Upload
aryamahzar
View
215
Download
0
Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
7/22/2019 Whitepaper Symantec SFS Introduction to Scalable NAS
1/19
Symantec Technical Network White Paper
WHITE
PAPER:TECHNI
CAL
Confidence in a connected world.
Veritas Storage Foundation
Scalable File Server
Introduction to Scalable NAS for
the Enterprise
7/22/2019 Whitepaper Symantec SFS Introduction to Scalable NAS
2/19
Content
Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 4Veritas Storage Foundation Scalable File Server Overview ........................................................... 4Gateway Model .................................................................................................................................. 4Leveraging core strengths ................................................................................................................. 6New SFS platform components ....................................................................................................... 7Installation ........................................................................................................................................ 7
Administration .................................................................................................................................. 7NFS File Sharing and Lock Management (NLM) ................................................................................ 8CIFS-based file sharing ..................................................................................................................... 9SFS Key Benefits ............................................................................................................................ 10Consolidate and Reduce Costs of Storage ....................................................................................... 10 Increased Storage Utilization .......................................................................................................... 10Operational Cost Reduction ............................................................................................................ 10Storage Tiering ................................................................................................................................ 11Consolidated Backup/Restore ......................................................................................................... 12Scaling and Seamless Growth ......................................................................................................... 13Modular Growth at the Processing Tier ........................................................................................... 13 Modular Growth at the Storage Tier ................................................................................................ 13Near Linear Scaling ......................................................................................................................... 14Availability, zero interruption of file services for company critical data ......................................... 15 Example Use Case .......................................................................................................................... 16Enable scale out compute clusters and heterogeneous sharing of data ......................................... 16Infrastructure checklist ................................................................................................................. 17SFS Server Hardware Requirements ............................................................................................... 17SFS Storage Hardware Requirements ............................................................................................. 17Summary ........................................................................................................................................ 18Where to get more information ....................................................................................................... 18
White Paper: Symantec Technical
Veritas Storage Foundation Scalable File
System
Introduction to Scalable NAS for the
Enterprise
7/22/2019 Whitepaper Symantec SFS Introduction to Scalable NAS
3/19
Symantec Technical Network White Paper
7/22/2019 Whitepaper Symantec SFS Introduction to Scalable NAS
4/19
About Technical White Paper
4
Introduction
This document provides a technical introduction to and outlines the various use cases for the
Veritas Storage Foundation Scalable File Server (SFS) product. SFS is a high-performance, highly
scalable clustered NAS solution, delivered in a software appliance-style packaging. Taking
advantage of the rock-solid stability of the Storage Foundation Cluster File System (CFS), SFS
delivers NFS and CIFS-based file serving, along with integrated storage tiering and other high-end
NAS functionality.
As a clustered NAS product, SFS has a singular function: to share out unstructured file data in a
simple-to-operate, highly scalable, and highly available manner. Unlike in a typical CFS
deployment, one cannot run other applications on SFS nodes. While a customer could configure
core CFS to only serve out NFS file systems and then add a CIFS-based file-sharing package (e.g.
Samba), this is an unlikely use case due to operational heaviness associated with maintaining all
the core CFS components, CVM, CFS, VCS, GAB/LLT, DMP, and then adding the complexities of
different NFS server implementations and samba install. SFS masks all of these components and
provides a simple, appliance-like administration model for file serving. This document describes
a technical overview of the Scalable File Server and the benefits to deploying the product in a file
serving environment.
Veritas Storage Foundation Scalable File Server Overview
Storage Foundation Scalable File Server is a fixed function, soft appliance based extensively on
Storage Foundation technology, including using CFS as a core file system engine and Veritas
Cluster Server (VCS) cluster technology to allow seamless scaling of the SFS cluster. The
applications consuming the storage are running a standard NFS or CIFS-based client.
Components of SFS include the underlying, hardened Linux operating system, CFS, and the new
SFS platform components all provided on a single DVD image.
