HP AutoRAID 12H User's Manual
Contents
1. executive summary In today s market environment you are constantly challenged to find ways to both grow your business and save costs And with the current market growth uncertainties saving costs is getting a lot of attention by everyone from Main Street to Wall Street to inside the Beltway HP has invented a solution that will get you on the road to saving money and set you up to grow revenue streams once the economy turns around That solution is HP s Virtual Arrays lt may sound complicated at first but HP s Virtual Arrays are simply just another automated advancement They free your organization from the many manual functions required by the current vintage of arrays on the market today Just as automated printing machines revolutionized the publishing industry in the last century HP revolutionized the personal and corporate printing industry with its industry leading LaserJet printers Now HP s Virtual Arrays are revolutionizing the storage industry creating industry leading storage solutions that save your organization 2x in operating costs over the current set of arrays on today s market HP s Virtual Arrays are automated to maximize your operating efficiencies and maximize your return on investment They are automated to save you money The following customer quotes and two articles explain how HP s Virtual Arrays deliver on this money saving promise Read them for the details or have your trusted IT professio2. but it is not enough to justify bringing the system down However over time the performance continues to degrade until eventually the problem is so severe that the administrator is forced to bring the system down over the protests of the users He must then go through all 13 configuration steps including binding all the LUNs and waiting for the reformat to complete After that the cycle begins again Performance initially is great but over time it degrades until finally the pain increases to the point that a reconfiguration again becomes justifiable managing the hp virtual array Configuring an HP Virtual Array is much simpler than the process for configuring a traditional array Remember the complex steps involved in configuring a traditional array The steps involved in configuring the HP Virtual Array consist of determining the total capacity and performance requirements for each application determining the number and size of LUNs 1 4 hp storage white paper determining the number of disks required for the necessary performance creating the LUNs note creating LUNs takes only a few seconds per LUN Step away from the array the configuration is now complete Every other step is automatic RAID levels are automatic The different capacity number and speeds of disk drives are automatically accounted for The cache page size is automatically set Even the disk formatting is performed automatically Moreover after
3. a full complement of virtualization functions Enterprises that value a return on investment in areas such as data sharing optimized self tuning performance and data access flexibility must evaluate HP s Virtual Array offerings SAN virtualization is in effect the aggregation of multiple storage devices in a centralized configuration a storage pool This simplifies the storage administrator s role by enabling all resources to be seen as a single entity SAN virtualization by itself however offers little assistance in efficiently managing requirements of single applications It pays scant attention to the capacity and performance dynamics of individual heterogeneous devices within the storage pool HP in its Federated Storage Area Management FSAM strategy acknowledges the importance of SAN virtualization In its VA7O00 Series HP extends these concepts and benefits to the device array level Together they demonstrate the full advantage of interdependencies between managing SAN virtual storage pools and managing virtual storage at the device level HP s VA7000 Series Characteristics Feature VA7100 VA7400 Capacity 1 TB raw in 3U enclosure 7 6 TB raw using the Disk System DS 14 TB in 2M rack 2400 up to six DS2400s chained 14 TB in a 2M rack of 73 GB disks LUNs max 128 1 024 Disk Drives Supported 15 per 3U enclosure Up to 105 drives with DS2400 18 GB 15 K rpm same disk support as 7400 36 GB 10 K and 15 K
4. absorbed at the array level without consuming SAN or server resources 2 1 by D H Brown Associates Inc super redundancy enhances RAID As alternatives to the self tuning LUN management capability described above the VA7000 series also enhances LUN performance through its use of RAID configurations redundancy groups Many variations to RAID configurations have surfaced over the past 10 years Most provide moderate variations on the standard RAID 1 mirroring and RAID 5 striping techniques In its VAZOOO Series HP delivers a variation that substantially adds to its availability characteristics RAID 5DP Double Parity approaches a RAID 6 solution in that it enables recovery from simultaneous failures in two disks without loss of any data While this might seem superfluous in RAID arrays of only a few disks it becomes critical in configurations supporting a large number of disks in a virtual array The potential for disruption due to disk failure grows with the number of disks involved in an array The goal of virtualization is to remove the physical constraints which enables dozens of disks to be used in a single virtual array HP has addressed this concern with its RAID 5DP solution increasing data availability by two orders of magnitude over traditional RAID 5 implementations Additionally use of storage is made more efficient as very large RAID groups up to dozens of disks are now manageable using o
