A New Approach to Storage
in Virtual Environments
March 2012
Eric Burgener
VP, Product Management
Agenda

Storage I/O in virtual environments

Implications

Industry responses

The storage hypervisor
March 2012
2
Hidden Storage Costs of Virtualization
❶
VM
Poor performance
• Very random, write-intensive workload
• Spinning disks generate fewer IOPS
• Storage provisioning trade-offs
VM
❷
Poor capacity utilization
VM
• Over-provisioning to ensure performance
• Performance trade-offs
VM
❸
Complex management
• Requires storage expertise
• Imposes SLA limitations
• Limits granularity of storage operations
Virtual Machines
March 2012
The VM I/O Blender
3
Hidden Storage Costs of Virtualization
❶
VM
Poor performance
• Very random, write-intensive workload
• Spinning disks generate fewer IOPS
• Storage provisioning trade-offs
VM
Can decrease storage
❷ Poor capacity utilization
• Over-provisioning to ensure performance
performance by 30%
- 50%
• Performance
trade-offs
VM
VM
❸
Complex management
• Requires storage expertise
• Imposes SLA limitations
• Limits granularity of storage operations
Virtual Machines
March 2012
The VM I/O Blender
4
VDI Environments Are Even Worse

Windows desktops expect
dedicated local disk

Even more write-intensive
due to many more VMs/host

Much wider variability
between peak and avg IOPS


VIRTUAL DESKTOPS
March 2012
Boot, login, application, logout
storms
Add’l storage provisioning,
capacity consumption issues
5
Yet Another “Virtual” Storage Conundrum
HIGH PERFORMANCE
Poor space utilization
SPACE-EFFICIENT
Poor performance
RAPID PROVISIONING
Poor performance
Thick/Fixed Disks
Fully provisioned
Thin/Dynamic Disks
Thin provisioned
Linked Clones/Differencing Disks
Writable clones
The virtual administrator’s choice: pick just one
March 2012
6
Industry Responses
BUY MORE STORAGE



Adding spindles adds
IOPS
Tends to waste storage
capacity
Drives up energy, backup
costs
March 2012
HOST SSD CARDS
BUY FASTER STORAGE



Add higher performance
drives (if available)
Upgrade to a higher
performance array
Increased storage
complexity

Really speeds up reads

Does not necessarily
speed up random writes

Expensive and precludes
any “HA” support
7
Storage Challenge Implications

Storage has to be significantly overprovisioned

Storage costs can unexpectedly be 30% 50% higher

Performance vs provisioning times vs space
efficiency vs cost
Will I run out of storage budget before I finish?
March 2012
8
The Storage Hypervisor Concept
…
STORAGE HYPERVISOR
SERVER HYPERVISOR

Server hypervisors increase
server resource utilization and
virtualize server resources

Storage hypervisors increase
storage utilization and
virtualize storage resources

Increases resource utilization
and improves flexibility

Increases storage utilization
and improves flexibility
Performance, capacity and management implications
March 2012
9
Introduction of a Dedicated Write Log Per Host

…
HOST
Log turns random writes into a
sequential stream

HYPERVISOR

Optimized Writes
Acknowledgements
De-staging allows data to be laid out
for optimum read performance

Optimized
Reads
Dedicated
write log

Optimized
asynchronous
de-staging Tier 1

Minimizes fragmentation issues
Requires no add’l hardware to
achieve large performance gains

Tier n
Storage devices can perform up to 10x faster
The more write intensive, the better the speed up
Excellent recovery model for shared
storage environments
Tiered Storage
March 2012
10
Log De-Couples High Latency Storage Operations
THESE OPERATIONS
NO LONGER IMPACT
…
HOSTS
HYPERVISOR
VM PERFORMANCE
THIN PROVISIONING
Write Logs
ZERO IMPACT SNAPSHOTS
Storage Pool
HI PERFORMANCE CLONES
Shared Storage
March 2012
INSTANT PROVISIONING
11
The Virsto Storage Hypervisor
Fundamentally changes the way
hypervisors handle storage I/O
Improves performance of existing
storage by up to 10x
Thin provisions ALL storage with
NO performance degradation
Reduces storage capacity
consumption by up to 90%
Enables almost instant provisioning of high performance storage
Reduces storage provisioning times
by up to 99%
Allows VM-centric storage management on top of block-based storage
Enables safe provisioning and deprovisioning of VMs by anyone
March 2012
12
How Virsto Works (1)

Virtual
Desktop
Virtual
Desktop
Virtual
Desktop
Virtual
Desktop
…
vLog provides very high write
performance ALL the time

Sequentializes writes to speed up spinning
disk or SSD
Virsto Virtual Storage Layer
HOST
Optimized Writes
Acknowledgements
Hypervisor
3
1
Optimized
Reads
Virsto vLog
Optimized
de-staging


Tier 1
Tier n
2
Virsto vSpace
March 2012
Data asynchronously de-staged
to vSpace

vSpace shared across all hosts (SAN)

Almost all reads handled from vSpace
Splits reads and writes across
different spindles

Improves the performance of both
13
How Virsto Works (2)

Virtual
Server
Virtual
Server
Virtual
Server
Virtual
Server
…
Virsto Virtual Storage Layer
Host
6

Optimized
Reads
Virsto vLog
Regular provisioning, thin provisioning

Snapshot/clone creation/usage, backup
All storage is “cluster-aware”
with no performance impact

5
Tier 1
Tier n
4
Virsto vSpace
March 2012

Hypervisor
Optimized Writes
Acknowledgements
Optimized
de-staging
High latency operations can be
done with NO performance impact

Supports HA failover, live migration, etc.
Pure software solution that does
not REQUIRE more hardware for
performance

But speeds that up too if you buy it
14
What Virsto Does For SSD: Log vs Cache
Physical
Host
Physical
Host


…

Log
(Virsto vLog)
Shared
Storage
Tier 0
SSD placement
options
March 2012
SSDs perform better
Primary Storage
(Virsto vSpace)
Sequential vs random write performance
Logs are much more efficient
use of SSD capacity

Virsto vLogs are 10GB in size

Caches a % of primary storage capacity

Logs speed up EVERY write ALL
the time

Can lock shared data into tier 0
SSD for read performance

Speeds up ALL reads ALL the time
15
Integrated Virsto Management

Uses standard hypervisor
workflows


Transparently uses Virsto
storage


VMware, Hyper-V
Higher performance, faster
provisioning, lower capacity
consumption
Rapid Deployment Utilities
For VMware View, Citrix XenDesktop
VDI environments
March 2012
16
Proof Points in vSphere Environments: SDSU
Baseline Environment
341 IOPS
Native VMDKs
March 2012
Performance with Virsto
10X more IOPS
20% lower latency
9x CPU cycle reduction
3318 IOPS
Virsto vDisks
Virsto for vSphere
December 2011 Results
17
Proof Points in VDI Environments: MS EEC
Virsto vDisks vs Hyper-V Differencing VHDs
90000
With Virsto, Hyper-V supports
over 2x times the number of VDI
sessions, assuming the same
storage configuration
80000
Weighted response time
70000
60000
50000
40000
830
401
30000
20000
10000
0
0
200
400
600
800
1000
1200
VDI session count
Virsto for Hyper-V
June 2011 Results
March 2012
VSIIndex_avg - Virsto
VSIIndex_avg - DVHD
18
Demonstrated Customer Value
March 2012
19
Virsto Solutions

Pure software based solution

High performance, space-efficiency, rapid provisioning, cluster-awareness –
ALL AT ONCE with your existing storage

Provides better utilization of spinning disk and/or SSD

Works with any heterogeneous block-based storage
20