Gateway Model
SFS is built on a NAS gateway architecture model. The SFS software can be installed on an
industry standard sever running Intel Xeon-based processor architectures. These servers can be
blade or other form factors.
7/22/2019 Whitepaper Symantec SFS Introduction to Scalable NAS
5/19
About Technical White Paper
5
The SFS servers are then attached via Fibre Channel to FC-attached storage. This can be separate
FC storage connected through a commodity switch (or point-to-point in a two-node cluster), or
connected to and part of a much larger SAN. In all cases, the connections are made via one or
more FC HBAs in each of the SFS nodes. Thus the solution is an open storage offering allowing a
high degree of flexibility in configuration. Customers can attach different storage devices to the
SFS cluster ranging from commodity storage to high-end arrays. Support for nearly all storage
arrays that present valid SCSI-3 LUNs is provided, and there is additional support for
active/active arrays through the Storage Foundation Dynamic Multi-Pathing. Full details on thissupport can be found in the Storage Foundation Hardware Compatibility List, obtainable through
the Symantec support website.
Figure 1 shows the conceptual model of a clustered gateway model. The diagram shows the front
end IP network to handle NFS client requests and the backend heterogeneous Fibre Channel
based storage tier.
Figure 1 Clustered Gateway Model
7/22/2019 Whitepaper Symantec SFS Introduction to Scalable NAS
6/19
About Technical White Paper
6
Leveraging core strengths
In addition to the Scalable File Server platform itself, SFS also leverages the capabilities and
strengths of the core CFS file system engine and Veritas Cluster Server HA capabilities. Some of
these key features include Dynamic Multi-pathing (DMP), the cluster file system (CFS), Veritas
Cluster Server (VCS) and Dynamic Storage tiering (DST). Each of these layers represents
industry-leading technology solutions and when combined into a file serving appliance provide an
incredibly robust foundation on which to host file services.
CFS is the underlying core file system technology that is used within SFS. CFS itself is built upon
the industry-leading Veritas File System (VxFS). CFS provides full POSIX compliance; cache
consistency across multiple nodes, a single namespace and a global lock management
implementation. CFS also distributes load across SFS cluster nodes so that both data and meta-
data operations can be performed for the same file system across the cluster. This leads to near-
linear scalability in terms of NFS operations per second. For SFS, leveraging the maturity and
scalability of CFS was critical in being able to ensure the mission-critical and rock-solid
performance and availability that is expected in todays high performance storage environments.
DMP provides advanced FC HBA load balancing policies and tight integration with array vendors
to provide in-depth failure detection and path failover logic. DMP itself is a large technical
differentiator when evaluating SFS against similar offerings from other vendors as it contains the
most advanced capabilities of any multi-pathing driver in the industry.
Finally, VCS itself is used within SFS to provide cluster wide monitoring, communication, and
failover for all nodes and their associated critical resources including virtual IP addressing
failover for both NFS and CIFS client connections.
7/22/2019 Whitepaper Symantec SFS Introduction to Scalable NAS
7/19
About Technical White Paper
7
New SFS platform components
The following section outlines the new modules that SFS is comprised of in order to provide a
complete file-serving solution.
Installation
The first node in an SFS cluster is booted from a single DVD containing the OS image, and SFS
software stack which is comprised of: The Storage Foundation Cluster Volume Manager, Storage
Foundation Cluster File System, and the Storage Foundation Scalable File Server platform. Once
this node is up and running the rest of the nodes in the cluster (defined via IP addresses during
the first node boot up) are automatically installed over the SFS private network with all necessary
components (these nodes can also be imaged and installed at a later date). Key SFS services are
then automatically started to allow the cluster to begin discovering storage and creating NFS or
CIFS shares.
Administration
SFS contains a role-based administration model consisting of three key roles: Storage, Master,
and Network. This delineation is consistent with the operational roles in many data centers. For
each role the administrator accesses an easy-to-use Command Line Interface (CLI). This CLI
provides for a common and consistent access method to all aspects of SFS administration,
including managing storage, creating shares, administering network interfaces, etc. Furthermore,
an administrator can simply log in as one of those roles on the console node within the cluster
(normally the first node that was installed) and can then execute commands which perform tasks
uniformly on all nodes in the cluster.