5. further Once the disk is inserted the array automatically includes that disk into the existing disk space and stripes all LUNs across that disk This means that even without the creation of any additional LUNs the array performance will improve because of the additional available spindle Only the HP Virtual Array automatically adds the new disks to existing LUNs Further any newly created LUNs are also automatically spread across all the disks in the array including the additional disk time to implementation formatting the array As mentioned earlier after new disks are added to a traditional array it then takes several hours to complete the formatting of the RAID group During this format phase no data can be written to the new LUNs With some implementations the array is offline until all the LUNs have been formatted In other implementations I Os can be written to already formatted LUNs even while other LUNs are going through the format process although performance is very slow Because executing the disk format command uses up so much of the array s internal bandwidth array performance is greatly reduced until all of the disk formatting has been completed With HP s Virtual Array Technology the array is immediately available as soon as the LUNs have been configured The disk formatting is done as the writes are done In other words as writes are sent to disk the formatting is accomplished for only those blocks
6. optimum performance 1 0 hp storage white paper These are not trivial benefits Data centers are already complex and with the continued explosion in storage capacity they will only become more so HP s Array Virtualization is evolutionary not revolutionary It is a logical progression in array technology It is proven It is necessary It is the perfect storage area network SAN technology And it is offered only by Hewlett Packard array virtualization defined The purpose of virtualization in any technology is to hide complexity from the user or in the case of disk arrays to hide complexity from the storage administrator and provide a standard environment for application development and increased price performance Disk arrays are complex devices designed for complex tasks A disk array with 50 disk drives is more complex to manage than a disk array with one drive Armed with virtualization an array could potentially allow the 50 drives to be perceived and managed as one big drive or as one big pool of storage The power of virtualization is the power of simplification Now for the definition Virtualization in arrays is about creating and managing virtual storage devices It is about taking blocks of storage on the disk drives and presenting them as LUNs logical units of storage What system administrators see then are not the actual physical disk drives but rather a created simplified virtual view of the act
7. the LUNs are set the array is immediately available to accept data The array does the work not the administrator Not only is this the initial configuration process but the process is just as simple for any subsequent reconfigurations In other words if LUNs have to be deleted and new ones created the process is just as simple Note As with any array if you wanted to delete the LUNs but save the data you would have to do a backup and restore adding capacity with hp virtual arrays HP s Virtual Array Architecture also simplifies the process of adding capacity to an array Today many traditional arrays allow the administrator to add disks on the fly in other words to add a disk drive when the array is up and running and accepting I Os However when the disk drive is added to a traditional array it is not part of any LUN It is not formatted and it is not able to accept data An administrator must go in and manually perform those functions If the disk drive is to be added to an already existing RAID group then the data in that group must first be backed up and later restored to the newly created LUN that now contains the new disk drive And except for the backup the steps are the same as when an array is first configured section The HP Virtual Array accepts new disks while the array is up and running and accepting I Os as with some higher end traditional arrays However the HP Virtual Array takes it one step
8. the new disks This normally requires data movement within the array However administrators have the option to postpone this data movement by simply turning off the array s Auto Include feature faqs Question Isn t this virtualization technology new and doesn t that make it risky and untried Answer lt would be new for HP s competitors but HP has been virtualizing arrays since 1995 and since then HP has sold over 20 000 virtualized arrays The technology is neither new nor risky and it offers a simple and compelling value proposition i e great ease of management and great data protection For arrays management costs are far more costly than the initial purchase price The HP virtual array is the easiest array in the world to configure add capacity and manage the administration savings are significant It also has the best availability of any mid range array on the market See the white paper titled VA7100 Hardware High Availability Features 1 6 hp storage white paper for more details Question Shouldn t a good system administrator know which RAID level the data is in With the virtual array have no idea if it is in RAID 5 or RAID 1 0 Short answer Both the HP Surestore Virtual Array 7100 and the HP Surestore Virtual Array 7400 can be configured to run in either fixed RAID 1 0 or AutoRAID modes And to help with performance analysis the controller can provide data on the actual usage of ea
