNX family, delivers industry-leading innovation and enterprise capabilities for file, block, and object storage in a scalable, easy-touse solution. This next-generation storage platform combines powerful and flexible hardware with advanced efficiency, management, and protection software to meet the demanding needs of today s enterprises. The VNX series is designed to meet the high-performance, high-scalability requirements of midsize and large businesses while providing market-leading simplicity and efficiency to minimize total cost of ownership. EMC RecoverPoint EMC RecoverPoint is an enterprise-scale solution designed to protect application data on heterogeneous SAN-attached servers and storage arrays. RecoverPoint runs on a dedicated appliance and combines industry-leading continuous data protection technology with a bandwidth-efficient, no-data-loss replication technology, allowing it to protect data both locally and remotely. Innovative data-change journaling and application integration capabilities enable organizations to address their pressing business, operations, and regulatory data protection concerns. Organizations that implement RecoverPoint see dramatic improvements in application protection and recovery times compared with traditional host and array snapshots or disk-to-tape backup products. EMC Cluster Enabler EMC Storage Integrator The CE software integrates with Microsoft Failover Cluster software, enabling geographically dispersed cluster nodes to be replicated by RecoverPoint continuous remote replication (CRR). RecoverPoint/CE seamlessly manages all storage system processes necessary to facilitate cluster node failover. RecoverPoint/CE supports Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 in both Enterprise and Datacenter editions that use Node Majority and Node and File Share Majority quorum modes only. ESI for Windows provides capabilities for viewing and provisioning storage. As part of the viewing capability, it depicts Windows-to-storage resource mapping. As part of storage provisioning, it simplifies the steps of creating a logical unit number (LUN), preparing the LUN through the steps of partitioning and formatting, and creating a drive letter. ESI also: Enables users to create a file share and mount that file share as a networkattached drive in the Windows environment Provides virtualization capability by supporting Microsoft Hyper-V Supports storage provisioning and discovery using the PowerShell toolkit ESI for SharePoint provides capabilities for viewing and provisioning storage. To view storage, ESI discovers SharePoint farms, sites, and content databases. It also maps these resources to the underlying storage resources. To provision storage on the SharePoint server, ESI prepares the LUN by partitioning it, formatting it, and assigning it a drive letter, and provisions the storage to the SharePoint site. ESI also supports File Stream Remote Blob Store. 11

12 Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager Hyper-V is an integral part of Windows Server that enables customers to make the best use of their server hardware investments> Hyper-V consolidates multiple server roles as separate virtual machines running on a single physical machine, and provides a foundational virtualization platform for transition to the cloud. With Windows Server 2008 R2, it presents a solution for core virtualization scenarios such as production server consolidation, dynamic datacenter, business continuity, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), and test and development. Microsoft System Center SCVMM enables centralized management of physical and virtual IT infrastructure, increased server utilization, and dynamic resource optimization across multiple virtualization platforms. It includes end-to-end capabilities such as planning, deploying, managing, and optimizing the virtual infrastructure. You can use SCVMM to maximize datacenter resources and promote IT agility while leveraging existing skills. With SCVMM, you can: Centrally create and manage virtual machines across datacenters Easily consolidate multiple physical servers onto virtual hosts Rapidly provision and optimize virtual machines Dynamically manage virtual resources Microsoft System Center Operations Manager Microsoft SCOM is an end-to-end service-management product for Windows environments. It works seamlessly with Microsoft infrastructure servers, such as Windows Server, and application servers, such as Microsoft Exchange, helping you to increase efficiency while enabling greater control of the IT environment. 12

13 Solution architecture and configuration Configuration overview Solution architecture This solution deploys all Exchange, SQL Server, and SharePoint servers as virtual machines on a Hyper-V cluster across the production site and the DR site. With the built-in RecoverPoint VMAX 10K array splitter, EMC RecoverPoint provides heterogeneous replication from VMAX 10K storage on the production site to a lower tier of the VNX5700 storage array on the DR site, and EMC Cluster Enabler automates the site failover. Figure 1 illustrates the solution architecture. Refer to Hyper-V cluster in the Application design and configuration section for detailed information about Hyper-V virtual machine setup and configuration. Figure 1. Physical architecture 13

