True Efficiency & Converged Storage for
Virtual Server and Desktop Environments
Glenn Stewart - Systems Engineer
© 2011 Nimble Storage, Inc. Proprietary and confidential. Do not distribute.
Frank Moll – Eastern Canada Sales Manager
Company Snapshot
 Company Snapshot
‒ Founded in January 2008; Started shipping in August 2010
‒ Headquartered in San Jose, CA
‒ 170 employees and rapidly growing
‒ Operations in US, Canada and Europe
 Record-Setting Momentum Since Launch
‒ Revenue ramp faster than any storage array startup
‒ Employee base has quadrupled in the last 12 months
‒ Rapidly growing installed base of over 400 customers
 Foundations for Innovative Technology
‒ Leadership team with deep technical expertise and industry experience
‒ Top tier investors :
© 2011 Nimble Storage, Inc. Proprietary and confidential. Do not distribute.
2
The Founding Premise –
Capacity/Performance @ Odds
Capacity
optimization
Technology Enablers
Data
Protection
Can we optimize
all of these
simultaneously?
Ease of
administration
1. Flash – a dramatic change!!
2. High density, low cost drives
3. Multi-core CPUs
Performance
optimization
© 2011 Nimble Storage, Inc. Proprietary and confidential. Do not distribute.
3
The Nimble Storage Paradigm
Today
Nimble Storage
Applications
– OR –
Primary
High
RPM
Drives
High
Capacity
Drives
High
Capacity
Drives
Performance AND
Capacity Efficiency
True efficiency.
Backup
Radically Better
Data Protection
Converged storage.
Disaster
Recovery
© 2011 Nimble Storage, Inc. Proprietary and confidential. Do not distribute.
Pain-Free
Operations
4
Nimble Optimized for Virtual Environments
Performance AND
Capacity Efficiency
Big performance and density gains
 Consolidate performance hungry apps
 Dramatically increase VM density
Huge storage savings
 2–4x compression
 Zero copy clones saves up to 95% in
space
 Thin snapshots require 50x–100x less
space than full copies
Native stack integrations
 vStorage APIs enable rapid
provisioning
 Instant clones from gold images
available through vCenter plug-ins
© 2011 Nimble Storage, Inc. Proprietary and confidential. Do not distribute.
Better DR and
Backups
Pain-Free
Operations
vStorage APIs for Array Integration
VMware vSphere
API
Nimble
vCenter
Plug-ins
5
Nimble VMware Integration
Features
Installed Components
SRM integration

Nimble SRA
iSCSI Connection Management


Nimble Connection Service (CIM
provider)
Nimble PSP
VAAI – WRITE-SAME

Nimble OS (built-in)
VAAI – ATS
VAAI – UNMAP


Nimble OS (built-in) – Q2/3
Nimble OS (built-in) – Q2/3
VAAI – Copy Offload

Nimble OS (built-in) – Q2/3
vCenter integration

vCenter plugin
VMware synchronized snapshots 
(formerly known as VMware
NPM)
VASA Integration

Nimble OS (built-in)
Nimble VASA Provider – Q2/Q3
© 2011 Nimble Storage, Inc. Proprietary and confidential. Do not distribute.
Description
Allows integration and interoperability
with VMware Site Recovery Manager
Allows efficient connection
management to Nimble arrays in a
VMware environment.
Allows efficient path management to
Nimble arrays in a VMware
environment.
Enables WRITE-SAME VAAI API for fast
disk creation.
Enables Atomic test and hardware
locking
Enables reclaiming of deleted block
data
VAAI – Enables hardware-assisted
storage copy
Enables Nimble-specific plug-in within
vCenter for creating and managing
datastores on Nimble arrays.
Enables application consistent
snapshots within VMware
environments.
VAAI – Enables vSphere VASA APIs
6
VDI Challenges and Stresses
 User experience demand
 Cost per desktop
 Impact on existing virtualization infrastructure
 Proper sizing
 Growth
 Tuning
 Protection (Backup and DR)
 Administration (Overcoming complexity)
© 2011 Nimble Storage, Inc. Proprietary and confidential. Do not distribute.
7
VDI Demands Responsive, High-Performance
Storage
VDI Storage Requirements for Hundreds Desktops
14000
Boot Storm
12000
AV Scans
and Patches
10000
8000
IOPS
Writes
Workday
6000
Reads
4000
2000
0
9:00 AM
© 2011 Nimble Storage, Inc. Proprietary and confidential. Do not distribute.
6:00 PM
10:00 PM
8
Nimble’s CASL Architecture
NVRAM
NVRAM
Inline Compression
NIMBLE
ARRAY

