Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

virtual san

Virtual SAN / EVO:RAIL use cases versus supported

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I have seen this being debated many times on twitter now, and I’ve seen various Virtual SAN (VSAN) and EVO:RAIL competitors use this in the past to mislead potential customers.

I think we have all seen these slides at VMworld or at a VMUG when it comes to VSAN or EVO:RAIL. The slide contains a couple of primary use cases:

evo:rail use cases

So what does that mean? Does this mean that VMware does not support Exchange or MS SQL on top of VSAN or EVO:RAIL? Does that mean that VMware does not support it as a DR target? Or what about a management cluster? Or what about running Oracle? Or maybe SAP? Or what about my WordPress instance? Or what about MySQL? Or although you mention VDI, would that only be VMware View? What about… Yes by now you get my drift.

Let me try to make it really simple: Primary use cases says nothing about support. Primary use case means that this where the vendor expects the product or solution to fit best. In this case it is where VMware expect VSAN/EVO:RAIL to fit best, this is the target market VMware will be going after with this release.

Why include this in a slide deck? Well it allows you (the user / consultant / architect) to quickly identify where the majority of opportunities will be with the current version for your environment or for your customers. It does NOT mean that if your use case, like running your Exchange environment for instance on top of VSAN, is not listed that it is not supported. (Try listing all use cases on a slide, it will get pretty lengthy.)

Running Tier-1 applications on top of VSAN (or EVO:RAIL) is fully supported as it stands today, however … your application requirements and your service level agreement will determine if EVO:RAIL or VSAN is a good fit. One example would for instance be that if your agreed SLA requires an RPO (recovery point objective) of zero then sync replication is the only option (or stretched clustering), now you will need to determine if this is possible with the platform you want to use (this goes for any solution!). (Yes, you can make that happen with the platform pretty soon before anyone wants to go there…)

I hope that clears things up a bit.

VMware EVO:RAIL FAQ

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Over the last couple of days the same VMware EVO:RAIL questions keep popping up over and over again. I figured I would do a quick VMware EVO:RAIL Q&A post so that I can point people to that instead of constantly answering them on twitter.