14 Hardware resources Table 2 details the hardware resources deployed in this solution. Table 2. Hardware resources Equipment Quantity Configuration EMC VMAX 10K 1 2 system bays and 1 storage bay 2 engines and 128 GB memory (mirrored) Enginuity version: e EFD, FC, and SATA disks: 200 GB EFD drives: GB 15k rpm FC drives: GB 10k rpm FC drives: 82 2 TB 7.2k rpm SATA drives: 89 EMC VNX Block OE code: EFD, SAS, and NL-SAS disks RecoverPoint 4 4 RecoverPoint appliances (2 per site) FC switch 2 8 Gb FC switch (1 per site) GbE network switch 2 48-port IP switch Servers 11 8 Hyper-V root servers: 4 cores x 4 processors CPU and 128 GB RAM 1 management server: 4 cores x 4 processors CPU and 32 GB RAM 2 domain controller servers: 4 processors and 4 GB RAM Software resources Table 3 details the hardware resources deployed in this solution. Table 3. Software resources Software Hyper-V cluster nodes Virtual machine operating system SQL Server Exchange Server SharePoint Server 2010 SCVMM SCOM Configuration Windows Server 2008 R2 with Service Pack (SP) 1 Windows Server 2008 R2 with SP RTM Enterprise Edition 2010 Enterprise Edition with SP Enterprise Edition with SP1 and Cumulative Update in February R2 SP R2 14

15 Software EMC PowerPath Configuration Version 5.5 SP1 ESI Version 1.3 RecoverPoint Version Cluster Enabler Version

16 Application design and configuration Overview The solution was designed for a mixed Microsoft application workload, including Exchange Server 2010, SharePoint Server 2010, and SQL Server 2012, on the Symmetrix VMAX 10K storage array. Microsoft Hyper-V provides the virtualization platform for all Microsoft applications. The following sections provide the design methodology for all three Microsoft applications, the Hyper-V cluster, and Symmetrix FAST VP. Exchange Server 2010 Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 introduces the database availability group (DAG) as the new HA mechanism to replace previous, integrated HA technologies. This section provides the virtualization platform, DAG, and disk design for Exchange Server 2010 as deployed in this solution. Exchange Server 2010 user requirement The user requirements in this solution are detailed in Table 4. Table 4. Exchange user requirement Item Value Number of Exchange 2010 users 10,000 Number of Mailbox Server virtual machines 4 Number of DAGs and database copies Number of users per Mailbox Server User profile (in DAG configuration) Read:Write ratio Mailbox size Target average message size Deleted items retention window Logs protection buffer 1 DAG with 2 copies 5,000 total mailboxes (2,500 active and 2,500 passive during normal operating conditions) 100 messages/user/day (0.10 IOPS) 3:2 in a DAG configuration Start at 500 MB, grow to 2 GB 75 KB 14 days 3 days 24 x 7 BDM configuration Enabled Exchange Server 2010 building block design Sizing and configuring storage for use with Exchange Server 2010 can be a complicated process, driven by many variables and factors that vary from organization to organization. Properly configured Exchange storage, combined with a correctly sized server and network infrastructure, can guarantee smooth Exchange operations and the best user experience. One of the methods that can simplify the sizing and configuration of large Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 environments is to define a unit of measure called a building 16