A specific design goal of the SFS product was that there should be no requirement to have any
knowledge of Veritas Storage Foundation technology to install or administer an SFS cluster. In
fact, there is no need to have any specific understanding of any Veritas technology, as the SFS
CLI masks any of the components and provides a single point of administration for the entire
cluster. Of course, it should also be noted that users currently familiar with Storage Foundation
technology will find familiarity with the basic management concepts.
7/22/2019 Whitepaper Symantec SFS Introduction to Scalable NAS
8/19
About Technical White Paper
8
Adding or removing nodes from the SFS cluster is a simple non-disruptive operation and is highly
automated following the installation model outlined above.
NFS File Sharing and Lock Management (NLM)
SFS provides for active/active shared data NFS file sharing across all nodes within the SFS
storage cluster. This provides for unparalleled scalability as clients are free to access any node
within the cluster at any time, and be able to access the same data both read and write. This
allows for the ability to load-balance across an SFS cluster by dividing access to specific nodes,and also allows the administrator to perform manual load-balancing correction by moving Virtual
IP addresses between the storage cluster, when needed.
Because NFS can be shared read/write across all nodes, SFS has implemented the NFS NLM
module which allows a customer to use NFS advisory client locking in parallel with core CFS
Global Lock management. The module consists of failing over the locks amongst SFS nodes as
well as forwarding all NFS client lock requests to a single NFS lock master. The result is that no
data corruption will occur if a user or application needs to use NFS client locking with an SFS
cluster.
7/22/2019 Whitepaper Symantec SFS Introduction to Scalable NAS
9/19
About Technical White Paper
9
Figure 2 below depicts the architecture components of the SFS stack. The components in blue
are elements leveraged from the core CFS stack or the base O/S architecture, while the brown
components indicate the new SFS additions. CIFS file serving functionality was added into the
SFS 5.0.1 release.
Figure 2 SFS Component Architecture
CIFS-based file sharing
With the 5.0.1 release of SFS, CIFS file services functionality was added to the product. CIFS file
sharing is made possible in SFS with the use of the open-source Samba file sharing package.
Within an SFS cluster, all nodes can be running and sharing data over CIFS; further, CIFS shares
can be failed-over to other nodes in the cluster, and the DFS referral functionality can also be
utilized in order to span CIFS shares across all nodes, e.g. in a Homedirs environment. Full
integration with Active Directory is also provided.
7/22/2019 Whitepaper Symantec SFS Introduction to Scalable NAS
10/19
About Technical White Paper
10
SFS Key Benefits
The following represent the most common uses cases or likely deployment scenarios for the SFS
product. This list is not exclusive or comprehensive but should provide the reader with a good
understanding of how and when to use SFS to solve key business problems.
Consolidate and Reduce Costs of Storage
The value of consolidating several independent islands of NAS storage into fewer, larger shared
pools has many cost benefits which are outlined below.
Increased Storage Utilization
Typical enterprises are running with storage utilization rates in the 30 40% range. This results
in excessive spending on new storage when there is more than adequate free space in the data
center. Ideally customers would group their storage assets into fewer, larger shared pools. This
would naturally result in a significant increase of backend storage utilization. In turn, this
increased efficiency would then result in substantial cost savings from deferred purchases of new
storage. SFS allows the creation of larger pools due to its scalable front processing capabilities.
Eight mid-range nodes can provide over 1.6 GBytes/sec of aggregate throughput which facilitates
very large backend pools. This assumes each SFS node is configured with 2 GbE NICs for NFS
client data traffic. More GbE NICs could be configured if required. With combined NFS and CIFS
file sharing, the storage pool can be securely shared amongst heterogeneous or homogeneous
nodes. Thus, SFS becomes a powerful enabler for this common business strategy.
