Technical sales education enterprise- svc and ibm flash best practices update

© 2014 IBM Corporation
SVC and FlashSystem
Best Practices Update and
Implementation Considerations
February 2014
Christian Burns
Storage Solutions Architect, ATS Storage Solutions Engineering

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Agenda
We will cover…
• Brief SVC/Storwize Overview and Updates
• Brief FlashSystem Overview and Updates
• Switch Zoning, Cabling and Port Masking Considerations
• Basic SVC Guidelines
• Supported Release Levels
• Additional Resources
We will not cover…
• FlashSystem V840 (look for a future session to cover the V840)
• All SVC or all FlashSystem best practices, only those uniquely relevant
to running FlashSystem behind SVC

© 2014 IBM Corporation4
IBM XIVTM
Virtual
Disk
Virtual
Disk
Virtual
Disk
Virtual
Disk
SAN Volume Controller
Advanced Copy Services
Storage Pool
HP
EMCDS4000
DS8000
HDS
Combine the capacity from
multiple arrays into a single pool of
storage
Apply common copy
services across the
storage pool
Manage the storage pool from
a central point
Make changes to the storage
without disrupting host
applications
Automatically or manually
migrate volumes to meet
needs
IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC)
Block storage virtualization appliance
• Sits on SAN between Servers and Storage
• Provides heterogeneous tiering, migration and copies

IBM XIVTM
SVC – Relevant Updates
7.1
Additional FC ports: The number of FC ports can now be doubled to eight 8Gb/s ports (Feature code AHA7)
Additional capability for Real-time Compression: Chubbie node adds more cores and memory for RtC, closely
preserving system resources.
Ability to use Real-time Compression and Easy Tier together: This enables users to get high performance and
high efficiency together at the same time.
Port Masking: allows for traffic isolation to improve performance in environments with SAN congestion or replication
challenges.
>2TB LUNs as MDisks: Requires 7.1.0.2 or greater
7.2
Enhanced Real-time Compression Performance: New RACE 2.2 engine/LZ4 algorithm offers numerous
improvements:
• Improved performance up to 3x for sequential write workloads (Faster VMware vMotion operations & sequential
copy operations; more VMware vMotion sessions in parallel – accelerates ROI)
• 35% higher throughput (IOPS) in intensive DB OLTP workload (Increase performance boundaries for random
workloads)
• 35% lower compression CPU usage for the same workload compared to 7.1
Ports 7&8 can be used for Backend Traffic: Prior use of AHA7 limited backend traffic to ports 1-6

Data center optimized
to deliver extreme
performance,
flexible capacity
and total system
protection
• 1.1M IOPS
• 8 GB/s Bandwidth
• Multiple connectivity interfaces
- 16Gb/8Gb Fibre Channel
- 40Gb QDR InfiniBand
- 10Gb FCoE
• Fully redundant and hot swappable architecture:
- Flash modules, power supplies, batteries,
interfaces, fans
• Maintain business continuity with Concurrent code
load
• AES 256 HW base encryption
• 2U form factor- minimal footprint for best of breed ROI
• Low power 625 watts
• Field upgradeable, granular capacity
- 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24, 32, 40, 48
• Reduce installation and management time
with intuitive standardized GUI
• Low Latency 135/90 µs R/W
• Purpose-built, highly parallel design
• Maximize host CPU efficiency and productivity
Macro
Efficiency
MicroLatency™
Enterprise
Reliability
Extreme
Performance
IBM FlashSystem 840

What Does SVC Provide for IBM FlashSystem?
• Migration
• From outside SVC environment – “image mode” import maintaining block format
• Within SVC environment – non-disruptive movement between heterogeneous systems
• High Availability
• Volume Mirror - Preferred Read
• Efficient Utilization
• Easy Tier
• Thin provisioning
• Compression
• Advanced functions
• FlashCopy (Point in Time Image)
• Remote Mirroring (Synchronous and Asynchronous)
• Additional Host attach
• iSCSI

Switch Zoning/Cabling/Port Masking – General Considerations
• SVC nodes traditionally have had four 8Gb/s ports
• CG8 feature code AHA7 adds second HBA, total of eight 8Gb/s ports (no 10GbE or internal SSD)
• Ports 1-6 can be used for back-end storage (v 7.1)
• Ports 1-8 can be used for back-end storage (v 7.2)
• Feature code AHA7 is strongly recommended when using SVC with FlashSystem boxes
• FlashSystem 7x0/8x0 series have four 8Gb/s ports
• FlashSystem 840 has sixteen 8Gb/s ports
• Eight 16Gb/s ports are also an option (out of scope)
• 8Gb/s ports will negotiate at 4Gb/s, if necessary
• Recommendations for port usage, zoning, etc. depend on the specific configuration and conditions:
• For absolute best performance, consider using all SVC ports for FlashSystem traffic
• Consider using SVC port masking to:
• isolate node-node traffic if SAN congestion, high node-node latency is an issue
• Isolate replication traffic with poor site-site bandwidth, replication issues
• Redundant fabrics are recommended

