Storage Virtualization Software

Technical Feature Descriptions

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Infrastructure-Wide Functions • Across unlike & incompatible devices

• Without slowdowns or downtime

Auto-Tiering

Intuitive, Self-Guided Workflow

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Consolidate like or unlike disk resources

► Split pool into tiers of different

price/performance/capacity

► Create and assign virtual disks

of desired sizes

► Define access rights

► Explicitly assign virtual disks

to hosts or groups of hosts

► Expand capacity without downtime

► Eliminate stranded disk space

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Virtual Disk Pooling

Eliminate stranded

storage

Make available capacity

accessible to most

needy applications

Choose disk

characteristics based on

program needs

Defer additional purchase

until pool nears depletion

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Remove Direct-Attached Drawbacks

Used

Free

DAS

W brand 6TB # P1

W brand 8TB # G2

X brand 11TB # S3

Tier Cost RAS Speed Density Disk Space (TBs)

1 Hi Hi Hi Lo

W brand

P1 model

2 Med Hi Med Med

W brand

G2 model

3 Lo Med Lo Hi

X brand

S3 model

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Manage Capacity as a Pool of Disk Space

6TB

Used

W brand

P3 model

W brand

G5 model

Z brand

Q7 model

Used

Used

8TB

11TB

SAN

Control / monitor all pooled resources from one console

► Intuitive to set up and operate

► Automates repetitive tasks

► Self-guided wizards for

key workflows

► Comprehensive diagnostics

& troubleshooting tips

► Configurable views of system

behavior and performance

► Role-based, administrative

permissions

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SAN-wide Centralized Management

Intelligent trade-offs between cost and performance

► No special disk hardware

required

► You select which disks make

up each tier

► Adapts to provide most

demanding workloads with

speediest response

Auto-Tiering

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Different pools satisfy different

performance/capacity needs

Best practice: Don't mix disks of different performance

characteristics and/or sizes within one pool

Traditional: Virtual Disk Assigned to Tier

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Tier 1 Fastest Performance

ERP

Transactional workloads

Databases

Tier 2 Balanced performance/costs

File

Email

User home directory

Tier 3 High capacity/Low Cost

Archive

Backup-to-disk

Scratch files

Monitor sustained I/O behavior across groups of disk

blocks (chunks)

Compare access frequency against average for each tier

Promote or demote chunks to most suitable tier

Making Good Decisions on Your Behalf

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Tier 1 Tier 2 Tier 3

Chunks

Above average

moves up a tier

Below average

moves down a tier

Each Virtual Disk has a Storage Profile assigned

Storage Profiles define tier preferences

Virtual Disk distribution within a pool

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Storage Profile

"Normal"

Storage Profile

"Low"

Storage Profile

"High"

VD

VD

VD Tier 1 Tier 3

Tier 2

DISK POOL

Heaviest hit blocks take advantage of Tier 1 performance

Other blocks moved to Tier 2 & Tier 3

Sensing Hot Spots within a Virtual Disk

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Tier 1 Tier 3

Tier 2

Frequently

Accessed

Infrequently

Accessed

Moderately

Accessed

VIRTUAL

DISK

DISK POOL

Speeds up performance

► Accelerates disk I/O response

from existing storage

► Uses x86-64 CPUs and

memory from DataCore

nodes as powerful,

inexpensive “mega caches”

► Anticipates next blocks to

be read, and groups writes

to avoid waiting on disks

High-Speed Caching

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Improve response and throughput

► Overcome typical storage-

related bottlenecks

► Spread load on physical

devices using different

channels for different

virtual disks

► Automatically bypasses

failed or offline channels

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Load Balancing Improve response and throughput

Allocate just enough space, just-in-time

► Appears to computers as very

large drives (e.g. 2 TB disks)

► Takes up only space actually

being written to

► Dynamically allocates more

disk space when required

► Reduces need to resize LUNs

► Reclaims zeroed out

disk space

Thin Provisioning

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Free

Disk 1

Free

Disk 1

Disk 2

Free

Disk 1

Disk 2

Disk 3

Free

Guessing on Allocation Leads to Waste Disk 1 Disk 2 Disk 3

Free

Capacity consumed

whether used or not!