17 block. A building block represents the required resources needed to support a specific number of Exchange 2010 users on a single virtual machine. You can derive the number of required resources from a specific user profile type, mailbox size, and disk requirement. For more information about the EMC building block methodology for Exchange 2010, refer to the EMC white paper Microsoft Exchange 2010: Storage Best Practices and Design Guidance for EMC Storage. Table 5 shows the detailed building block information for this solution. Table 5. Exchange building block Item Number of Exchange users per Mailbox Server Mailbox size Number of databases per Mailbox Server Value 5,000 total mailboxes (2,500 active and 2,500 passive during normal operating conditions) Start at 500 MB, grow to 2 GB 10 (5 active/5 passive) User mailboxes per database 500 Database LUN size Log LUN size 1.8 TB (sizing for 2 GB mailbox) 100 GB The requirements include starting with a user mailbox size of 500 MB with the ability to seamlessly grow to 2 GB. This can be easily accomplished using the VMAX 10K Virtual Provisioning feature. Symmetrix Virtual Provisioning technology builds on the base thin provisioning functionality, which is the ability to have a large thin device (that is, volume) configured and presented to the host while consuming physical storage from a shared pool only as needed. Symmetrix Virtual Provisioning can improve storage capacity utilization and simplify storage management by presenting the application with sufficient capacity for an extended period of time, reducing the need to provision new storage frequently and avoiding costly allocated but unused storage. Exchange Server 2010 DAG design This solution uses the Exchange 2010 DAG feature to provide HA for Exchange databases. A DAG is a group of up to 16 Mailbox Servers that hosts a set of databases and provides automatic database-level recovery from failures that affect individual servers or databases. We configured each Mailbox Server in this solution with ten databases, five active and five passive. All databases were balanced and distributed between Mailbox Servers within the DAG and between the Hyper-V nodes to eliminate a single point of failure. Figure 2 shows the DAG database distribution. 17

18 Figure 2. DAG database distribution Hyper-V virtual machine design for Exchange Server 2010 This solution deploys all the Exchange 2010 servers as Hyper-V virtual machines. We configured four Exchange 2010 Mailbox Servers in a DAG to provide HA for databases. Each Mailbox Server virtual machine was set up on a separate Hyper-V host server for additional redundancy. From the HUB/CAS servers, the HUB/CAS combined role had a 1:1 CPU core ratio to the Mailbox Server. Therefore, the solution included four HUB/CAS servers as virtual machines, separated into different Hyper-V hosts. Furthermore, we deployed the Exchange Server 2010 Client Access array and network load balancer to provide load balancing between the Client Access servers. For the Exchange virtual machines, we based the memory and CPU requirements on Microsoft best practices. For more information, visit the following websites: Table 6 provides a summary of the Exchange virtual machine configuration. Table 6. Exchange virtual machine configuration Virtual machine role Quantity vcpu Memory (GB) Boot disk VHD (GB) Mailbox HUB/CAS We configured all the database and log LUNs for the Exchange Mailbox Server virtual machine as pass-through disks in Hyper-V. Table 7 provides detailed information on the Exchange virtual machine pass-through disk configuration. Table 7. Exchange virtual machine disk configuration Virtual machine role No. of virtual machines Pass-through disks (GB) Description Mailbox TB Database LUNs GB Log LUNs 10 No. of pass-through disks on each virtual machine 18

19 SharePoint Server 2010 The SharePoint farm was designed for optimized performance, ease of manageability and growth. This section describes the SharePoint Server 2010 design and configuration in this solution. SharePoint Server 2010 user requirement Table 8 outlines the SharePoint 2010 user profile in this solution. Table 8. SharePoint user requirement Item Value Total user count 10,000 Usage profiles (%browse/%search/%modify) 80%/10%/10% User concurrency 10% Total data Content database size 4 TB 1 TB Total site collections count 20 Sites per site collection 10 Document size range 10 KB 10 MB SharePoint Server 2010 farm and component design To meet the user requirements listed in Table 8, we deployed seven SharePoint servers in three different roles: Three SharePoint web front-end servers for load balancing that were also configured as query servers. We scaled the query components out to three partitions. Each query server contained one index partition and a mirror of another one for better query performance and fault tolerance. Two SharePoint application servers with two crawlers on each to improve the full and incremental performance. Two SharePoint SQL servers with two content databases on each. SharePoint SQL Server configuration Before you deploy SharePoint Server, configure the following SQL Server settings and options: Do not enable auto-create statistics on a SQL Server that is supporting SharePoint Server. SharePoint Server configures the required settings upon provisioning and upgrade. Auto-create statistics can significantly change the execution plan of a query from one SQL Server instance to another SQL Server instance. Therefore, to provide consistent support for all customers, SharePoint Server provides coded hints for queries as needed to give the best performance across all scenarios. To ensure optimal performance, EMC strongly recommends that you set the max degree of parallelism (MAXDOP) option to 1 on SQL Server instances that 19