Variable-size blocks enable
fast inline compression,
saving 30-75%

Unique ability to compress
data even for performancesensitive applications
DRAM
© 2011 Nimble Storage, Inc. Proprietary and confidential. Do not distribute.
9
Nimble’s CASL Architecture
NVRAM
NVRAM
Inline Compression
NIMBLE
ARRAY

CASL delivers very high write
performance by always writing
data sequentially to disk:
– HDDs are poor at random IO
but good at sequential I/O
– CASL always organizes
random writes into large
sequential stripes

Using low-cost, high-density
HDDs coupled with
compression lowers costs
substantially
DRAM
All Data
High-Capacity Disk Storage
© 2011 Nimble Storage, Inc. Proprietary and confidential. Do not distribute.
10
Nimble’s CASL Architecture
NVRAM
NVRAM
Inline Compression
NIMBLE
ARRAY
DRAM
All Data
Cacheworthy
Data
Large Adaptive Flash Cache
High-Capacity Disk Storage

CASL uses Flash SSDs as a
cache to accelerate reads

CASL is over 10 times more
cost-effective in using flash:
– MLC flash: Converting random
writes to sequential writes
minimizes “write amplification”,
allowing the use of MLC SSDs
– No RAID overhead: CASL uses
flash as a cache, thus avoiding
the overhead of RAID protection
– Compression: Data on flash is
compressed, saving space
© 2011 Nimble Storage, Inc. Proprietary and confidential. Do not distribute.
11
Nimble’s CASL Architecture
NVRAM
NVRAM
Inline Compression
NIMBLE
ARRAY

– Space efficient backups
DRAM
All Data
Cacheworthy
Data
CASL facilitates hundreds of
backups in the same system:
– Backup windows completely
eliminated as backups are nearinstantaneous
Large Adaptive Flash Cache
– Restore time is in seconds
High-Capacity Disk Storage
Integrated Backup

Local replication facilitates
instantaneous failover in the
event of a system failure

