FlashSoft for VMware vsphere This document supports FlashSoft for VMware vsphere, version 3.0.
Copyright 2012 SanDisk Corporation. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This document contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from SanDisk Corporation. SanDisk is a trademark of SanDisk Corporation, registered in the United States and other countries. FlashSoft is a trademark of SanDisk Enterprise IP LLC. Other brand names mentioned herein are for identification purposes only and may be the trademarks of their respective holder(s). Specifications are subject to change without notice. Contact: SanDisk Corporation Corporate Headquarters 601 McCarthy Boulevard Milpitas, CA 95035 FlashSoft.support@sandisk.com SDF-TR-VM-1.4v.1.0 Page 2
Summary FlashSoft Software for VMware vsphere reduces I/O latency by enabling a server-tier solid-state (SSD) device as an intermediate cache for disk-based storage. FlashSoft for VMware vsphere runs within the VMware ESXi hypervisor, and it provides the following important benefits: 1. Application performance on virtual machines is increased. 2. VM density is increased. The tests described in this report address the second benefit: VM density. Using a tile-based virtualization scalability test, the FlashSoft engineering team at SanDisk ran a set of five tests: Test # Storage Number of tiles Result 1 HDD (baseline) 4 Pass 2 HDD (baseline) 5 Fail 3 HDD (baseline) 6 Fail 4 HDD+SSD w/ FlashSoft 10 Pass 5 HDD+SSD w/ FlashSoft 13 Pass These test results show that SSD-based caching with FlashSoft software enabled a greater than 3x increase in the VM density of the system tested. Page 3
Hardware Test Configuration The following hardware configuration was used for all tests for the System Under Test (SUT) and the Client. Page 4
System Under Test (SUT) Virtualization Vendor/Product VMware ESXi 5.0.0 # of Systems Under Test (SUT) 1 Vendor Model Dell Inc. PowerEdge R810 Processor Intel Xeon E7-4860 Processor Speed Processor Cores Memory 2.27 GHz 40 cores, 4 chips, 10 cores/chip, 2 threads/core 256 GB Operating System ESXi 5.0.0 JVM Version File System Other Hardware OpenJDK Runtime Environment (IcedTea 6 1.11.3) (rhel-1.48.1.11.3.el6_2-x86_64) vmfs5 LSI WarpDrive PCIe SSD SUT Storage Storage Controllers 1 x LSI SAS 2008 Storage Enclosure Disk Description 1 x Dell PowerVault MD3220 24 x 146GB SAS 15KRPM 6Gb/s Page 5
Storage Network Network Adapters Intel 82599EB 10 Gigabit TN SUT Ports Total 2 SUT Ports Used 1 Network Type Network Speed 10 Gigabit Ethernet 10 Gb/s Client Model PowerEdge R610 # of Clients 1 Processor Processor Speed Intel Xeon E5620 2.4 GHz # of Processors 1 Memory Network Controller Operating System JVM Version 48GB Intel 82599EB 10 Gigabit TN ESXi 5.0.0 on bare metal / Linux in VM OpenJDK Runtime Environment (IcedTea6 1.11.3) (rhel-1.48.1.11.3.el6_2-x86_64) Page 6
Test Results The following performance results were observed by conducting a tile-based virtualization scalability test multiple times for different combinations of tiles, with and without I/O acceleration, using the same workload and hardware configuration each time. 4 Tiles No Acceleration (Pass) A 4 tile test was conducted to establish a baseline for the highest level of VM density that could be achieved without acceleration for the test using the specified hardware configuration. The 4 tile test was clearly passed as indicated by the full marks observed in the Quality of Service summary, shown below: Performance Tile # Pct Load App Web Mail Idle Per-Tile Overall 1 100% 33.47 53.98 88.16 N/A 97.90 2 100% 33.64 54.01 88.06 N/A 98.04 3 100% 33.47 53.92 88.01 N/A 97.81 4 100% 33.54 53.93 87.96 N/A 97.86 Tile # Pct Load App Quality Of Service (QOS) Web Mail Idle Per-Tile 391.6 Overall 1 100% 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 2 100% 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 3 100% 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 4 100% 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 100.00% Page 7
5 Tiles No Acceleration (Fail) A 5 tile test was conducted to determine the extent to which the non-accelerated configuration could be successfully operated. At 5 tiles, results indicate failure to pass the Mail test. The Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation (SPEC) sets forth the following guidelines to evaluate Mail test performance: Mail : For each IMAP operation type, 95% of all transactions must complete within five seconds. Additionally for each IMAP operation type, there may be no more than 1.5% failures (where a failure is defined as transactions that return unexpected content, or time-out). The total failure count across all operation types must be no more than 1% of the count of all operations. Data extracted from the test (shown below) show specifically where the 5 tile test fails to pass (achieves less than a 98.5% score). This means the non-accelerated system configuration is only capable of providing a maximum density of 4 tiles. Tile 1: Mail Append 13.78 99193 97479 1714 98.27 Fetch 34.93 251490 251384 106 99.96 Tile 2: Mail Append 13.73 98845 96786 2059 97.92 Fetch 34.70 249852 249747 105 99.96 Tile 3: Mail Append 13.81 99450 97986 1464 98.53 Fetch 34.93 251522 251450 72 99.97 Page 8
Tile 4: Mail Append 13.79 99258 97966 1292 98.70 Fetch 35.01 252092 252019 73 99.97 Tile 5: Mail Append 13.82 99517 98376 1141 98.85 Fetch 35.04 252271 252207 64 99.97 Page 9