20 host SharePoint Server 2010 databases. For more information, visit: SharePoint farm configuration The SharePoint farm was designed as a collaboration portal. It comprised 4 TB of user content consisting of twenty SharePoint site collections (through the collaboration portal) with four content databases, each populated with 1 TB of random documents. SharePoint search configuration SharePoint 2010 search architecture improves scalability for both crawl and query components compared with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (MOSS 2007). The search server consists of crawler servers with the function to crawl and propagate the indexes on the query server and update the property stores on the SQL Server. In SharePoint 2010, the crawler server no longer stores a copy of the index files. They are propagated to the query component during the crawl operation. Because of this, the crawler server is no longer a single point of failure. The query servers split the content between themselves so that each of the query servers holds only a subset of the content index files and queries. The property store is the authoritative source for all indexed content properties and does not need to be synchronized with the crawler servers. In this solution, we enabled the query function on the web front-end (WFE) server. We scaled the query components out to three partitions for load balancing. Each query component also held a mirror of another index partition for fault tolerance consideration. We provisioned two 120 GB LUNs that store the index partition and its mirror to each query server. We also provisioned two 80 GB LUNs on each crawler server to store the temporary index files during the crawl operation. SQL tempdb configuration Microsoft SQL Server performance best practices recommend that the number of tempdb datafiles should be the same as the number of core CPUs, and each of the tempdb datafiles should be of the same size. In this solution, we created four tempdb data files. The number is equal to that of SQL Server core CPUs. We placed the tempdb data and log files on a dedicated RAID 1 LUN, enabled for better performance and utilization. For more information about optimizing tempdb performance, visit: Hyper-V virtual machine design for SharePoint Server 2010 You can calculate virtual machine and Hyper-V requirements based on user requirements. The RAM recommended for the computer running SQL Server is calculated by the combined size of the content databases. For more information on storage and SQL Server capacity planning and configuration for SharePoint Server 2010, visit: In the solution, we had two SQL Servers in the SharePoint farm, so 32 GB for each was a good option. Table 9 provides a summary of the SharePoint virtual machine configurations. 20

21 Table 9. SharePoint virtual machine configuration Virtual machine role Quantity vcpu Memory (GB) Boot disk VHD (GB) SQL WFE App We added all the SharePoint LUNs as pass-through disks. To estimate the required storage for the property and crawl databases, we used the following multiplier suggested by Microsoft: Crawl: * (sum of content databases) = * 4 TB = GB Property: * (sum of content databases) = * 4 TB = 61.4 GB With a 20 percent capacity buffer, we had a 220 GB volume for the crawl database and an 80 GB volume for the property database. Table 10 provides detailed information about the SharePoint virtual machine passthrough disk configuration. Table 10. SharePoint virtual machine disk configuration Virtual machine role No. of virtual machines Pass-through disks (GB) Description WFE Query component and query component mirror No. of pass-through disks on each virtual machine 2 Index 2 80 Index component Content database data volume 2 30 Content database log volume 2 SQL Server 50 Configuration/central administration/search administration database volume SharePoint property database and its log volumes SharePoint crawl database and log volumes 50 SQL temp database and log volumes 1 2 (1 * 80 GB disk and 1* 20 GB disk) 2 (1 * 220 GB disk and 1 * 50 GB disk) Content database data volume 2 30 Content database log volume 2 50 SQL temp database and log volumes 5 21

22 SQL Server 2012 To maintain flexibility and performance, it is necessary to ensure that the storage sizing and virtual machine configuration for SQL Server is optimal. This section provides detailed information about SQL Server user requirements and design. SQL Server 2012 user requirement Table 11 shows the user requirement for SQL Server 2012 in this solution. Table 11. SQL Server user requirements Profile SQL database capacity and user profile Value 3 user databases per SQL Server: 1 x 50 GB (5,000 user) 1 x 100 GB (10,000 user) 1 x 150 GB (15,000 user) Number of SQL Server instances 2 Number of user databases for each virtual machine 3 Number of virtual machines 2 Total database size 600 GB Number of total users 60,000 Read-write ratio Concurrent users 85:15 online transaction processing (OLTP) Mixed, to simulate hot, warm, and cold workloads across the databases Hyper-V virtual machine design for SQL Server 2012 In this solution, we deployed two SQL Server virtual machines. The following list shows the Windows and SQL Server 2012 configurations of each virtual machine. Keep the default values for all other settings. Grant the Lock pages in memory privilege to the SQL startup account. Refer to Pre-Configuration Database Optimizations on the Microsoft website for more information. Format the user data device by allocating 64 KB for the NTFS allocation unit size. Refer to the SQL Server Best Practices Article on the Microsoft website for more information. Table 12 provides a summary of the SQL Server virtual machine configuration. Table 12. SQL virtual machine configuration Virtual machine role Quantity vcpu Memory (GB) Boot disk VHD (GB) SQL As described in Table 11, the total user database size is 600 GB. The user database log and the tempdb log are laid out on a separate LUN for each database. For tempdb 22

