Track 4: How to build trouble-free large SANs up to thousand(s) of ports

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Track 4 How to build trouble-free large SANs up
to thousand(s) of ports

• Dragon Slayer Consulting
• Marc Staimer, President CDS
• marcstaimer_at_earthlink.net
• 26 April 2004

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Agenda

• SAN Definition 2004
• Current Large SAN Architectures
• Issues w/current architectures
• Eliminating SAN Scaling pain
• Summary

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Dragon Slayer Background

• Paid Consulting
• gt 70 vendors
• Unpaid Consulting
• gt 200 end users
• Known Industry Expert
• Speak 5 events/yr
• Write 3 trade articles/yr

• 7 yrs sales
• 7 yrs sales mgt
• 10 yrs marketing bus dev
• Storage SANs
• 6 years consulting
• Launched or participated
• 20 products

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SAN Definition 2004
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Audience Response

• Raise your hand if you now have or plan to have
  within 12 months an all-encompassing SAN
  infrastructure into the thousands of ports.

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Large SAN Architectures

• Traditional (a.k.a. Victorian)
• Planned/Gated Communities
• Urban Sprawl

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Audience Response

• By a show of hands, what SAN architecture have
  you implemented?
• Core-to-edge
• Mesh
• SAN Islands
• Not sure

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Traditional a.k.a. Victorian

• Mesh
• Switch-switch interconnect
• Core-to-edge
• Guaranteed hop count latency
• Dual fabric typical for both

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Issues with Traditional Approaches

• Change management
• Guaranteed bandwidth
• Fabric disruption propagation

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Change Management

• Change No management
• Lot of coordination
• Servers, storage, SAN, cables facilities
• Re-architecting
• Switch ports have to be reallocated for ISLs
• Zones, cabling, and LUN masking must be redone
• Followed up with shakedown troubleshooting
• Sometimes requiring back out of the change

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Guaranteed Bandwidth

• Lack of user definable QoS
• Some applications have higher priorities than
  others

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Fabric Disruption Propagation

• Fabric disruptions anywhere
• propagate throughout the fabric everywhere
• RSCNs
• Zone changes, add switches or HBAs

Salud!
Ah choo!
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Traditional Approaches have led to Urban Sprawl
a.k.a SAN Islands

• IT is dynamic
• Most organizations do not plan well
• Minimizes disruption effects of change
• Doesnt eliminate disruptions

this
This becomes
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Issues with SAN Islands

• Limits SAN benefits
• Storage consolidation limited by island
• Management touches expand

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Eliminating SAN Scaling Pain The Market
Requirements

• Fabric disruptions
• Large fabric latency
• Intra-fabric switch ASIC hops
• Database bloat
• QoS
• Change management
• Correlating storage provisioning, SANs,
  policies
• Troubleshooting

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Fabric Disruptions

• RSCNs
• Switch, HBA, Zoning
• Changes
• Market requirement
• lt fabric disrupts

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Intra-Fabric Switch ASIC hops

• Hop number affects latency
• Latency is cumulative
• Affects end user response times
• Users demand predictability
• Mesh and/or SAN islands unpredictable
• Locality predictability again
• Core-edge predictable
• Market requirement
• Minimize latency

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SAN Database Bloat

• As fabrics get larger
• FSPF databases get largerand slower
• Name services get largerand slower
• Market requirement
• Keep databases small

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QoS

• Policy based bandwidth matching
• Providing each application bandwidth based on
• User defined requirements and thresholds
• Market requirement
• Optimize bandwidth
• Not to waste it

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Change Management

• Market requirements include
• Automation
• Negative impact minimization
• Audit trail
• Change simulation, planning, validation
• Correlation of LUN maps, zones, pathing policies
• Work plans for all of the departments involved
• Simple, brain dead trouble shooting

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Correlating Storage Provisioning, SANs, policies

• Efficient storage mgt lt SAN
• Market requirements include
• One interface for both storage and SAN mgt
• Policy based
• Enforcement capable

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Troubleshooting

• Market requirements include
• Make it brain-dead simple
• Make it quick
• Make it easy AND cheap

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Audience Response

• By a show of hands, which is your worst SAN
  scaling pain?
• Fabric disruptions
• Large fabric latency
• Database bloat
• QoS
• Change management
• Storage, SANs, policies correlation
• Troubleshooting

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Solutions that Eliminate SAN Scaling Pain

• HBA RSCN switch suppression
• Automated change mgt software
• SAN Masking-a.k.a. SAN routing
• SAN segmentation
• Planned communities
• QoS
• SAM
• Troubleshooting tools

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HBA RSCN Switch Suppression

• Stops unimportant HBA RSCN disruptions
• From disrupting other HBAs
• Significantly lt zoning requirements
• Vendors include
• QLogic
• McDATA

RSCN
RSCN
RSCN
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Automated Change Management Software

• Plan Change
• Predicts Impact
• Implements Change
• Validates Change
• Logs Change History

• Correlates
• Storage SAN changes
• LUNs
• Zones
• Pathing Policies
• Vendors include
• Onaro

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SAN Masking-a.k.a. SAN Routing

• Analogous to LUN masking
• Routes specific data
• Between SAN islands
• Visibility between specific WWNs
• Eliminates disruptions
• Between SAN islands
• Increases SAN scalability
• gt switches from 239 to 57,121
• Simplifies management
• Both ongoing change mgt.
• Heterogeneous SANs
• Address translation (domain WWN)
• Eliminates ATL forced fabric merges
• Increases availability

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SAN Masking continued

• Works over FC
• And IP networks
• iFCP and FCIP
• Vendors include
• McDATA
• Eclipse/IPS
• Cisco
• MDSVSAN Routing
• Brocade
• Multiprotocol Router
• LightSand
• 8100

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SAN Segmentation a.k.a. Planned Communities

• Analogous to large storage controller
• Start large subdivide
• One physical fabric
• Many logical ones
• Vendors include
• Cisco
• MDSVSANs
• McDATA
• Dynamic Partitioning
• CNT (04)

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Quality of Service QoS

• SAN throughput allocation
• Based on IT priorities
• Policy based
• Recognizes App performance
• Requirements differ
• OLTP gt than data migration, etc.
• Vendors include
• SANdial Shadow 1400
• Inter intra-switch
• Cisco MDS
• Intra-switch
• McDATA (04)
• CNT (04)

QoS
OLTP 100MB/s
Migration 25MB/s
Warehouse 35MB/s
Email 30MB/s
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System Area Management SAM

• SRM SAN mgt
• Storage Provisioning
• Block File
• Heterogeneous
• Policy based mgt
• Policy enforcement tools
• One look feel
• App performance mgt
• Optimizes ecosystem

• Vendors include
• EMC
• Softek
• AppIQ
• HP
• IBM
• Creekpath
• VERITAS
• Storability
• TekTools
• CA

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Easier Troubleshooting Tools

• Simplified
• Problem isolation
• Problem resolution
• Performance issues

• Vendors include
• Cisco
• SPAN, rSPAN
• SANdial
• Network Performance Analyzer

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How Big Can SANs Grow?

• Switches
• Currently up to 256 ports
• Up to 1024 2H 2004
• Fabrics
• Traditional
• 239 switches
• 239 x 256 gt 61K ports
• Theoretical (new technologies)
• 239 switch domains
• 239 switches/domain
• 256 ports/switch
• gt 14M ports

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Conclusion

• SAN Scaling today is painful
• New generation software hardware
• Provides pain relief
• Test verify

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Thank you. Questions?
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• Mr. Staimer will be available in the
  Ask-the-Expert booth in the Exhibit Hall
• Monday 5-6 PM