9. 00 series 22 e software extends virtual functions 2 3 customer quotes After seven years and 20 000 sales we hardly consider virtualization new Many companies have optimized their performance with HP including Amazon com We look at three things when selecting data warehouse disks Price per terabyte throughput capabilities and availability features With the HP Virtual Array 7100 the price per terabyte was extremely competitive and the throughput was phenomenal Our current Superdome VA7 100 configuration is capable of driving three to four gigabytes of I O per second and the autoraid features of the VA7100 exceed our availability requirements Mark Dunlap Director of Data Warehousing Amazon com Room amp Board After reviewing various competitive scenarios for our SAP environment we selected HP as our single vendor with rp5450 servers and a VA7 100 for our SAN We found the setup to be fast and easy and the performance excellent It was an easy decision to add a second virtual array a VA7400 to accommodate our growth and position us for the future John Focht Systems Administrator Room amp Board State of New Mexico In consolidating from eight controllers to the HP Surestore VA7100 we expected to see some performance degradation in running our Children Youth and Family Department databases We haven t seen any degradation and are pleased with the performance We ve found it very easy to
10. Virtual Array will catch up and continue to operate at peak performance for as long as the array is plugged in while the traditional array will get slower over time This is how it works When the HP Virtual Array is first turned on it doesn t know which data needs to be in RAID 1 0 and which data needs to be in RAID 5 After a day or so of reading the access patterns it will figure out which RAID level is best suited for which data Once that happens the performance will be as good as in any manually configured array And don t forget if the environment should change after that even slightly the HP Virtual Array will adjust while a manually configured array can do nothing but keep plugging along in a degraded mode Question Are you saying that this technology is for everyone l m not looking for anything new Answer If it s new to you then it is understandable that HP s virtual technology might seem unnecessary After all you ve succeeded without it up till now But sometimes improvements do come along that really do hold out the promise of a widespread advantage The dilemma of our rapidly advancing technological age is to know which new technologies should be ignored and which are the ones that need to be grasped 1 8 hp storage white paper Consider It is always easier to manage a smaller number of things than a larger number of things At first bits were grouped into bytes When there were too many bytes to kee
11. acity is definable as a logical set of storage blocks rather than as a specific set of predefined physical disks Each LUN becomes scalable from a few megabytes to several terabytes by adding capacity without operator intervention the array automatically controls the addition of new capacity to the storage pool This self tuning capability automatically restripes data across new disks added to the array minimizing any potential imbalances of data distribution within the VA7OOO series Redistribution occurs in the background with no impact on SAN bandwidth or server performance This function significantly reduces the efforts required by the system administrator to keep storage resources in balance Also with VAZOOO virtualization the number of LUNs is no longer restricted by the amount of physical storage Administrators can configure LUNs up to the limit permitted by the architecture without concern for physical disk groupings within arrays Disk arrays without virtualization support LUNs only from contiguous free space requiring allocation of large storage chunks even if only a small portion is necessary As changes occur over time data must be moved or storage reconfigured to recover unused space Within the VA7000 fragmentation of physical space is managed at the RAID Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks block level rather than in disk sized chunks The impact of free space management and garbage collection is
12. ager ViaSat section virtualization simplification and storage In 2001 HP announced two new disk arrays the HP Surestore Virtual Array 7400 and the HP Surestore Virtual Array 7100 This paper will focus entirely on the virtualization technology that makes these the easiest arrays to manage and the most intelligently simple arrays on the market This paper answers the question What is the value of HP s Array Virtualization For those familiar with data center environments virtualization is not a new concept Virtualization already exists to some extent at every point in the solution stack For example servers operating systems databases file systems volume managers drivers switches and storage devices all require virtualization to achieve their purposes At the array level HP s Virtual Architecture simply expands on already familiar ground and it cleanly fulfills the promise of virtualization it hides complexity from the administrator and can have a dramatic and positive effect on real world performance This reduction in complexity greatly simplifies and streamlines the data center environment hp s array virtualization reduces the time spent managing individual arrays allows storage administrators to manage more storage with less effort reduces the opportunities for human error frees up precious IT resources to work on revenue generating projects selfrmanages the RAID configuration for
13. allocate space with the VA7100 and have saved time with reduced administrative overhead With the AutoRAID feature we ve eliminated worrying about mirroring We let AutoRAID go to work and don t even have to think about it Tom Elder DBA 3 Children Youth and Family Department State of New Mexico customer quotes cont d Santa Clara We needed to move to the next generation of technology as we merged data centers We had outgrown the large server farm scenario and wanted to focus on consolidation In discussing our current and future needs for our NT environment the VA7400 was the best solution We have transformed to an enterprise environment with great expandability for the future And as a hospital environment with needs for an always on 24x7 operation we ve found a reliable solution with HP Gary Davis Hospital Information Systems Manager II Santa Clara ViaSat We selected the HP Surestore Virtual Array 7400 storage based on the number of Oracle ERP instances that would be needed We found the Virtual Array has many more features and capabilities than the Sun solution that was being proposed We felt it would scale the way we needed provided strong price performance and offered excellent operating efficiencies It has saved many hours and long nights for our DBA s and system administrators Plus we re using the HP Surestore tape library for efficient tape backup data protection Mike Johnson IT Man