23 data, as suggested by best practice, we created the same number of LUNs for the tempdb datafiles as the number of CPUs on the SQL Server. We configured all the database and log LUNs for the SQL Server virtual machine as pass-through disks in Hyper-V. Table 13 provides detailed information about the SQL Server virtual machine pass-through disk configuration. Table 13. SQL virtual machine disk configuration Virtual machine role No. of virtual machines Pass-through disks (GB) Description SQL Database LUN of 150 GB DB Log LUN of 150 GB DB Database LUN of 100 GB DB Log LUN of 100 GB DB Database LUN of 50 GB DB 1 75 Log LUN of 50 GB DB SQL tempdb data 4 50 SQL tempdb log 1 No. of pass-through disks on each virtual machine Hyper-V cluster After we determined the virtual machine design for each individual application, the next step was to consider the Hyper-V cluster configuration. This solution deploys a Hyper-V cluster consisting of four nodes in the production site and another four nodes in the DR site to increase the availability of virtual machines and applications. As this solution has a multisite failover cluster with an even number of nodes, we used the quorum configuration of Node and File Share Majority. When determining where to place the virtual machines, it is important to consider load balancing and failure protection in your plan. You should distribute virtual machines with the same application roles as the different Hyper-V root servers. For example, this solution separates Exchange Mailbox Server virtual machines into different Hyper-V nodes, so if a Hyper-V node fails, only one of Mailbox Servers is affected. The same rule also applies to SharePoint WFE servers, SharePoint App WFE servers, Exchange HUB/CAS servers, and SQL Servers (including those for SharePoint). Table 14 describes the virtual machine placement on each of the solution s Hyper-V nodes and the summary of total resources allocated to the virtual machines. 23

24 Table 14. Virtual machine distribution in Hyper-V cluster nodes Production site server VM Role VM host name vcpu Memory (GB) Exchange Mailbox ExMBX Exchange HUB/CAS ExHC Node 1 SharePoint WFE SPSWFE SharePoint App SPSAPP SQL SQL Total: Exchange Mailbox ExMBX Node 2 Exchange HUB/CAS ExHC SharePoint SQL SPSSQL SharePoint WFE SPSWFE Total: Exchange Mailbox ExMBX Exchange HUB/CAS ExHC Node 3 SQL SQL Domain Controller DC SharePoint App SPSAPP Total: Exchange Mailbox ExMBX Node 4 Exchange HUB/CAS ExHC SharePoint SQL SPSSQL SharePoint WFE SPSWFE Total: For each virtual machine, a 200 GB virtual machine boot LUN is provisioned to provide storage for a 100 GB fixed-size virtual hard disk (VHD) disk for the virtual machine Operation System (OS), virtual machine configuration file, and the virtual machine memory swap file (of the same size as the memory configured for this virtual machine). We used the volume GUID to configure the boot LUN for each virtual machine. If the boot LUN was formatted with the NT file system (NTFS) and assigned with a drive letter on the Hyper-V node, it could not be configured as a cluster resource disk, and so a live migration would fail. By using the volume GUID, this GUID on the primary node was replicated to all remaining nodes and stayed the same on all nodes, leading to a successful virtual machine live migration across all cluster nodes. 24