FlashSystem Cabling
• When connecting to redundant fabrics
• connect the odd ports to one fabric
• and the even ports to the other fabric
• On 840, with 16Gb ports, only ports 1 and 2 on each card are
active, as implied in diagram ->
• On 840 with 4Gb and 8Gb, all ports are active
• With SVC, it is assumed that connections are 8Gb
1A / 1B 2A / 2B

SVC Cabling – 4 Ports per SVC Node

SVC Cabling – 8 Ports per Node

SVC to FlashSystem Zoning
• Consider using 1:1 zoning approach: 1 FlashSystem port to 1 SVC Port
• For absolute best performance, consider using all SVC ports (16) and all FlashSystem ports (16)
• Use port masking techniques in case of SAN congestion, high node-node latency, or poor replication
performance to isolate specific traffic types
• Zoning for a single IO Group with 4 port nodes:
• Each zone: 1 IBM FlashSystem port to 1 port in each SVC node
• Repeat zoning for additional I/O groups

SVC to FlashSystem Zoning

Basic SVC Guidelines – 8 Ports per Node
On Fabric 1
Zone-1: SVC Node 1 port 1 with FlashSystem Canister 1 Card 1 Port 1
On Fabric 2
Zoning for a single IO Group, would be repeated for additional IO Groups

SVC Port Masking – Example Port Assignments, If Necessary
• Illustration shows functions of ports 6 and 8 flipped with 2 and 4. This is due to restriction of
backend traffic to ports 1-6 in v7.1.
• Note, with 7.2, port masking can be identically configured across cards.
• Take care to ensure that isolated traffic types are distributed across both fabrics

Port Masking – Detailed Example
• Port masking restricts usage of specific SVC ports
to specific traffic types (host, replication, node-
node)
• Use chsystem –localfcportmask, chsystem
–partnerfcportmask, chhost –mask CLI
command to set port masking.

Basic SVC Guidelines
• Number of FlashSystems per I/O Group
• Depends on usage scenario:
• When Flash is only storage, use 2 systems if mirroring locally
• When using Flash with ET and other storage, depends on ET capacity required
• Note, max recommended Mdisks per controller is 16, so if you want to use Flash/ET with more
than 16 pools, more than 1 FlashSystem is recommended
• SVC Multipathing with IBM FlashSystem
• IBM FlashSystem multipathing with SVC is Balance Mdisk (Round Robin in 7.1 and higher)
• IBM FlashSystem LUNs for SVC
• Number of LUNs by multiple of 4 to achieve capacity required
• LUN size dependent on capacity required (use fewer larger LUNs)
• 512B sector (4K sector not supported by SVC)
• All SVC nodes have access to all IBM FlashSystem LUNs
• IBM FlashSystem LUN access policy/host mapping should match zoning

Basic SVC Guidelines (cont.)
• SVC Mdisk from IBM FlashSystem
• Minimum of 4 Mdisks (LUNs) per FlashSystem
• Single pool with 16 LUNs Max is recommended (multiples of 4 LUNs to balance across cores, ports)
• If more than one FlashSystem, create a single storage pool per FlashSystem
• SVC Vdisk zoning to host
• Single host initiator to 1 port in each SVC node
• SVC Vdisks from IBM FlashSystem Mdisks
• 8 Vdisks per host from a FlashSystem Mdisk Group
• Cache “on” unless absolutely highest performance required
• Striped volumes - striped across all Mdisks from IBM FlashSystem
• Extent size - 256MB (default) or 1GB (default >= 7.1)
• Preferred node balanced across nodes; IO Group balanced
• Vdisk/volume size dependent on total capacity required