14. anual transmissions in cars would not give better performance if drivers were only allowed to shift gears once and could never change them after that In essence this is what you have with traditional disk arrays You are stuck with the initial configuration unless you bring the array down and go through a time consuming and complex reconfiguration every time the 1 7 hp storage white paper environment changes HP s Virtual Array Architecture tunes the array automatically 24 hours per day It is the hands down winner in real world performance A better analogy would be to compare the multiple manual processes required to set the type load the paper and actually print books on the old style printing presses with those of the automated printing systems of our generation Obviously automation in printing presses adds to greater performance It works the same for arrays Question Wouldn t striping the data across such large RAID groups make the disk rebuild times very long and take up a high percentage of the array resources Answer Because of HP s RAID 5DP this is practically a non issue for HP Virtual Array products The HP Virtual Array s RAID 5DP gives each redundancy group 10x the protection of RAID 1 RAID 5DP requires that 3 drives would have to fail before there would be data loss Thus even AFTER a drive fails the data is STILL protected with the same degree of protection as standard RAID 5 Finally this means tha
15. being written to This means that while there is a small hit to performance for that individual write there is very very little impact on overall array performance 1 5 hp storage white paper automating the cache parameters Configuring a traditional array typically requires setting the cache parameters such as the percentage of read and write cache the size of the cache pages and in some cases the allocation of cache to specific LUNs In making these determinations there is ample opportunity for error With HP s Virtual Arrays all of this is preset and automatic And this means that all the parameters within the array are tuned to work in unison with the stripe size and the array hardware First the cache is set at 80 read and 20 write is shared between controllers and is treated as a pool Second the cache page size is set at 64K and is set to automatically destage to disk every 4 seconds whether the page is full or not The 64K size minimizes the number of I Os to the back end in sequential environments and provides a carefully calculated balance within the array between the number of cache pages and the speed of the back end in random environments performance Traditional arrays are susceptible to hot spots and to changes in the environment that make the initial configuration obsolete The HP Virtual Array virtually eliminates these critical performance issues First the HP Virtual Array is far l
16. ch RAID level Long answer With the HP Virtual Array if your data is frequently used it WILL be in RAID 1 0 and will have the best performance The virtual array RAID level policies were developed after researching the decision patterns of experienced system and database administrators Almost always technology progresses from highly manual to highly automated operations In almost every case the developers of automation simply replicate the best of the already developed manual processes This is exactly what HP did with the HP Virtual Array Also please note The Virtual Array policies are improved over those of the Model 12H The virtual array really does strive in almost every instance to do any background data movement during periods of low array activity Question On which disks is my data kept suppose the virtual array can be trusted to handle the RAID level decisions but also need to know on which disks my indexes and redo logs are kept The way the virtual array moves data and stripes across all the disks means have no idea where my data is kept Answer First if you are worried about the integrity of your data the HP Virtual Array does a combination of things to protect your data that no other array does First the HP Virtual Array offers end to end checksum ECC protected memory parity coherence disk scrubbing and RAID 5DP which in a typical configuration section gives 100X the data protection of tradi
17. ciates Inc software extends virtual functions While hardware design and functionality are critical to enabling performance software function can maximize the efficiency and flexibility of the device HP s software packages extend the management and flexibility of the VA7000 family while exploiting the virtualization capability HP s Software for VA7000 Series Feature VA7100 VA7400 CommandView SDM HP UX with all PA RISC computers HP UX with all PA RISC computers Windows and Red Hat Linux with Intel Windows and Red Hat Linux with Intel Pentium III 500 MHz computers or above Pentium III 500 MHz computers or above HP UX with all PA RISC computers Windows and Red Hat Linux with Intel Pentium III 500 MHz computers or above Enterprise Management HP UX with all PA RISC computers Smart Plug ins Windows and Red Hat Linux with Intel Pentium III 500 MHz computers or above Secure Manager VA HP UX with all PA RISC computers Windows and Linux with Intel Pentium III 500 MHz computers or above supports 128 World Wide Names and 128 secure LUNs HP UX with all PA RISC computers Windows and Linux with Intel Pentium IlI 500 MHz computers or above Managed by Command View SDM supports 128 World Wide Names and 1 024 secure LUNs Business Copy VA HP UX with all PA RISC computers HP UX with all PA RISC computers Windows and Linux with Intel Pentium III 500 Windows and Linux with Intel Pentium III 500 MHz computers or abo