Few Blocks Actually

Written To

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Waste-Free Thin Provisioning

60% Free

Free

0

2TB

Free

0

2TB

Free

0

2TB

V Disk 3

V Disk 2

V Disk 1

1TB

Expand as

Needed

No Device

Dependency

Physical Disk Pool 0

Virtual

Allocation:

0.4TB

Time to add more

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Actual = 0.4TB

+ 2.0TB

+ 2.0TB

+ 2.0TB

6.0TB

Disk Pool Allocation

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Recover space from deleted files in virtual volumes

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Thin Provisioning Space Reclamation

0 Physical Disk Pool

Free

0

2TB

V Disk 1 Space previously

allocated to deleted file

Free

0

2TB

V Disk 1 Fill with zeroes

Release zero-filled

space back to free pool

Better protection & performance

► Circumvents drive failures

► Spreads I/O across

multiple spindles

► Offloads RAID 0 & 1

► Supports popular RAID

devices in pool

RAID Striping

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Real-time I/O replication for High-Availability

► Eliminates storage as

a single point of failure

► Enhances survivability using

physically separate nodes

► Updates two distributed

copies simultaneously

► Mirrored virtual disks behave

as one, multi-ported shared drive

Synchronous Mirroring

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Synchronously Mirrored Writes

Synchronous Mirroring

“Virtual Disk”

1

4

2

3 5 6

Node A

• Separate Chassis

• Different Location

• Independent Power

• Independent Cooling

• Separate UPS

Active Partner

Cache Cache

Mirror (P) Mirror (S)

Node B

Client

Mirror (P)

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Automatic Failover via Multipath I/O

“Virtual Disk”

1

4

2

Node A

Client

Offline Partner

Cache Cache

Out-of- Sync Mirror (S)

Node B

MPIO

Preferred

Alternate

1

Retry

3

Log

Updates

Mirror (P)

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Resynchronization of Mirrored Drives

“Virtual Disk”

Node A

Client

Rejoin Partner

Cache Cache

Out-of- Sync Mirror (S)

Node B

MPIO Alternate

Log

Updates

Transmit changes since outage

Mirror (P)

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Resume Normal Operations

“Virtual Disk”

Node A

Client

Partner

Cache Cache

Mirror (S)

Node B

MPIO

Preferred

Synchronous Mirroring Active

Alternate

OFF

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Track Health of High Availability Mirrors

Transparently move contents from one disk to another

► Allows non-disruptive

hardware disk upgrades

► Clears & reclaims space

occupied by original

► Provides pass-through

access to drives previously

used on other systems

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Virtual Disk Migration

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Non-Disruptive Disk Upgrades

Tier 1

Virtual disks remain active while contents are migrated to

a different device

Physic

al S

tora

ge P

ool

Retain or discard

older device

MPIO

New Old

Tier 2

Tier 3

Capture point-in-time images without tying up much disk space or make complete clones

► Recover quickly at disk

speeds to known good state

► Eliminate back-up window

► Provide “live” environment

for analysis, development

& testing

► Save snapshots in lower tier,

thin-provisioned disks

without taking up space on

premium storage devices

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Online Snapshots

Empty when

Snapshot enabled

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Low-impact, Point-in-time Snapshots

1

2

3

4

Source disk

blocks

• Back-up

• Testing

• Analysis

• Recovery

Active program If unchanged,

read from Source

Copy original contents

here on 1st write

Current

image

Source E p-i-t

(Earlier point-in-time)

Only changed blocks

take up space

Return to any point-in-time without taking explicit backups

► Dial back to restore arbitrary

point-in-time within a 48 hour

time frame

► Logs and timestamps all I/Os

to the selected virtual disks

► No need to quiesce or

interrupt applications

► No host agents required

► Easy to turn on and

revert from

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Continuous Data Protection & Recovery

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Revert to Earlier Image

9am 10am 11am

=

Time-

Stamped

Updates

Cache

11:09am

Active CDP

10:22am

Choose time before

problem occurred

Update distant copies without impacting local performance

► Perfect for disaster recovery

► Only needs a basic IP

connection to secondary site

► Bi-directional (sites can

replicate to each other)

► Asynchronous

► Compressed, multi-stream

transfers for fast performance

& optimum use of bandwidth

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Remote Replication

Snapshot

IP

Cache

Cache

Destination

Source

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Keep Remote Disaster Recovery

Site Updated

Central IT site

DR Site

Recovery

Image

Asynchronous

Copy

Active

Queued

Updates

Replicated

Updates

Expedite central site restoration

► Reverses direction of

replication from the disaster

recovery (DR) site to the

primary datacenter

► Same automated process

for virtual & physical systems

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Advanced Site Recovery

THANK YOU !

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