HP LeftHand P4000 - SAN Solutions Supplement

HP LeftHand SAN Solutions

Support Document

Application Notes

NSM 2120-G2 Performance

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Contents

NSM 2120-G2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Maximum Performance Metrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Performance Tuning Tips. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Performance Test Environment for Realistic Application Benchmarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Real-World Application Benchmarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

NSM2120 Performance Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Additional References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

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NSM 2120-G2 Performance

Overview

The LeftHand Networks NSM 2120-G2 is an ideal platform to build robust

storage clusters running the LeftHand Networks SAN/iQ®software.

LeftHand’s SAN/iQ software platform delivers enterprise-class SAN

functionality on industry standard hardware. This document provides an

overview of the performance characteristics your applications can rely on with

the LeftHand Networks NSM 2120-G2.

The LeftHand Networks SAN

architecture enables the aggregation

of any number of storage nodes to

create storage clusters. Increasing the

number of storage nodes in a cluster

increases the total number of disks,

processors, controllers, network connections and cache used in the storage

cluster, which allows for performance to scale along with capacity.

In addition, SAN/iQ Network RAID dynamically load balances data across the

storage clusters and eliminates bottlenecks as the cluster grows. This

dramatically increases data availability since data is now striped and

mirrored across multiple storage nodes. The disks, processors, controllers,

network connections and caches in the NSM 2120-G2 were selected to

maximize throughput, IOPS, and scalability.

NSM 2120-G2

The LeftHand Networks NSM 2120-G2 is an enterprise class storage node

built on industry-standard Intel chipsets. The storage node can utilize either

Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) or Serial ATA II (SATA) disk drives. The solution

is available in multiple disk configurations yielding between 1.8 to 12.0

Terabytes (TB) of raw storage capacity. The LeftHand Networks NSM

2120-G2 provides enterprise-class reliability, high availability and

performance. Specific product highlights include: Twelve hot swappable disk

drives, dual NIC connectivity with automatic failover, dual power supplies,

robust power and cooling, and battery-backed write cache.

Maximum Performance Metrics

The maximum performance metrics data is used to show maximum

performance limits of the SAN in an optimal scenario. While these numbers

are often used as a basis of comparison between different storage vendors,

they aren't representative of the workload typically found in production

environments. The type of workload run against the SAN can dramatically

affect performance numbers. The maximum performance metrics should be

used for comparison against other SAN vendors rather than as a guideline for

your specific needs. When sizing for your specific environment, LeftHand

Networks advises using a benchmark that closely resembles your own data

requirements.

Performance Tuning Tips

SAN performance can be negatively impacted if the SAN is not configured

properly. The following guidelines will help maximize the performance of the

LeftHand Networks SAN.

Network Best Practices

•Use Gigabit Ethernet switching infrastructure.

•Dedicate a separate IP subnet/VLAN for your iSCSI SAN.

•Use a secondary Gigabit Ethernet NIC in servers attached to the Ethernet

storage subnet for high availability and performance.

•If possible attach all modules and application servers to the same Gigabit

switches for the storage networking.

•Make sure all switch ports and Ethernet adapters are configured to run at

Full-duplex Gigabit speeds.

Disk Formatting Best Practices

•Use the default block size, or allocation unit size, unless a particular

application specifies an alternate size. Microsoft Exchange should be on

volumes formatted with a block size of 4096 bytes.

•Partitions should be created starting at sector 128 to align the offset to

64KB using Diskpar or Diskpart.

Storage Node Configuration Best Practices

•Bond networks interfaces for network redundancy and more bandwidth

using Adaptive Load Balancing (ALB).

•Use RAID level 5 or 10 for disk redundancy within storage modules.

•Enable SAN/iQ iSCSI Load Balancing on authentication groups for

Windows servers

•Install the DSM software driver to enable fault-tolerant paths to the SAN

modules while also increasing available bandwidth to the SAN for

maximum performance

Performance Test Environment for Realistic Application Benchmarks

Performance data was gathered using enterprise class servers with the

following attributes:

•2.8GHz dual core Intel Xeon processor

•4 gigabytes of RAM

•Dual gigabit Ethernet network adapters (bonded using balance ALB)

•All equipment connected to the same gigabit Ethernet switch

The iSCSI SAN configurations included a dedicated group of three storage

nodes comprised of:

•Single management group with a single cluster including all

storage modules

•Storage modules were configured in either RAID 5 with volumes further

protected by SAN/iQ Network RAID Level-2 (2-way Replication).