25 Figure 3 shows the volume GUID of a virtual machine boot LUN in the Failover Cluster Manager. Figure 3. Volume GUID Figure 4 shows the volume GUID configuration for the virtual machine storage path. Figure 4. Storage path for VM OS VHD file FAST VP storage design The storage design of the VMAX 10K platform provides a robust, scalable, and simplified storage infrastructure. We used FAST VP technology in this solution for automated tiering storage to meet the changing application needs. Symmetrix FAST VP Symmetrix FAST VP operates on Virtual Provisioning thin devices and uses intelligent algorithms to continuously analyze devices at the sub-lun level. This enables FAST VP to identify and relocate the specific parts of a LUN that are most active and would benefit from being moved to higher-performing storage such as EFD. FAST VP also identifies the least active parts of a LUN and relocates that data to higher-capacity, more cost-effective storage such as SATA, without altering performance. Data movement between tiers is based on performance measurement and userdefined policies, and is executed automatically and nondestructively by FAST VP. For FAST VP to operate, you need to configure the following three storage elements: Storage tiers A storage tier is a specification of a set of resources of the same disk technology type (EFD, FC, or SATA) combined with a given RAID protection type (RAID 1, RAID 5, or RAID 6). Storage groups A storage group is a logical collection of Symmetrix devices that are to be managed together. 25

26 FAST policies A FAST policy groups between one and three tiers and assigns an upper usage limit for each storage tier. The upper limit specifies the maximum capacity that a storage group associated with the policy can have while residing on that particular tier. VMAX 10K storage and FAST VP design guidelines The following list provides general design guidance for running a mixed Microsoft application workload on a VMAX 10K storage array using FAST VP: EMC recommends separating databases and logs onto their own LUNs. Balance front-end processor and port utilization across all available VMAX 10K resources intended for the mixed Microsoft application environment. For FC, use port 0 of a given front-end processor (a slice) before also using port 1 of the same processor. For the thin devices used for the application data LUN in the solution, we created eight-way striped meta devices for better performance. Set FAST VP only for application data LUNs: For Exchange Server, exclude transaction log volumes from the FAST VP policy. For SharePoint and SQL Server, exclude the log and tempdb LUNs from the FAST VP policy. Exclude the Hyper-V virtual machine boot LUNs from the FAST VP policy. FAST VP configuration in this solution FAST VP in a VMAX 10K environment provides an easy way to employ the storage service specializations of an array configuration with a mixture of drive types. When configuring FAST VP in this solution, we considered the following: We chose the FAST VP tiers for this solution per the application requirements, with all three applications sharing the same tiers. This configuration allowed FAST VP to automatically move data across all disks in this tier for optimal performance. We chose a RAID 5 protection type for faster tiers like FC and EFD to yield the best total cost of ownership (TCO), and RAID 1 mirrored protection for SATA to yield the best performance results. For the SharePoint Server in this solution, each content database was 1 TB in size. In this situation, more IOPS are required than databases in a small size. Therefore, we used the FC tier for the majority of the storage devices. 26

27 Table 15 lists the FAST VP tiers and disk information used in this solution. Table 15. FAST VP tiers and disks Tier name Disk technology Quantity of disks RAID type EFD 200 GB EFD drives 12 RAID 5 (3+1) FC 450 GB 15k rpm FC drives 80 RAID 5 (3+1) SATA 2 TB 7.2k rpm SATA drives 68 RAID 1 The FAST VP policy settings were different for each application since each application has different performance requirements. Table 16 shows the FAST VP tiers and policies used in this solution. Table 16. FAST VP policy Application Tier FAST VP policy FC 10% Exchange SATA 90% EFD 10% SharePoint FC 80% SATA 10% EFD 25% SQL FC 65% SATA 10% 27

28 System management design and configuration Overview SCVMM 2008 R2 This solution architecture includes the following components to demonstrate a private cloud solution for customers who are looking for enterprise consolidation with management simplicity: SCVMM enables rapid deployment of virtual machines. ESI provides the ability to provision storage for the Microsoft Hyper-V environment. SCOM enables the discovery and health monitoring of Windows, Hyper-V, and Microsoft applications. This solution uses SCVMM to provide unified management for an environment of Hyper-V servers hosting SQL, SharePoint, and Exchange virtual machines. SCVMM also helps to consolidate physical servers in a virtual environment and monitor all clusters, hosts, and virtual machines in this environment. In addition, administrators can use SCVMM to rapidly provision the virtual machines and to dynamically optimize virtual resources. Figure 5 shows the virtual machine environment, including the host, CPU average, and memory information of a virtual machine. Figure 5. Virtual machine environment in SCVMM 28

