Storage Performance Validation
Your Name
Your title
December 2014
1
Your Storage Challenges
How to balance cost, risk, time to market?

Constant pressure to lower storage
infrastructure costs

Need to quickly evaluate, deploy and derisk new products & technologies
 Need to rapidly roll out new
infrastructure to support the business
units
Implement change without compromising
performance and availability
2
Legacy Approaches to Your Challenges
Over-provision
storage
infrastructure
“Test in production &
pray”
Blindly trust
vendor specs &
claims
Validate with
freeware load
testing
“Our vendor will fix
any problems”
“Racks of
servers/VMs &
scripting”
3
Problems with Current Approaches
Overprovisioning
Trust vendor
“best guess”
Performance
validation w/
freeware tools
 Storage is ~40% of today’s IT

infrastructure budget & growing
Wastes CAPEX
 Vendors don’t have the data

related to your workloads
Vendors can’t identify your
performance limits; it’s your SLA
 No scaling to production levels
 No realistic scenarios
 80% of time on setup; 20% on testing
 Slows time to market
4
Who is Load DynamiX?
Leader in storage performance validation
Mission
Provide actionable insight into storage infrastructure
behavior to assure performance & optimize cost
Product Suite
 Software: Load DynamiX Enterprise
 Hardware: LDX load generation appliance
;;
Award Winning Technology
5
The Load DynamiX Solution
Load DynamiX Enterprise software
Performance Analytics
Workload Modeling
Load DynamiX Performance
Validation Appliance
(File, Block, Object)
Switch
Product or
Product or
Configuration A Configuration B
6
Load DynamiX: The performance validation
standard for both Vendors and IT organizations
Technology Vendors
IT Organizations
7
Benefits of Using Load DynamiX
 Optimize Storage Investment
•
Eliminate over/under-provisioning by aligning your
workload requirements to deployment decisions
 Mitigate Risk
•
Identify issues before deployment by testing at
extreme scale and worst-case conditions
 Innovate with Confidence
•
Adopt the latest storage technologies without the
fear of unpredictable performance
“If you can’t
validate technology
before it’s deployed
into production,
then you’re flying
blind.”
Julia Palmer,
Performance
Engineering
Manager
 Improve Lab & Engineering Efficiency
•
Make better engineering decisions and reduce
testing costs
8
Why IT Organizations Use Load DynamiX
Storage Validation Life Cycle
To Introduce Change with Confidence
Technology
Evaluation
What technology is best for our business?
Product
Evaluation
Which vendor and/or which product is best for
each of our workloads / multiple workloads?
Configuration
Optimization
Which mix of SSD vs. HDD is best for workloads?
Benefits of tiering, caching, proper queue depth
settings?
Pre-Production
Staging Validation
Benchmark before going live and verify all
connections, configurations and ports?
Change
Validation
Will patches, firmware and OS updates
degrade performance, cause outages, or fix
issues?
Flash, Hybrids, NFSv4, FCoE, OpenStack, Ceph, ...
More efficient testing enables full life cycle testing
9
Technology Evaluation Example
ADP Case Study
Customer Overview


Large payroll servicing company
>10PB of storage
IT Challenge

Find performance limits of NAS arrays with NFS
and SMB
Solution


Load DynamiX 10G Series appliances & software
Load DynamiX Professional Services
Benefits


Provided data to make a decision on the
technologies that would best support expected
growth
Full confidence that their storage systems can
support future workloads
“I was moving forward
with one NAS product
for my Tier 2 storage,
but after running my
validations with Load
DynamiX, I know that
I would have spent
the next 6 months
trying to fix this bad
decision and likely
would have lost my
job.”
Storage Architect
ADP
10
Use Case
Technology Evaluation
Determine which storage system offers the highest performance
or is the most cost-effective when running workloads that reflect
your specific applications
Performance Comparison: NAS Vendor A vs. NAS Vendor B
Vendor A: Shallow Tree Structure (2014-03-21: 11:05:05 AM)
Vendor A: Deep Tree Structure (2014-03-20: 12:58:50 AM)
Vendor B: Shallow Tree Structure (2014-03-20: 12:48:12 AM)
Vendor B: Deep Tree Structure (2014-03-20: 12:45:36 AM)
Technology B shows
significantly lower
latencies in both
shallow and deep
tree directory
structures
11
Storage Product Selection
Go Daddy Case Study
Customer Overview
 World’s largest web hosting provider: 5+ million accounts
 Over 50 million domain names under management
 3300 employees; 600+ IT developers, 5 storage admins
IT Challenge
 Determine most cost-effective storage systems to support
31PB growing 30% annually with 99.999% uptime across 5
data centers
Solution
 Load DynamiX 10G Series appliances & software
Go Daddy Benefits
 Projected storage cost savings of 65% over 2 years
 Full confidence that their storage systems can support future

