SERVER-SIDE CACHING FOR THE VMWARE ADMIN
HOW TO AFFORDABLY BOOST VSPHERE PERFORMANCE
ABOUT US
Sheryl Koenigsberg
Director of Product Marketing
David Davis
vExpert, VCP, CCIE, and Video Training Author
STORAGE PROBLEMS
STORAGE… THE AFTERTHOUGHT
When vSphere was new…Storage was difficult to sizeStorage performance wasn’t
as critical a factorMost companies just used
what they had
POLL QUESTION
DEMAND IS RISING!
Most of us are experiencing…> consolidation> utilizationMore applicationsMore tier-1 applications I/O intensive
applications, like VDI
INCREASED LATENCY AND IOPS
> latency> IOPS> application
responseAlso, the I/O
Blender effect is a major issue
POLL QUESTION
STORAGE SOLUTIONS
HARDWARE OPTIONS TO IMPROVE STORAGE PERFORMANCE
1. Buy new storage for vSphere
2. Upgrade the SAN/NAS- More spindles
Increase caching
Add flash storage
Implement tiering
3. Buy I/O acceleration hardware for servers
$$$$$
$
New Storage
Upgrade StorageI/O Accel
HW
Server-Side Caching
POLL QUESTION
HARDWARE OPTIONS TO IMPROVE STORAGE PERFORMANCE
VERY COSTLYHardware-basedDowntimePainful to implementNot always adding
performance where needed most
VSPHERE SERVER-SIDE CACHING
BENEFITS Reduces latency & improves I/O throughput Software-based Easy to implement (some easier than others) Much lower cost (some more-so than others)
VSPHERE SERVER-SIDE CACHING
VMware vSphere Flash Read Cache (vFRC)
SELECTING A SERVER-SIDE CACHING SOLUTION
• Low cost / affordable
• Easy to implement
• Consider hardware requirements
• Consider potential downtime• Provides massive storage performance
boost
SERVER-SIDE CACHING UTOPIA
You want…Low costLeverage existing resources (RAM)Uses the fastest storage available for caching (RAM is
faster than SSD)Minimal footprint
SERVER-SIDE CACHING UTOPIA
You want…Non-intrusiveTransparent“set it and forget it”No reboot Immediate ROI, with proof, based on your workload
INFINIO’S SOLUTION
Infinio: the price/performance leaderfor server-side cache
Optimized to run in RAM
Easy to evaluate
Operationally transparent
Infinio is optimized for RAM
Infinio takes small amounts of RAM from each node and
creates a distributed cache with SSD-like cache hit rates.
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Content-based: Inline deduplication
works across hosts for a large effective cache
Global: All nodes can access
all of the shared cache1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9
2 3 1
5 4 6
8 7 9
101
431
114
144
549
762
664
245
333
093
094
383
Infinio is easy to evaluate
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Download software
Double-click to install Evaluate
Procure hardware
Schedule downtime Visit colo Take down
applications
Install hardware
and drivers
Install software Configure Evaluate
Procure hardware
Schedule downtime Visit colo
Configure storage
networking
Install hardware
Install drivers/soft
ware
Migrate data Configure Evaluate
Infinio
Hardware-based server side cache
New array hardware
Schedule downtime Install software Migrate data
Reconfigure snapshots, clones,
and backups
Reconfigure datastores and
ACLsEvaluate
Other memory-based caches
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Infinio is operationally transparent
ESXi
VM
VM VM
VM
Datastoreconfiguration
Snapshots and replication
Backupscripts
VAAI operations
vMotion
Infinio
ESXi
Operations remain the same once Infinio is installed
This
slid
e is
ani
mat
ed
Let’s look at a VMware environment
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…with Infinio installed
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8 GB of RAMper host
1 Accelerator VM per ESX host
1 Management Console VM per vCenter
Communication runs over the vMotion network
GlobalDeduplicatedContent-basedTh
is s
lide
is a
nim
ated
Get a closer look at Infinio
10X response time
65-85% reduction of read requests from storage
More consistent application performance
Q&A TIME!
WHAT ARE YOUR QUESTIONS?
THANKS FOR ATTENDING!
• To learn more about how Infinio’s Accelerator can save you time and affordably improve your storage performance, visit
www.Infinio.com