29 ESI ESI greatly simplifies managing, and viewing and provisioning of EMC storage in a Hyper-V environment. As part of storage provisioning, ESI simplifies the steps involved in creating a LUN, processing the LUN through the steps of partitioning, formatting, and creating a drive letter. While configuring the cluster node in ESI, it is very easy to add a cluster system. After you add the cluster node to ESI, ESI shows all the cluster disks and its relative information. Figure 6 shows the Hyper-V hosts and VMAX 10K across the entire solution environment and that ESI provides insight into cluster disk resources on the storage. Figure 6. ESI simplified view of Hyper-V hosts and VMAX 10K ESI also supports PowerShell commands. For large environments, storage administrators can use ESI PowerShell commands to deploy multiple volumes in the Windows platform at the same time. For detailed steps on how to use ESI, refer to EMC Storage Integrator for Windows Product Guide. Note The features described in this white paper are based on the ESI version available at the time of solution validation. EMC constantly improves and 29

30 updates its products and technology with new features and functionality. Visit for the latest features and updates. SCOM 2007 R2 This solution uses SCOM 2007 R2 to discover and monitor the health, performance, and availability of the whole virtual infrastructure across Exchange, SQL, and SharePoint applications, the operation system, and hypervisors. The following management packs are imported into SCOM 2007 R2 to monitor the whole infrastructure: SQL Server Management Pack Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Management Pack System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2008 R2 Management Pack Microsoft Windows Server Operating System Management Pack Figure 7 shows SCOM monitoring of the Microsoft Windows and Hyper-V environment deployed in this solution. Figure 7. SCOM monitoring of Windows computers 30

31 RecoverPoint/CE design and configuration Overview VMAX 10K preparation for RecoverPoint/CE This section shows the design and configuration of RecoverPoint /CE, as well as the VMAX 10K preparation for RecoverPoint/CE in this solution. While RecoverPoint is qualified with VMAX 10K, and VMAX 10K has an integrated write-splitter to support RecoverPoint replication, a few more steps must be completed to make VMAX 10K fully prepared for RecoverPoint: 1. Configure the RecoverPoint splitter on the Symmetrix VMAX 10K array by provisioning the following volumes: A repository volume (3 GB) for the RecoverPoint appliance (RPA) cluster. This volume stores configuration information about the RPAs and RecoverPoint consistency groups, which enables a properly functioning RPA to seamlessly assume the replication activities of a failing RPA from the same cluster. We also provisioned a repository volume of the same size on the VNX5700 for the RPA cluster at the DR site. Eight unique gatekeeper volumes each for RPA1 and RPA2. To provision these volumes, create auto-provisioning masking views that present the volumes to the RPAs. For the solution, we created three masking views for the RecoverPoint cluster, as it consists of two RPAs. 2. When replicating volumes to a Symmetrix splitter, the production and replica LUN sizes must be identical. LUN size faking (fake size feature) is not supported by Symmetrix splitters. When replicating from a Symmetrix splitter to a different splitter, the replica LUN can be larger than the production LUN. However, as a best practice, always make the replica LUN the same size as the production LUN by using block count. 3. Enable the write-protect bypass for RPA initiators. The RecoverPoint splitter for VMAX 10K requires the RPA initiators to have special access that enables them to write to write-protected devices. Figure 8 shows this setting. Figure 8. Write-protect bypass for RPAs For more information, see EMC RecoverPoint Deploying with Symmetrix Arrays and Splitter Technical Notes. 31

32 RecoverPoint CRR configuration In this solution, RecoverPoint CRR replicates the production environment to the recovery environment using the RecoverPoint splitter. We used asynchronous replication over IP WAN for RecoverPoint CRR. We connected the RPAs for the production and DR sites by a trunked network between two switches in order for them to communicate with each other. Each RPA was connected to the network switches by two 1 Gb connections. A network Distance Emulator simulated the network latency between the RPA s WAN links. We configured the following two scenarios for testing: 25 ms network latency (2,500 km round trip distance) 85 ms network latency (8,500 km round trip distance) The RecoverPoint management console displays the data flow with more detailed information. Figure 9 shows the data flow on one of the consistency groups implemented in this solution. Figure 9. RecoverPoint CRR data flow in the management console RecoverPoint journal sizing The size of the journal volumes is closely related to your required protection window. Determining the journal size requires administrators to calculate the expected application data change rate in the environment. The following is the journal volume sizing formula: 32