•iSCSI sessions were load balanced across the clusters using SAN/iQ iSCSI

Load Balancing

The LeftHand Networks SAN is designed to work on your existing Ethernet

infrastructure. Segmenting the storage network from your corporate network

is recommended, and boosts overall performance of the solution. For

performance testing, the SAN network was isolated to a single broadcast

domain (subnet) and had dedicated NICs for the storage traffic. A single 24

port Gigabit switch was used for all tests.

All disk volumes were configured using the Microsoft iSCSI Software Initiator

Version 2.0.4. Volumes were mounted using the Windows Logical Disk

Manager and formatted with NTFS using the default allocation unit size.

Real-World Application Benchmarks

All of the following benchmarks were designed to help characterize the actual

performance users can expect in similar production environments. Each

benchmark measures different storage characteristics. Standard SQL server

and Exchange benchmarks illustrate the expected performance in those

application environments. Simple file copies show throughput in megabytes

per second (MB/sec) and IOmeter simulates IOPS (inputs/outputs per second)

and throughput.

Microsoft SQLIOStress

The SQLIOStress utility was written and is maintained by the Microsoft SQL

Server Escalation staff. Designed to help detect possible I/O path problems

that would lead to Microsoft SQL Server data corruption or loss, it emulates

different SQL server database versions and types and reports on some basic

benchmarks. At a minimum it runs 5 iterations. Only the third and fourth

iterations should be used for comparing performance according to the

SQLIOStress tool documentation. For this document the 4th iteration will be

used. The SQLIOStress test runs from only a single host and typically

becomes CPU bound. The tool is not capable of scaling at the same rate as the

SAN. Some scaling is achieved on a single host due to the lower latency in

the SAN.

Best Practice - Keep the data files and logs for SQL databases on

separate volumes.

Microsoft Exchange Jetstress

The Jetstress tool allows administrators to verify the performance and

stability of the disk subsystem before putting their Exchange server into a

production environment. It reports back to the administrator with an html

document that contains results and a PASS or FAIL for the overall test. A

PASS or FAIL is strictly based on specific test results not exceeding Microsoft

specified limits. Disk Latency is the primary metric used by Jetstress for

PASS / FAIL criteria. The values to pass are the log avg. disk sec/write,

database page fault stalls, and database avg. disk sec/read. Log average

latency should be below 10ms, database page fault stalls should always be 0,

and database average read latency should be less than 20ms. LeftHand

Networks uses an automated command line version of Jetstress that will

increase threads until the test no longer passes and records the IOPS of the

last passing run. The highest IOPS achieved while still passing is the value

reported in this paper.

Best Practice – Keep the email database files and log files on

separate volumes.

File Copy Using Robust File Copy

The file copy test is a straight-forward Windows file copy. Using robocopy.exe a

file copy of one hundred 100MB files is done from direct attached storage

(DAS) in the server to a volume on the SAN. For this test a simple

measurement of megabytes per second is taken. Robocopy (Robust File Copy)

is included in the Windows resource kit. While individual file copy speeds are

limited by the nature of low queue depth disk operations, the architecture of a

LeftHand Networks SAN solution is capable of handling multiple file copy

jobs simultaneously without degrading performance. This is represented by

the “Concurrent Jobs” set of data.

Best Practice - When copying from DAS to the iSCSI SAN remember the file

copy cannot go any faster than the DAS disk. Make sure the disk that the

source files are on is the fastest disk available to you otherwise it might be

limiting the file copy speed. Running multiple file copies at a time will

increase the aggregate performance.

IOmeter

IOmeter is an I/O subsystem measurement and characterization tool. IOmeter

is a good tool for simulating loads of different I/O sizes to demonstrate a

system’s IOPS and throughput capabilities. These configurations are designed

to show typical speeds as opposed to the maximum values.

Best Practices - Run IOmeter against raw disks to avoid file system

cache interference.

NSM2120 Performance Results

Figure 1: Cache hit random IOPS

Figure 2: Cache hit sequential throughput

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