“Load DynamiX
is like my smart
phone – I can’t
imagine my life
without it!”
Julia Palmer
Manager,
Performance
Engineering
Go Daddy
workloads
Freedom to rapidly innovate with new technologies
12
Use Case
Storage Product Selection
Find the performance limits of new storage systems before deploying
them into production under a variety of worst case loading scenarios.
Faster
15k
RPM
Drives
Vendor-A
(production
reference)
Open
Compute
solution 1
Open
Compute
solution 2
9ms
8ms
6ms
7.2k
RPM Drives
20ms
18ms
13ms
Tiered
Cheaper
Better
HDD with
SSD
15ms
N/A
15ms
baseline
+ Features
+ Support
+ Mature/stable
23%
reduction
- Support
- Features
- Stability
unknown
56%
reduction
- Support
- Features
- Stability
unknown
13
Flash Storage Product Selection
NYP Case Study
Customer Overview
 Large healthcare organization
 >20,000 staff supporting >2,000 beds
IT Challenge
 Determine best price / performance flash storage systems

to support current and expected workloads
Finding the right tools / methodology to use to test with
Solution
 Load DynamiX Professional Services
Benefits
 Data to enable decision to select the best vendor / array
 Validated the configurations that would support the

“We wanted to test
certain ‘smart’
storage arrays, that
support dedupe &
compression;
therefore Iometer
and similar tools
aren’t appropriate.”
Storage Engineer
New York
Presbyterian Hospital
workloads
Full confidence that the storage systems from the new
vendor array can address performance issues
14
Use Case
Storage Product Selection – Flash Storage
Determine the comparative performance of all-flash and hybrid systems
when running workloads that reflect your specific applications to identify
optimal price/performance solution.
300000
IOPS
250000
20%
Reducible
50%
Reducible
Dedupe
Effects:
Vendor A
does better
when data is
highly
compressible
80%
Reducible
200000
150000
Dedupe
100000
Effects:
Vendor
B
50000
does best
when data is0
50% or less
compressible
Vendor A
Vendor B
20% /
80%
50% /
50%
80% /
20%
20% /
80%
50% /
50%
80% /
20%
20% /
80%
50% /
50%
80% /
20%
Read/Write Ratios
15
Storage Configuration Optimization
Nationwide Case Study
Customer Overview
 Nationwide - F100 financial services
 Supported by EMC and integration partner AdvizeX
IT Challenge
 By understanding the effects of system configuration
options, determine how to wring the most performance
out of the next-gen storage systems
Solution
 Multiple Load DynamiX appliances & software
 Load DynamiX Professional Services
Benefits
 Reduced risk by optimizing the proposed clustered NAS

solution to meet performance goals before going live
Lower costs via the ability to align configurations to
performance requirements.
“By using Load
Dynamix, our
normal testing
cycle was
reduced from 2
months to 2
weeks.”
Paul Timmerman
TVP, Technology
Solutions
AdvizeX
16
Use Case
Storage Configuration Optimization
Determine the optimal storage price / performance configuration by
varying dozens of settings like read/write ratio, block/file size,
compression / dedupe and queue depth.
Set test
Parameters
See results from
sequential test runs
in tabular or
graphical form
17
Pre-Production Validation
Ellie Mae Case Study Overview
Customer Overview
 Ellie Mae® is a leading provider of enterprise level, ondemand automated solutions for the residential mortgage
industry.
IT Challenge
 Private Cloud migration
Load DynamiX Solution
 Load DynamiX FC Series appliances & LDX Enterprise
 Load DynamiX Professional Services
Customer Benefits
 Unique insight into performance bottlenecks of the Private
“Using Load
DynamiX's
workload modeling
solution can help
IT organizations
avoid performance
issues."
Colm Keegan,
Senior Analyst
Storage Switzerland
Cloud allowed customer to make important design and
configuration decisions pre-deployment

Greater performance and uptime
18
Use Cases
Pre-Production Validation
Validate performance of storage infrastructure before deployment.
 Set VDI environment assumption
 Vary # of clients, replica sizes,
clone sizes, read/write metrics
Track progress as VMs start booting
19
Pre-Production Validation
Financial Institution
Customer Overview
 Leading US financial institution
IT Challenge
 Validate Oracle-based application performance on new
storage subsystem before going “live”
Load DynamiX Solution
 Load DynamiX FC Series appliances & LDX Enterprise
Customer Benefits
 In days, built application emulation model, ran against
target arrays, proved performance and array head room in
a pre-deployment