Operational Cost Reduction
The use of NAS heads from traditional storage companies have resulted in the proliferation of
many independent islands of NAS storage. As the number of islands increases, the operational
burden of managing these many NAS head-to-storage relationships becomes a significant time
investment both from a technical and business perspective. Fewer, consolidated pools that
can be spanned across multiple SFS clusters reduces the ongoing management costs since there
are a fewer relationships to manage.
7/22/2019 Whitepaper Symantec SFS Introduction to Scalable NAS
11/19
About Technical White Paper
11
Storage Tiering
Being able to seamlessly tier unstructured data between different types of storage media is a
natural fit in the NAS market. Despite this, few customers have adopted a storage tiering strategy
even though the business benefits are clear. This is generally because, there are many
limitations with the legacy or current storage tiering offerings in the market today that are
causing this slow rate of adoption. Most commonly, the lack of flexibility of static storage tiering
solutions is the biggest barrier; tiering that occurs at a hardware block level, rather than at the
file level is counter-intuitive to what would be expected within a NAS solution. Furthermore, suchhardware based data relocation solutions often restrict support for hardware from only the same
vendor, and further limit granularity to a LUN level even if there is a degree of abstraction
provided. There is no visibility to the underlying individual files and directories. The effectiveness
of these types of solution is further diminished when the often high overhead of carrying out
such relocation operations is taken into consideration.
SFS includes a native storage tiering solution that is integrated into the product, and that
leverages existing Veritas technology. The DST feature that was first introduced into the Veritas
File System (VxFS), and later implemented into CFS and also SFS provides the unique ability to
meet all of the key requirements customers need from a tiering solution. With SFS, tiering is pre-configured and defined meaning it simply needs to be enabled on a storage pool basis to work.
An administrator specifies the number of days before primary storage will tier to secondary, and
once enabled, the process is automatic. In addition, such tiering happens on a file level, without
affecting the files location, or its i-node credentials. With SFS, this DST functionality also scales
seamlessly to match the environment being used; relocation is quick and effective for millions of
files due to the use of the Veritas File Change Log (FCL) a feature whereby the SFS server nodes
can track which files have changed and need to be relocated, without having to walk the file
system.
Finally, in SFS, the storage can always be heterogeneous including when using storage tiering.
Being able to tier between different storage vendors, and/or different storage technologies is all
fully supported. A common use when dealing with large repositories of unstructured data is to
utilize a MAID-style architecture for the secondary tier. In a use case where high-performance is
key, utilizing solid-state disk (SSD) on the primary tier is also possible.
7/22/2019 Whitepaper Symantec SFS Introduction to Scalable NAS
12/19
About Technical White Paper
12
Figure 3 below depicts the unique feature of SFS, the multi-volume file system, and how it
maintains the application transparency. SFS can leverage this capability to further reduce costs
of the backend FC storage by moving older data to lower cost storage.
Figure 3 Multi-volume File System Namespace
Consolidated Backup/Restore
A consolidated set of large storage pools reduces the management overhead of backing up and
restoring disjointed file systems. With a 256TB maximum filesystem size, SFS allows the
collapsing of the file storage into fewer pools and thus reduces the backup interfaces and
operations necessary. All critical file data can be backed up and restored through the SAN via
integration with the market leading Veritas NetBackup (NBU) solution.
7/22/2019 Whitepaper Symantec SFS Introduction to Scalable NAS
13/19
About Technical White Paper
13
Scaling and Seamless Growth
SFS allows a customer to scale storage and processing independently and seamlessly (online).
This provides great flexibility since a given application may need to scale in either dimension.
The application may be primarily performance based and additional throughput may be needed
for the same amount of storage; or perhaps the application is capacity bound and thus only
needs to add backend storage without adding an SFS node. You can add only the resources that
the application(s) require without having to purchase a costly combined set of compute and
storage resources.
Modular Growth at the Processing Tier
SFS automates the installation of a new node to the running cluster, configures it, and adds its
capacity into the processing tier. The product scales from 1- 8 nodes today, with 16 nodes
planned for the next major release update. An administrator can quickly add processing in units
of single nodes, providing modular scaling that leverages cost savings compared to buying a large
new and costly independent appliance, and without adding to the management burden.