33 As a general rule, EMC RecoverPoint field implementation experts recommend that you size journals at 20 percent of the data being replicated when change rates are not available. In this solution, the Exchange Mailbox data change rate is 6 Mb/s based on the Exchange user profile. To support a 3-day (72-hour) rollback requirement, the journal size should be 250 GB: 6 Mbps * 259,200 seconds / 0.8 * 1.05 = 2,041,200 Mb (~250 GB) In the calculation shown above, 259,200 seconds represents a 72-hour rollback window, and 0.8 represents 20 percent for reserved journal space. For optimal journal performance, ensure that you choose the appropriate RAID and drive types. In this solution, we used 600 GB 10k rpm SAS drives in a RAID 1/0 configuration on VNX5700 for the remote protection, and 600 GB 10k rpm FC drives in a RAID 1 configuration on VMAX 10K for failback during a site failover. To meet the protection window in this solution, EMC recommends that you configure the proper journal size for each consistency group as shown in Table 17. Consult your local RecoverPoint champion to size your journals based on your particular requirements. Table 17. Journal sizing for each consistency group Site Production site DR site Protection window 1 day 3 days Journal size Exchange Mailbox Server 75 GB Exchange Mailbox Server 250 GB Exchange HUB/CAS 5 GB Exchange HUB/CAS 20 GB SQL Server 75 GB SQL Server 250 GB SharePoint SQL Server 90 GB SharePoint SQL Server 300 GB SharePoint Application server 5 GB SharePoint Application server 20 GB SharePoint WFE server 15 GB SharePoint WFE server 50 GB Domain controller 5 GB Domain controller 20 GB EMC Cluster Enabler configuration EMC Cluster Enabler for Microsoft Failover Clusters is a software extension of failover cluster functionality. Cluster Enabler allows Microsoft Failover Clusters to operate across multiple connected storage arrays in geographically distributed clusters. Each cluster node connects through a storage network to the supported storage arrays. In a typical environment, storage data is replicated to another storage array on the DR site to protect the environment against site failure. It has read-write access on the source array and read-only access on the target array, which adds extra steps to allow read-write access on the remote site after failover when implementing stretched clusters across data centers. EMC Cluster Enabler helps automate these additional steps by providing the CECluRes custom resource type as part of the failover 33

34 cluster. Figure 10 shows this resource in a cluster s properties in the Failover Cluster Manager. Figure 10. CE cluster resource To configure the Cluster Enabler, we installed the CE base component and plug-in for RecoverPoint on each Hyper-V node (requires a reboot). The Hyper-V cluster was configured by Cluster Enabler Manager. Figure 11 shows the Cluster Enabler Manager managing the current Hyper-V cluster and the disk resources of a virtual machine. Figure 11. EMC Cluster Enabler Manager Console When the CE cluster is configured, it creates the CE custom resource for every resource group (a virtual machine is a resource group) that contains disk resources. It then makes all the disk resources in the cluster group dependent on this custom resource. Figure 12 shows the CE custom resource and disk dependency in a SharePoint WFE virtual machine. 34

35 Figure 12. EMC CE customer resource On the RecoverPoint side, there must be one matching consistency group for each virtual machine for Cluster Enabler to work. In this solution, we created 18 consistency groups: We named each consistency group the same as each virtual machine name. Figure 13 shows the matching names in the Failover Cluster Manager and RecoverPoint Management Application. 35

36 Figure 13. Virtual machine names in Failover Cluster Manager and consistency group names in RecoverPoint Management Application For each consistency group, we set up two journal volumes, one at the production site and the other at the DR site. Each consistency group s replication set consists of production LUNs and DR replica LUNs. Figure 14 shows the replication sets of an Exchange Mailbox consistency group. Figure 14. Replication sets of a consistency group 36