18. e capacities and speeds within the array Benefit simplifies disk drive inventory control and capacity management allows disk drives and controllers to be moved to any slot in the array Benefit reduces the chance for human error hp storage white paper why now is the time for array virtualization Data centers have become enormously complex Interestingly new technologies that initially held the promise of simplifying the data center have in fact added to the complexity at least for now Fibre Channel SANs and the low cost and ease of adding storage have enabled data centers to expand both in size and complexity The world is moving from SCSI to Fibre Channel Fibre Channel and SANs allow for more devices to be connected together with greater performance and at far greater distances All of these are wonderful benefits but along with those benefits comes an ability to now create configurations that are larger more complex further apart and harder to manage than anything envisioned even a few years ago Couple this new reality with the exponential increase in storage fueled by its low cost and you have a recipe for losing control of the data center Consider this while human resources remain static environments grow larger and more complex Simplification is the only realistic answer Adding newer and slicker management software oftentimes can help but in the long term adding software tends to have the oppos
19. erformance characteristics of the disks which RAID level will meet desired capacity cost and availability needs number and type of RAID groups number of LUNs based on application performance and array configuration needs size of LUNs configuration of the server volume manager cache configuration options stripe depth configuration implementation plan who what and when time to bind LUNs section In addition the same processes must be followed whenever disk drives are added or the environment changes Plus these additional factors must be considered current configuration desired additional capacity performance and availability whether the new disks will be stripe extensions of existing disks or be independent groups here is a typical process for setting up a traditional array 1 Determine number of disks number of RAID groups disks and disk type per RAID group RAID level of each group total LUNs LUNs per RAID group stripe depth 2 Determine volume manager configuration stripe size and depth LUNs per logical volume 3 Using the command station set up the LUNs and their RAID levels and assign them to particular disks 4 Set up the cache page size depending on the size of the I Os coming in from the host 5 Finally before the new LUNs can be used disks must be formatted which can take many hours per array configuring an array for a database Properly config
20. esources for managing storage virtualization improves the efficiency of storage administrators virtualization reduces the training required for people to manage storage data always grows but human head count doesn t virtualization reduces the number of people required to manage storage key features of hp s patented virtual technology automatically stripes every LUN across all disks in a very large redundancy group Benefit simplifies overall management reduces the number of LUNs required to 1 1 array virtualization defined achieve a balanced workload and eliminates hot spots automatically adds new disk drives into existing RAID groups Benefit capacity upgrades require no IT training are faster and hot spots are virtually eliminated dynamically and without any human intervention optimizes the RAID level to the application workload Benefit performance tunes the array 24 hours per day and eliminates downtime for reconfigurations allows LUNs to be created in seconds Benefit reduces setup times allows immediate use of the array after LUN configuration Benefit speeds implementation time allows hundreds of LUNs to be created of virtually any size from a single megabyte to over 2TB Benefit simplifies configurations improves application performance and greatly decreases management complexity and potential for security errors allows any combination of disk driv
21. ess likely to experience a hot spot in other words it will almost never experience a condition where a few disk drives become a performance bottleneck in the array Here s why the virtual array always and automatically stripes all of the LUNs across all of the disks in the RAID group For example assume a virtual array loaded with a total of 60 disks had 30 disks in each of its two RAID redundancy groups Every LUN in that group would be spread across all 30 disks section Every LUN would have 30 spindles at its disposal And don t forget in the virtual array the spare disk capacity is also spread across all of the spindles i e there are no unused spindles in an HP Virtual Array Second the virtual array automatically performance tunes the array 24 hours per day 365 days per year The RAID level is matched with the workload Data with access patterns that would benefit from RAID 1 0 storage are automatically directed to a RAID 1 0 section of the array Infrequently used data or data whose access patterns match RAID 5DP performance characteristics are directed to the RAID 5DP section of the array These are the same rules that a storage expert would use fo optimize an application s performance In addition like an expert storage administrator any changes to the configuration are made only during low usage periods or when disks are added Note When disks are added the existing LUNs are automatically extended across