Modular Growth at the Storage Tier
SFS takes advantage of Veritas CVM and DMP technology in order to discover and use new
storage resources; this is also an on-line operation that requires no downtime on any node. A
storage administrator can configure a new array or even add new LUNs from existing ones to the
SFS cluster nodes. SFS can then scan the storage automatically, see the new LUNs, and place
them under SFS control for use in the file systems.
7/22/2019 Whitepaper Symantec SFS Introduction to Scalable NAS
14/19
About Technical White Paper
14
Additionally, at the storage tier, existing file systems can be dynamically resized (shrink/grow)
on-line with no interruption of service. There is a simple command to add space to an existing
file system which automatically uses newly available storage. Existing files system shares can
be reduced in size in order to free up or reclaim tier-one storage. SFS creates the concept of a
logical storage pool, from which volumes and file systems can be created and managed. Mirroring
and tiering is all supported at a storage pool layer; additionally, the ability to perform SFS level
RAID mirroring is built into SFS, thus allowing an administrator to utilize RAID protection at both
an array level (e.g. RAID 6), and use mirroring across arrays at a SFS storage level. Finally, SFSprovides the flexibility for an administrator to specify which LUNs a given file system should
reside on within a storage pool. This can be critical for some performance based applications.
SFS growth allows a customer to adopt a pay as you grow model. This is often highly desirable
for service providers or any customer who has implemented a chargeback model.
Near Linear Scaling
The product provides nearly linear scaling in terms of both NFS operations per second as well as
total I/O throughput. Figure 4 below depicts this scaling capability.
7/22/2019 Whitepaper Symantec SFS Introduction to Scalable NAS
15/19
About Technical White Paper
15
Figure 4 SFS ScalabilityNote: SFS is initially qualified to support up to 8 nodes for the 5.0 product release. 16 nodesupport will be added in the next major release update of SFS.
Availability, zero interruption of file services for company critical data
SFS provides an always-on file service. The loss of single or even multiple nodes does not
interrupt I/O operations on the client tier. The convergence of two key trends is driving the
capabilities that SFS delivers: The first is the dramatic growth of file based (unstructured) data
assets. The second is the critical nature of these assets; they have to be available at all times to
the application.
The architecture provides transparent failover for other key services such as NFS lock state,
reporting and logging, and backup and restore operations. The installation service itself is also
highly available and can seamlessly recover from the initially installed node failing during the
install of the remaining nodes in the cluster. In the event of a CIFS failover, users simply re-
establish their session and connect to a new node within the SFS cluster. Finally, the console
service providing access to the centralized menu driven interface is automatically failed over.
7/22/2019 Whitepaper Symantec SFS Introduction to Scalable NAS
16/19
About Technical White Paper
16
Example Use Case
Enable scale out compute clusters and heterogeneous sharing of data
The trend to scale out, aka Grid computing continues to gain significant traction in both the
server and storage industry.
One of the key inhibitors to this scale out computing is the requirement to provide a shared
storage infrastructure for compute nodes. There are few cost effective options available todaythat enable you to share storage heterogeneously as well as scale up as performance requires.
SFS solves both of these issues by providing a highly scalable and shared storage platform at the
storage tier and by scaling file services such as NFS and CIFS on the compute tier.