6 Tiles No Acceleration (Fail) The non-accelerated configuration was tested one more time using 6 tiles to firmly establish the baseline level and to identify any trends. As with the 5 tile test, failure to pass occurred in the Mail portion of the test. Data extracted from the test report (shown below), clearly indicate failure of all 6 tiles (achieving less than a 98.5% score), and a trend is now apparent. Tile 1: Mail Append 11.63 83756 52815 30937 63.06 Fetch 29.47 212185 209322 2863 98.65 Tile 2: Mail Append 11.52 82958 48219 34738 58.12 Fetch 29.06 209213 206143 3070 98.53 Tile 3: Mail Append 11.61 83580 52618 30961 62.96 Fetch 29.59 213082 210458 2624 98.77 Tile 4: Mail Append 11.70 84221 54211 30009 64.37 Fetch 29.76 214267 211690 2577 98.80 Tile 5: Mail Append 11.96 86139 59127 27012 68.64 Fetch 30.57 220087 217942 2145 99.03 Tile 6: Mail Append 12.33 88762 66471 22291 74.89 Fetch 30.97 223004 221115 1889 99.15 Page 10
10 Tiles With Acceleration (Pass) After SSD-based caching was applied to the configuration controlled by FlashSoft software, the system was able to easily pass the same test for 10 tiles achieving a 100% perfect score. This demonstrates FlashSoft software s ability to more than double VM tile density 1. Performance Tile # Pct Load Applicati on Web Mail Idle Per-Tile 1 100% 33.60 53.92 88.65 N/A 98.17 2 100% 33.52 53.96 88.38 N/A 98.01 3 100% 33.46 54.00 88.95 N/A 98.19 4 100% 33.48 53.90 88.55 N/A 98.00 5 100% 33.54 53.96 88.52 N/A 98.09 6 100% 33.46 53.92 88.61 N/A 98.02 7 100% 33.48 53.94 88.45 N/A 97.99 8 100% 33.41 53.91 88.19 N/A 97.81 9 100% 33.48 54.05 88.50 N/A 98.08 10 100% 33.60 53.84 88.43 N/A 98.04 Tile # Pct Load Applicati on Quality Of Service (QOS) Web Mail Idle Per-Tile 1 100% 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 2 100% 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 3 100% 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 4 100% 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 5 100% 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 6 100% 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 7 100% 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 8 100% 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 9 100% 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 10 100% 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 Overall 980.3 Overall 100.00% Page 11
13 Tiles With Acceleration (Pass) The same test was conducted once more for 13 tiles. After allowing the cache to be warmed 2, the system using FlashSoft for VMware vsphere passed the test with 13 tiles. The Mail Sever portion of test that had previously been the point of failure for the non-accelerated 5 and 6 tile tests was easily passed at 100%. Although the measured Overall and Application s were slightly less than 100%, the achieved test values were still high enough to unconditionally pass the scalability test 3. The overall performance score of 1271 is 3.25x greater than the score of 391.6 originally achieved in the non-accelerated 4 tile test. This represents FlashSoft software s ability to increase tile density more than 3 times! Performance Tile # Pct Load App Web Mail Idle Per-Tile 1 100% 33.62 53.89 88.30 N/A 98.04 2 100% 33.46 53.76 88.26 N/A 97.79 3 100% 33.37 53.62 88.27 N/A 97.62 4 100% 33.54 53.76 88.23 N/A 97.86 5 100% 33.42 53.72 88.33 N/A 97.75 6 100% 33.33 53.81 88.35 N/A 97.73 7 100% 33.50 53.69 88.13 N/A 97.74 8 100% 33.45 53.83 88.34 N/A 97.85 9 100% 33.49 53.71 88.37 N/A 97.83 10 100% 33.50 53.73 88.28 N/A 97.82 11 100% 33.40 53.94 88.31 N/A 97.86 12 100% 33.38 53.75 88.44 N/A 97.77 13 100% 33.51 53.80 87.94 N/A 97.74 Overall 1271 Page 12
Quality Of Service (QOS) Tile # Pct Load App Web Mail Idle Per-Tile 1 100% 0.99 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 2 100% 0.99 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 3 100% 0.99 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 4 100% 0.99 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 5 100% 0.98 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 6 100% 0.97 1.00 1.00 1.00 0.99 7 100% 0.99 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 8 100% 0.99 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 9 100% 0.99 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 10 100% 0.98 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 11 100% 0.98 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 12 100% 0.98 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 13 100% 0.99 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 Overall 99.63% Notes: 1 2 3 Based on internal testing. Results from a tile-based virtualization scalability test. System under test: Dell 810. Complete test report available. When testing at this level and beyond, it is necessary to warm the cache by populating it with hot data. This allows the benefits provided by a cache to be realized; and is in fact representative of how such a solution would actually be used in real-life situations (such as being installed within a data center to increase the number of VMs that can be hosted on a server). The cache is warmed by simply running the test without recording results and then running the test an additional time to collect test results. Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation publishes documentation that describes how to interpret test results and defines the levels of performance that constitute a passing score. Page 13