WAN efficient replication
facilitates disaster recovery
DR Site
© 2011 Nimble Storage, Inc. Proprietary and confidential. Do not distribute.
12
Major Space and Power Reduction
30U replaced by 3U
•
•
•
Replaced 30u of storage
with 3u of Nimble from a
space perspective.
•
On the same CS240 we were able to
cut processing time of a Informix DB
from 1hr45min to 42 min!
•
DB was VMotioned over from a EMC
Cx310 with 40 300GB FC 4GB
drives to a Nimble CS240.
•
This is just one example of what our
customers are experiencing
© 2011 Nimble Storage, Inc. Proprietary and confidential. Do not distribute.
13
A Better Paradigm for Backup,
DR, and Data Recovery
Performance AND
Capacity Efficiency
Radically Better
Data Protection
Pain-Free
Operations
Application and VM consistent
Hypervisor
“By capturing virtual desktops via
snapshot technology, the
complete state of the desktop is
protected. This also enables
multiple recovery options,
including physical-to-virtual,
virtual-to-physical and virtual-tovirtual.” – Lauren Whitehouse,
ESG
Cost-effective replication and
cascaded snapshots (vaulting)
simplifies DR as well as failover
© 2011 Nimble Storage, Inc. Proprietary and confidential. Do not distribute.
14
Pain-Free Operations
Performance AND
Capacity Efficiency
Easy to configure
and use
Proactive wellness:
beyond support
Radically Better
Data Protection
Pain-Free
Operations
Deep application
integration
 Single SKU for all
features
 Real-time telemetry
and health checks
 Deep VMware and
Microsoft Integration
 Intuitive management;
Simple UI
 Automated alerting
and case creation
 Application consistent
data protection
 Non-disruptive
software upgrades
 Configurable secure
remote access
 Pre-configured
application profiles
© 2011 Nimble Storage, Inc. Proprietary and confidential. Do not distribute.
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Observations & Results
 Workloads are “interesting”
‒
‒
‒
‒
‒
IOPS is not a best measure – latency (user experience) is better
IO sizes across the board – 4K to 64K+ (mostly random)
read/write ratios trend toward 50/50 (or as much as 20/80)
producing workloads is tough – agreeing on results – tougher
variances can be problematic
 boot storms, login storms, scans, updates, backups
 steady state – light user -> heavy user ??
 Test environments are tricky to manage
‒ managing large “real” workloads
‒ effect of hypervisor configuration (server, network etc.)
‒ Order of Magnitude workload shift
© 2011 Nimble Storage, Inc. Proprietary and confidential. Do not distribute.
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”Tearless” VDI
Storage Performance & Capacity Requirements
Nimble Storage
VDI
Requirements
Tiered Storage
Required IOPS
10,000
Controllers
Swap - 500 GB
SSD*
OS Base Image
250 GB
15k SAS
OS Replicas
1,500 GB
SATA
User Profiles
1,000 GB
User Data
10,000 GB
© 2011 Nimble Storage, Inc. Proprietary and confidential. Do not distribute.
Backup
17
© 2011 Nimble Storage, Inc. Proprietary and confidential. Do not distribute.
18
Nimble Tuned for VDI
Volume Tunable
Recommendation
Volume Size Example
500GB-1TB
(enough to hold 25-50 Desktops at
~20GB/desktop)
Performance Policy – Block Size
4K
(default = VMware)
Performance Policy - Compression
Yes
Performance Policy - Caching
Yes,
Volume Reserve
10-20%
Snapshot Reserve
10-20%
(only on critical user volumes –
assume Desktop volumes only
snapped during IT ops)
© 2011 Nimble Storage, Inc. Proprietary and confidential. Do not distribute.
19
Nimble Storage VDI Benefits
 Increased performance and density
‒ Flash caching supports boot storms
‒ Sequential layout accelerates writes,
supports AV / patching operations
‒ Result: 10x more desktop density
© 2011 Nimble Storage, Inc. Proprietary and confidential. Do not distribute.
20
Nimble Storage VDI Benefits
 Increased performance and density
‒ Flash caching supports boot storms
‒ Sequential layout accelerates writes,
supports AV / patching operations
‒ Result: 10x more desktop density
 Huge storage savings
‒
‒
‒
‒
50% inline compression
Thin provisioning
Zero-copy clones for master versioning
Result: 50-90% space savings
© 2011 Nimble Storage, Inc. Proprietary and confidential. Do not distribute.
21
Nimble Storage VDI Benefits
 Increased performance and density
‒ Flash caching supports boot storms
‒ Sequential layout accelerates writes,
supports AV / patching operations
‒ 10x more desktop density
‒ Result: 10x more desktop density
 Huge storage savings
‒
‒
‒
‒
50% inline compression
Thin provisioning
Zero-copy clones for master Versioning
Result: 50-90% space savings
ONSITE
 Improved data protection
‒ Take frequent snapshots with no
performance impact
‒ Efficient VDI storage replication
‒ Result: complete, affordable backup
and disaster recovery
© 2011 Nimble Storage, Inc. Proprietary and confidential. Do not distribute.
OFFSITE
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Nimble Products
Model
Usable
Capacity
Capacity with
Compression
# of SSD
Drives
# of SATA
Drives
Controllers
Active
Network
Ports
CS210
CS220
CS240
CS260
4 TB
8 TB
16 TB
24TB
Approx. 8TB
Approx. 16TB
Approx. 32TB
Approx. 48TB
2 (80GB)
4 (80GB)
4 (160GB)
4 (320GB)
8 (1TB)
12 (1TB)
12 (2TB)
12 (3TB)
Dual
Dual
Dual
Dual
4
6
6
6
CS220-10G
CS240-10G
CS260-10G
8 TB
16 TB
24TB
Approx. 16TB
Approx. 32TB
Approx. 48TB
4 (80GB)
4 (160GB)
4 (320GB)
12 (1TB)
12 (2TB)
12 (3TB)
Dual
Dual
Dual
4
4
4
© 2011 Nimble Storage, Inc. Proprietary and confidential. Do not distribute.
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Canadian Clients
© 2011 Nimble Storage, Inc. Proprietary and confidential. Do not distribute.
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Learn More
For more information, visit www.nimblestorage.com:
 Detailed product and solution information
 White papers, analyst reports, and best practices guides
 Local events and conferences
For an onsite/Webex briefing, contact
fmoll@nimblestorage.com
© 2011 Nimble Storage, Inc. Proprietary and confidential. Do not distribute.
25
Thank You
© 2011 Nimble Storage, Inc. Proprietary and confidential. Do not distribute.