22. ite effect of reducing complexity Software may give you a central place from which to manage your hardware and it may simplify processes but it doesn t necessarily eliminate those processes Armed with better management software environments are encouraged to add more hardware and eventually the environment becomes as complex as it was before but for different reasons And when the human resources are already stretched to the breaking point this is a recipe for complexity stress long hours and human error Virtualization is the answer It solves the basic underlying problem It permanently simplifies the environment for the system administrator reasons for more virtualization in the array managing traditional storage The mistakes are all there waiting to be made Chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower on the game s opening position Configuring and managing traditional storage is time consuming and challenging even for experienced system administrators When configuring storage a wide variety of factors must be accounted for judgments must be made and steps repeated over and over again The potential for error is high The cost of configuring an array improperly is also high The administrator must consider the following factors capacity cost performance and availability requirements requirements for future additional capacity and performance number of disk drives and their capacity p
23. nals do this for you Just remember that HP s Virtual Arrays are the only automated arrays on the market today that offer you these cost saving features at a mid range price Can you think of even one profitable publishing house that has not fully adopted automated publishing equipment Can you think of any successful organization that has not adopted laser printing The same will be said for HP s Virtual Arrays Capture these savings today table of contents customer quotes e Amazon com i Room amp Board i State of New Mexico i e ViaSat ii e Santa Clara ii section 1 hp storage white paper November 2001 e virtualization simplification and storage e array virtualization defined e the reasons you need more virtualization in the array e key features of hp s patented virtual technology e why now is the time for array virtualization managing traditional storage configuring an array for a database e the system administrator s dilemma e managing the hp virtual array e adding capacity with hp virtual arrays e time to implementation formatting the array automating the cache parameters performance faqs e summary e for more information CMDAUUNUHARARWNN OO section 2 hp extends virtualization to the array by D H Brown Associates Inc November 15 2001 e virtual value in hp s va7000 series 2 0 super redundancy enhances RAID 2 1 e reliability characteristics of hp s va70
24. nly two parity disks rather than a parity disk for each group of five disks Technology Trends Copyright 2001 by D H Brown Associates Inc section 2 hp extends virtualization to the array reliability characteristics of hp s va7000 series redundant hot swappable controllers fans power supplies and an internal fibre channel hub eliminates planned downtime online firmware and capacity upgrade using mixed capacity disk drives Checksum algorithm used for end to end data and data path protection against data corruption double parity supports recovery from two simultaneous disk failures RAID 5DP error Correction Code ECC protects mirrored cache from corruption before writing to disk three day battery backup protects user data in cache from power outages and disasters phone home capability is provided through hp s Predictive Support programs and Event Monitoring Services EMS Redundancy groups are physical disks that contain redundant copies of data defined by the RAID type assigned to the data Each redundancy group is divided into LUNs addressable by a host The VA7100 supports only one redundancy group with each of the 15 disk drives in the enclosure addressable by both controllers with no physical restrictions The two fibre channel loops one to each controller include a transmit line and a receive line for the transfer of data to and from the controller Controller to con
25. p track of they had to be grouped into blocks When there were too many blocks to manage someone invented volumes and volume managers What do you think the next logical step is when there are foo many volumes Answer HP s Virtual Array summary HP s Virtual Array with HP s patented Virtual Technology is the industry s most intelligent disk array Because of its unique ability to greatly simplify storage management it significantly reduces overall IT management costs and practically eliminates mistakes caused by human error HP s Virtual Technology also has a significant positive impact on real world performance by automatically eliminating hot spots and by performance tuning the array 24 hours per day 365 days per year for more information For additional information on HP Virtual Arrays and other HP storage products and solutions please call your local HP sales representative or visit our Web site at www hp com go storage section 2 hp extends virtualization to the array by D H Brown Associates Inc virtual value in hp s va7000 series Virtualization is a key to solving complexities associated with storage configurations As Information Technology continues its non stop evolution tools and devices that improve manageability while increasing business efficiency will command a premium in the marketplace HP has taken a significant step forward in delivering its Virtual Array VA 7000 series with
26. plication takes place at a specified point in time while the system is operating and entirely within the storage array reducing the potential for I O bottlenecks Auto Path Virtual Array VA routes data around any path s failure to maximize data availability It provides the ability to selfconfigure and to automatically manage multiple I O paths It also provides dynamic load balancing to ensure peak performance This document is copyrighted by D H Brown Associates Inc DHBA and is protected by U S and international copyright laws and conventions This document may not be copied reproduced stored in a retrieval system transmitted in any form posted on a public or private website or bulletin board or sublicensed to a third party without the written consent of DHBA NO copyright may be obscured or removed from the paper All trademarks and registered marks of products and companies referred to in this paper are protected This document was developed on the basis of information and sources believed to be reliable This document is to be used as is DHBA makes no guarantees or representations regarding and shall have no liability for the accuracy of data subject matter quality or timeliness of the content CA Unicenter TNG and BMC Patrol are supported in addition to the HP OpenView Storage Node Manager OpenView Allocator Builder Optimizer and Accountant Technology Trends Copyright 2001 by D H Bro