SVC Volume Mirroring & Preferred Read
Write to both copies
SVC
IBM FlashSystem
Legacy or new
disk storage in
SVC
environment
Server
• Benefits – performance, high availability
• SVC stores two copies of a volume (copy0/copy1), while single volume presented to host
• Reads from primary copy (c0) - “Preferred Read”
• Writes to both copies (c0 and c1)
• Primary copy may be dynamically changed
• Easy to use – just add a copy to an existing volume
• A local high availability function
• Each copy of the volume is on a separate storage system
• If disk supporting one copy is unavailable, SVC provides
continuous data access from the other copy
• Copies are automatically resynchronized when disk is available again
• Copies can be split
• Either copy can continue as production copy
• Either or both copies may be thin-provisioned or compressed
• SVC Volume Mirror Considerations
• If stretched cluster, ensure host writing to mirrored volume is in same site as primary copy
• Mirror sync rate 100 (default for pre-set is 50; 64MBps is easy for FlashSystem)
• Primary Copy balanced across IBM FlashSystem if using 2 IBM FlashSystem

• Benefits - Performance and efficiency
• Automatic, sub-LUN level movement of ‘hot’ data to FlashSystem and ‘cool’ data
to spinning disk
• Reduces cost of improved performance – FlashSystem used only for hot data
• Many workloads show <10% hot data (“skew”)
• Easy to use – just add LUNs from FlashSystem as “SSD tier” in SVC Storage
Pool containing spinning disk
• SVC Easy Tier
• Enabled for Storage Pool containing spinning disk and FlashSystem
• May be dynamically enabled/disabled for storage pool and/or volume
• Volume may be non-disruptively copied/moved into/out of Easy Tier
• SVC EasyTier Considerations
• Be sure to set correct tier (generic_ssd) for FlashSystem Mdisks
• If there is lots of IBM FlashSystem capacity relative to spinning disk, all
extents may move to FlashSystem (e.g. limit FlashSystem Mdisks to 20%
capacity of spinning disk)
• Thin provisioned volumes for EasyTier should use grain size of 64K or
greater (not 32K default in 6.3 and earlier; default in 6.4 and later is 256K)
• Refer to Redbooks for details on planned outages with ET and FlashSystem
• As always, use STAT tool to determine Flash capacity req’d
SVC Easy Tier

Real-time Compression
• Benefits: Increases effective capacity of storage systems up to 5x, helping to lower costs, floor-space
requirements, power and cooling. Accelerate more with less Flash, extend benefit of your Flash investment.
• Turbo Compression: Consider using Real-time Compression along with Easy Tier.
• Testing results showed 4x data reduction with 2x faster response times and double the throughput
with just 2% Flash.
• If using STAT tool, compress volume first, as ET only evaluates reads on compressed volumes
(may skew predictions for mixed pools)
• RtC Considerations
• Enabled/Disabled on a per SVC volume basis
• Use of 2013 SVC CG8 models, with 12 cores and 24GB cache (Compression Upgrade - 6.4.1 SW
or later) is strongly recommended
• Consider 7.2 for significant performance improvements for compressed workloads
• Use cache-enabled configurations ONLY
• Follow general SVC Real-time Compression best practices:
• Target volumes with compression ratio >= 45%
• Avoid pre-compressed and/or “upstream” encrypted data
• Small-block random I/O workloads are well suited
• Heavy write sequential workloads are not ideal, but 7.2 offers significant write sequential
improvements over earlier versions
• For workloads that include a significant amount of sequential writes, consult with support
on enabling compression_destage_mode parameter.

SAN Volume Controller/FlashSystem Support Matrix
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=ssg1S1004453#_IBMFlash
Controller Model Firmware
Supports SAN Volume
Controller Quorum Disks Support for
MDisks >2TB
Multipathing Notes
710
5.6.0
Yes
No
Round Robin
SAN Volume Controller
firmware level 7.1
required
IBM FlashSystems are not
currently supported with
16Gbps SANs.
810
720
6.3.0
6.3.1820
840 1.1.0.3
Yes
IBM FlashSystem 840 is
supported with 16Gbps
SANs.

Storwize/FlashSystem Support Matrix
http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=ssg1S1004450#_IBMFlash
Controller Model Firmware
Supports SAN Volume
Controller Quorum
Disks
Support for MDisks
>2TB
Multipathing Notes
710
5.6.0
Yes
No
Round Robin
Storwize 0 firmware
level 7.1 required
IBM FlashSystems
are not currently
supported with
16Gbps SANs.
810
720
6.3.0
6.3.1820
840 1.1.0.3 Yes
IBM FlashSystem
840 is supported
with 16Gbps SANs.

Resources/Links
FlashSystem Wiki/Community: https://w3-connections.ibm.com/communities/community/tms
IBM SVC Information Center: http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/svc/ic/index.jsp
IBM Storwize Information Center: http://pic.dhe.ibm.com/infocenter/storwize/ic/index.jsp
IBM FlashSystems: http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/storage/flash/
Additional FlashSystem Resources: http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/storage/flash/resources.html

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Technical sales education enterprise- svc and ibm flash best practices update