Greater performance and uptime
“Evaluating and
assessing storage
infrastructure
needs to be an
ongoing process.
The ideal solution
is a workload
modeling and
simulation product
that is purposebuilt for the task,
such as Load
DynamiX."
George Crump
Storage Switzerland
20
Use Cases
Pre-Production Validation
Validate database workload performance on storage before deployment
1. Characterize composite
2.
profile
usingof
3. Model
View from
distribution
workload
existing
LDX composite
workload
latency
(and
other
figures)
metrics
…
each
line
below
feature
and
run
the
as
related to athe
mission
represents
distinct
composite
workload
critical
database
workload
workload,
metrics
captured
against
the (new)
array
from
the existing
(old)
array
21
Change Mgmt / Validation
Firehost Case Study Overview
Customer Overview
 Leading provider of secure cloud hosting
 Differentiate on security & performance of data centers
IT Challenge
 Understand how constantly changing workloads are
impacting the storage infrastructure. Align storage
technology acquisitions to performance requirements.
Load DynamiX Solution
 Load DynamiX FC Series appliances & LDX Enterprise
 Load DynamiX Professional Services
“I'm dealing with
160 different
workloads–changing
all the time. I had no
solutions to help me
validate. It’s a
guessing game
without Load
DynamiX."
Customer Benefits
Todd Gleason
 Ability to quickly decide to deploy changes to production
Firehost

infrastructure, with much greater confidence
Ability to continue to confidently market their services as
the world’s fastest and most reliable
Director of Technology
22
Use Case
Change Management / Validation
Validate the effect on performance of application upgrades, firmware
updates and OS updates on storage infrastructure before going live.
EFFECT ON LATENCY (ms)
1.8
EFFECT ON IOPS
250000
1.6
200000
1.4
1.2
150000
1
0.8
100000
0.6
50000
0.4
0.2
0
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
V1
V1
V2
V2
Vendor claimed performance improvement from new firmware
release. Actual effect on IOPS & latency was negligible when tested
in pre-production lab
23
Load DynamiX: Superior to Freeware
Iometer, etc
Ability to test at production
scale & find performance
limits
Ability to aggregate results &
reports
A single 2U appliance
scales to any production
level
Impractical - even with
dozens of servers
Included
Requires extensive
scripting to consolidate
results
Modeling of deduplicable &
compressible content
Included
None or limited support
Ability to share tests &
results across distributed
users
Included
No shared access
Modeling of metadata
commands
Included
None or limited support
Complexity of running 100s
of tests
Included, using Workload
Iterator
A manual test-by-test
process
Time spent on setup vs.
running real tests
80-90% of time on testing
80-90% of time on admin,
setup & scripting
24
Load DynamiX: Superior to Freeware

Superior realism
▸ Meta-data, file system calls, mimic real-world applications.
▸ Dedicated high performance load generator scales to emulate largest production loads
▸ Patent pending method of testing streams that contain compressible and de-dupable
content … so critical for Flash testing

Consistency of results
▸ Repeatable load executed by optimized appliance and SW stack
▸ Runs & re-runs where output can be reliably compared now and anytime in the future

Ease of use & deployment for greater productivity and less cost
▸
▸
▸
▸
▸
▸

Single solution for File, Block and Object – instead of several
Full featured validation solution – develop, run, automate tests and analyze results
Purpose-built load generating appliance vs. cost & time deploying dozens of servers
80% of time on testing, vs. 80% of time setting up and administering test beds
Iterate hundreds of tests from a single command with no scripting
Simple and rich reporting removes the need to compile &
analyze results from dozens of clients and tools
Professional Support
vs.
▸ LDX professional services and support dedicated to performance testing
25
How Load DynamiX Works
3 steps to insight
26
The Storage Performance Validation Process
Iterate on different products
& configurations
2
1
Model
Production
Workload
3
Deploy and
Run Workload
Emulations
Analyze
Results
Iterate on different model assumptions & scale
Deploy In
Production
With Confidence
27
1
Create a Model
PRODUCTION STATS
(Perfstats, .nar, .btp,
NFSstat, etc)
PRE-BUILT TEST SUITES
(VDI, etc)
PACKET CAPTURES
(PCAPs)
ACCURATE, REALISTIC
WORKLOAD MODEL
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2
Deploy Test Configuration & Run Emulations
Load DynamiX
Performance
Validation Appliance
Load DynamiX
Enterprise
(File, Block, Object)
FC
SMB
iSCSI
NFS
Switch
Product or
Configuration
A
OBJECT
HTTP-S
LDX Appliances
Workload Emulation
Product or
Configuration
B
Systems Under Test
29
3
Analyze Results
Analytics
Insight
Technology
Evaluation
Product
Evaluation
Configuration
Optimization
Pre-Production
Staging Validation
Change
Validation
30
Real-World Results: Customer Quotes
“If you can’t
validate storage
technology before
it’s deployed in
production, you are
flying blind.”
“Load DynamiX
made it easy to
migrate to a private
cloud. We were
able to determine
real-world behavior
and save big $.”
“Load DynamiX is
like Iometer on
steroids; I’m so
much more
efficient; I’ll never
go back to
freeware tools.”
Julia Palmer
Systems Operations
Director
Todd Gleason
31
Thank you!
32
Load DynamiX 3-year Financial Benefit
Storage Cost
Avoidance
$ Millions
Business Risk
Mitigation
$ Millions
$
Cost
Avoidance –
Lab test
infrastructure
$ Tens to
hundreds of
thousands
Storage
engineering
productivity
$ Hundreds
of thousands
33