27. rces and bandwidth After a LUN has been formatted it can be used but as long as other LUNs in the array are also going through their format process the entire array will suffer from degraded performance Now a short word about human error Every step of this process has the potential for human error Except in the grossest cases errors would probably not result in data loss but every miscalculation in this process would easily result in a decline in performance Some of these declines could be huge For example miscalculating the RAID levels or the cache page size could severely degrade the array s performance section the system administrator s dilemma Change is the issue Many environments change over time and this makes their initial configurations progressively less and less optimal The dilemma is that an optimum configuration today eventually becomes out of date and typically over time performance degrades in traditional arrays but the administrator usually has neither the time nor the window of opportunity to bring the system down and perform the necessary reconfiguration Access patterns change Different areas of the database become more highly used Sometimes at the end of the month certain data that normally lies unused now becomes highly used and requires higher performance All of this poses problems for the conscientious system administrator At first the administrator notices a change in performance
28. rpm and 73 GB 10 K rpm 1 0 ports 1 Gb sec FC host and disk ports Two 2 Gb sec FC host ports two 1 Gb sec FC disk ports Cache 256 512 1024 MB mirrored 512 1024 MB mirrored per controller Transfer Rate 90 MB sec 12 000 I Os per sec from 160 MB sec 28 000 I Os per sec from cache cache 3000 I Os per sec back end 7500 I Os per sec back end In the HP Surestore VA7000 family virtual array refers to treating the disks within the array as a pool of storage blocks rather than as physical disks With this technology the VA7000 family emerges as a second tier of storage virtualization Extending virtualization to the device level the SAN s view of storage becomes independent of physical disk attributes This characteristic reduces the cost associated with SAN virtualization by simplifying storage management enabling more efficient use of available device capacity and decreasing the amount of required data movement at the device level D H Brown Associates Inc hitp www dhbrown com Our research program in Enterprise Storage Solutions ESS makes this Technology Trends available to all our subscribers Those interested in this program should contact marketing dhbrown com or 914 937 4302 ext 281 2 0 section 2 hp extends virtualization to the array VA7000 virtualization managed at the array level offers the advantage of providing greater granularity when managing a pool of logical storage Logical Unit Name LUN cap
29. t a single drive failure does not put the data at risk and therefore does not require an emergency rebuild The HP Virtual Array can take the time and do the rebuild in the background without impacting incoming I Os Also the HP Virtual Array will rebuild the RAID 1 0 data first since that is the most vulnerable after a failure In all cases data integrity is ensured and performance is preserved No other array can make this claim Question f your environment is totally stable wouldn t a manual configuration by an experienced system administrator result in better performance than one derived from the virtual array s policies Answer Lets first admit it Totally stable environments are rare But the answer is that if the environment were totally stable and if the administrator configured the array absolutely section accurately the traditional array and the HP Virtual Array would have similar performance However the HP Virtual Array would still have the performance advantage because of its ability to efficiently load balance across all the disks in the array both at the initial configuration and after capacity growth In both stable and changing environments the HP Virtual Array is the right choice Now if the environment is not totally stable then the HP virtual array is the hands down winner When both arrays are initially configured the traditional array should be faster at least for a day or so but after that the HP
30. tional RAID 5 and 10X the data protection of RAID 1 Second The HP Virtual Array stripes across all the disks in the redundancy group This involves more disks but is not so different from any other RAID 1 0 implementation Third array striping is the way of the future It s faster and safer Question Doesn t all this behind the scenes movement of data require a huge performance hit Surely the trade off for virtual technology is slow performance Answer Not true For years HP s original virtual array the AutoRAID Model 12H was used for HP s V class TPC C benchmark tests And today HP Virtual Array products have been used for the new rp8400 benchmark testing and are scheduled to be used for the Superdome TPC C tests Remember the HP Virtual Array mimics the policies of experienced system administrators Would an experienced system administrator do a reconfiguration of the array during a period of high workloads No And neither would the HP Virtual Array The HP Virtual Array policy is to NOT perform the background tuning operations when the array is under a greater than 60 workload Question Isnt manual always better than automatic In cars manual transmissions give better performance than automatic transmissions because they give the driver more control over performance likewise wouldn t manual RAID configurations be better than HP s Virtual Array Technology and its automatic RAID configurations Answer M