An example architecture might look like the following: An existing infrastructure houses
approximately 15TB of audio files in the form of voicemail data. This data is housed on a
traditional NAS platform. A series of twelve Linux blade servers are used to process call data, and
to write new files to the existing file system. A separate system is used to handle long-term
archiving of the call data, with a third system used to run reports on average call length, number
of voicemail files stored, etc. All of these servers need access to the same files and there is an
application requirement to have all of the files within a single namespace. Because the nature of
these files is to be written once, read for a short period of time and then archived, a storage
tiering strategy is desirable; one that can scale to 128TB+ (catering for growth) and still maintain
a single namespace. A single NAS head or two heads in an active/passive configuration cannot
provide enough NFS file serving performance to meet the throughput and response time
requirements, and additionally, the existing NAS solution limits the maximum file system size to
16TB. In this use case, SFS can provide the performance and availability necessary for the NFS
storage tier by spanning a single namespace across multiple nodes. Add in the built-in storage
tiering that will allow the use of additional MAID-style storage architecture in addition to primarySATA drives, and SFS is clearly wells-suited for this use case. SFS provides more than adequate
throughput and seamless failover for this architecture and also places no limits on the number of
spindles used, and allows a single file system to be 256TB in size more than enough for the
growth plans at this customer.
7/22/2019 Whitepaper Symantec SFS Introduction to Scalable NAS
17/19
About Technical White Paper
17
Infrastructure checklist
SFS Server Hardware Requirements
The server hardware must be capable of running SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 SP3 forAMD64 and Intel EM64T.
o Dual or Quad core processors at 3.0 GHz or above, are recommended forperformance
o Itanium is not supported 8 GB Minimum error-correcting code (ECC) random-access memory (RAM).
o
16 GB recommended Internal Drives: Minimum single disk, dual drives recommended 4 Gigabit Ethernet NIC Ports
o Dual embedded Gigabit Etherneto 2 Additional Gigabit Ethernet
2 Fiber Channel HBAs Internal DVD Drive PXE Boot capable BIOS Redundant power supply
SFS Storage Hardware Requirements
In general, SFS supports any FC attach storage that presents SCSI-3 valid LUNs. Please review the
following document from the public support website for specific details on supported arrays and
array vendors:
http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/283161.htm
http://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/283161.htmhttp://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/283161.htmhttp://seer.entsupport.symantec.com/docs/283161.htm7/22/2019 Whitepaper Symantec SFS Introduction to Scalable NAS
18/19
About Technical White Paper
18
Summary
Veritas Storage Foundation Scalable File Server from Symantec is a clustered NAS file serving
appliance that provides enterprise-wide CIFS and NFS file services in a highly available and
scalable environment. The server software is installed on industry standard hardware to give IT
organizations flexibility in choice of hardware vendors. SFS is based on the industry-proven
Veritas Storage Foundation Cluster File System.
Additional SFS servers can be added to the cluster without disruption and the file system can begrown dynamically without affecting file services. SFS combines the stability of a well-proven
product with enterprise-class scalability, low cost of deployment, and a simplified administration
model.
SFS lowers the cost of NAS file serving by reducing the proliferation of storage islands, reducing
the complexity of storage management and by improving storage utilization.
Where to get more information
More information can be found on theScalable File Serverpages at Symantec.com
http://www.symantec.com/business/storage-foundation-scalable-file-serverhttp://www.symantec.com/business/storage-foundation-scalable-file-serverhttp://www.symantec.com/business/storage-foundation-scalable-file-serverhttp://www.symantec.com/business/storage-foundation-scalable-file-server7/22/2019 Whitepaper Symantec SFS Introduction to Scalable NAS
19/19
About Symantec
Symantec is a global leader in
infrastructure software, enabling
businesses and consumers to
have confidence in a connected
world. The company helpscustomers protect their
infrastructure, information, and
interactions by delivering
software and services that
address risks to security,
availability, compliance, and
performance. Headquartered in
Cupertino, Calif., Symantec has
operations in 40 countries. More
information is available at
www.symantec.com.
For specific country offices and
contact numbers, please visit
our Web site. For product
information in the U.S., call
toll-free 1 (800) 745 6054.
Symantec Corporation
World Headquarters
20330 Stevens Creek Boulevard
Cupertino, CA 95014 USA
+1 (408) 517 8000
1 (800) 721 3934
www.symantec.com
Copyright 2008 Symantec Corporation. All rights reserved.
Symantec and the Symantec logo are trademarks or
registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its
affiliates in the U.S. and other countries. Other names may be
trademarks of their respective owners.
09/08 14551224