31. troller communication and loop failover occur via an internal N way bus The VA7400 supports two redundancy groups in which one controller manages access to one redundancy group consisting of all the odd numbered disk slots and the other controller to the second group 2 2 by D H Brown Associates Inc consisting of all the even numbered disk slots Data movement and failover occur in the same manner as in the VA7100 The variation in data management at the array level provides great flexibility in matching performance to application need Self tuning enables immediate response to data and application variables ensuring more work completed per transaction and maintaining more consistent service level performance RAID 1 0 uses a large number of disks in a single configuration to deliver strong performance to selected LUNs It does so however at the expense of additional space for mirroring the data RAID 5DP incurs a performance penalty for write operations and can affect system performance if frequent updates to large volumes of data are required Its advantage is in the data redundancy provided and the improved cost efficiency vs mirroring Dual redundancy groups in the VA7400 enhance the efficiency of data movement through the controllers improving system performance Technology Trends Copyright 2001 by D H Brown Associates Inc section 2 hp extends virtualization to the array by D H Brown Asso
32. ual physical storage i e the LUNs HP s Virtual Array works with LUNs just as traditional arrays do However the virtual array doesn t stop there The virtual array actually manages the disks down to the level of the smallest available cluster or chunk Further while traditional arrays utilize static address translation algorithms for managing the chunks the virtual array uses a dynamic mapping system hp storage white paper This allows the array to dynamically allocate and de allocate clusters of any RAID type without affecting the logical view as seen from the server In other words clusters can be moved and new RAID 5 and RAID 1 0 stripes can be created or extended dynamically without the host view being changed and without system administrator intervention Just as a file system on the host presents a virtualized view of the storage to the application or user the virtual array presents a virtualized view of the storage to the file system For example just as you can create and delete files in a file system you can create and delete LUNs within the virtual array This degree of virtualization is what gives the virtual array its unique ability to relieve the system administrator of many of his her mundane storage management responsibilities the reasons you need more virtualization in the array capacity requirements will always grow IT departments will always have a limited budget and limited human r
33. uring an array for a database typically involves a large problem set with many variables Many database administrators have been taught to isolate different pieces of the database in an attempt to optimize performance availability and recovery This process although based on sound objectives is far too error prone This typically involves a large problem set with many many variables Unfortunately database 1 3 hp storage white paper administrators oftentimes don t have all the critical information They don t know the precise database performance requirements for each of the pieces and they don t know the performance behavior of the array in its multitude of configurations In these real world environments it is typically far too time consuming to try a number of different storage configurations so database administrators typically apply rules from previous installations The changing characteristics of newer versions of the database typically result in an unbalanced configuration that has hot spots that limit the performance of the system This entire process can take from a few hours to several days depending on the skill of the administrator and the number and size of the LUNs During much of this time the array is either unusable or must operate in a degraded performance mode In other words LUNs cannot be utilized until they have been formatted This formatting takes up a lot of the array s internal resou
34. ve supports 127 MHz computers or above Managed by Business Copy LUNs Command View SDM supports 1 023 Business Copy LUNs Auto Path VA Windows 2000 with Intel Pentium III 500 HP UX with all PA RISC computers MHz computers or above Windows and Red Hat Linux Network Management Tools Not Applicable HP OpenView NNM HP Toptolls CA Unicenter Tivoli NetView BMC Patrol Operating Systems HP UX 11 0 Windows NT 2000 Red Hat HP UX 10 2 11 0 11i Windows Linux 6 2 NT 2000 Solaris 2 6 7 0 8 0 AIX 4 3 3 NetWare 5 0 5 1 MPE ix 6 5 7 0 Red Hat Linux 6 2 7 0 Technology Trends Copyright 2001 by D H Brown Associates Inc 2 3 section 2 hp extends virtualization to the array The major HP Surestore software packages identified on page 2 2 include Command View SDM speeds and eases local and remote management including install configure monitor and control via a web browser direct host attach or SAN HP Predictive Support programs and Event Monitoring Service EMS provide phone home capability Smart Plug ins allow HP Command View SDM to integrate and process storage events via SNMP with HP OpenView Network Node Manager NNM e Secure Manager Virtual Array VA controls server access to data on a LUN by LUN basis even in simultaneous heterogeneous array sharing environments Business Copy Virtual Array VA supports LUN replication for development testing or backup situations Data re
35. wn Associates Inc 2 4 06 02 598 1 2067ENUC
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