  • Can you explain what EVO:RAIL is?
    • EVO:RAIL is the next evolution of infrastructure building blocks for the SDDC. It delivers compute, storage and networking in a 2U / 4 node package with an intuitive interface that allows for full configuration within 15 minutes. The appliance bundles hardware+software+support/maintenance to simplify both procurement and support in a true “appliance” fashion. EVO:RAIL provides the density of blade with the flexibility of rack. Each appliance comes with 100GHz of compute power, 768GB of memory capacity and 14.4TB of raw storage capacity (plus 1.6TB of flash for IO acceleration purposes). For full details, read my intro post.
  • Where can I find the datasheet?
  • What is the minimum number of EVO:RAIL hosts?
    • Minimum number is 4 hosts. Each appliance comes with 4 independent hosts, which means that 1 appliance is the start. It scales per appliance!
  • What is included with an EVO:RAIL appliance?
    • 4 independent hosts each with the following resources
      • 2 x E5-2620 6 core
      • 192GB Memory
      • 3 x 1.2TB 10K RPM Drive for VSAN
      • 1 x 400Gb eMLC SSD for VSAN
      • 1 x ESXi boot device
      • 2 x 10GbE NIC port (SFP / RJ45 can be selected)
      • 1 x IPMI port
    • vSphere Enterprise Plus
    • vCenter Server
    • Virtual SAN
    • Log Insight
    • Support and Maintenance for 3 years
  • What is the total available storage capacity?
    • After the VSAN Datastore is formed and vCenter Server is installed / configured there is about 13.1TB left
  • How many VMs can I run on one appliance?
    • That will very much depend on the size of the virtual machine and the workload. We have been able to comfortably run 250 desktops on one appliance. With Server VMs we ended up with around 100. However, again this very much depends on things like workload / capacity etc.
  • How many EVO:RAIL appliance can I scale to?
    • With the current release EVO:RAIL scales to 4 appliance (aka 16 hosts)
  • If licensing / maintenance / support is three 3 years, what happens after?
    • After 3 years support/maintenance expires. It can be extended, or the appliance can be replaced when desired.
  • How is support handled?
    • All support is handled through the OEM the EVO:RAIL HCIA has been procured through. This ensures that “end to end” support will be provided through the same channel.
  • Who are the EVO:RAIL qualified partners?
    • The following partners were announced at VMworld: Dell, EMC, Fujitsu, Inspur, Net One Systems, Supermicro, Hitachi Data Systems, HP, NetApp
  • How much does an EVO:RAIL appliance cost?
    • Pricing will be set by qualified partners
  • I was told Support and Maintenance is for 3 years, what happens after 3 years?
    • You can renew your support and maintenance with 2 years at most (as far as I know).
    • If not renewed then the EVO:RAIL appliance will remain functioning, but entitlement to support is gone.
  • What if I buy a new appliance after 3 years, can I re-use my licenses that come with the EVO:RAIL appliance??
    • No, the licenses are directly tied to the appliance and cannot be transferred to any other appliance or hardware.
  • Will NSX work with EVO:RAIL?
    • EVO:RAIL uses vSphere 5.5 and Virtual SAN. Anything that works with that will work with EVO:RAIL. NSX has not been explicitly tested but I expect that this should be no problem.
  • Does it use VMware Update Manager (VUM) for updating/patching?
    • No EVO:RAIL does not use VUM for updating and patching. It uses a new mechanism which is built from scratch and comes as part of the EVO:RAIL engine. This to provide a simple updating and patching mechanism, while avoiding the need for a Windows VM (VUM requires Windows).
  • What kind of NIC card is included?
    • 10GbE dual port NIC per host. Majority of vendors will offer both SFP+ and RJ45. This means there is 8 x 10GbE switch port per EVO:RAIL appliance required!
  • Is there a physical switch included?
    • A physical switch is not part of the “recipe” VMware provided to qualified partners, but some may package one (or multiple) with it to simplify green field deployments.
  • What is MARVIN or Mystic ?
    • MARVIN (Modular Automated Rackable Virtual Infrastructure Node) was the codename used by VMware internally for EVO:RAIL. Mystic was the codename used by EMC. Both of them refer to EVO:RAIL
  • Where does EVO:RAIL run?
    • EVO:RAIL runs on vCenter Server. vCenter Server is powered-on automatically when the appliance is started and the EVO:RAIL engine can then be used to configure the appliance
  • Which version of vCenter Server do you use, the Windows version or the Appliance?
    • In order to simplify deployment EVO:RAIL uses the vCenter Server Appliance.
  • Can I use the vCenter Web Client to manage my VMs or do I need to use the EVO:RAIL engine?
    • You can use whatever you like to manage your VMs. Web Client is fully supported and configured for you!
  • Are there networking requirements?
    • IPv6 is required for configuration of the appliance and auto-discovery. Multicast traffic on L2 is required for Virtual SAN
  • …

Some great EVO:RAIL links:

If you have any questions, feel free to drop them in comments section and I will do my best to answer them.

Win a free ebook copy of Essential Virtual SAN?

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A couple of weeks ago the electronic version of Essential Virtual SAN was published and this week the first paper copies are shipping! Because of that Cormac and I decided we will give away 4 ebooks each. If you want to win one then please let us know why you feel you deserve to win a copy using the hashtag #essentialvirtualsan on twitter. Cormac and I will decide which 8 tweets will win an ebook, and of course we will favour the ones that make us laugh 🙂

So lets be clear:

  • tweet why you think you deserve the book
  • use the hashtag #essentialvirtualsan

The 8 winners will be announced Friday 8th of August.

 

Paper copy of Essential Virtual SAN available as of today!

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3 weeks ago I announced the availability of the ebook of “Essential Virtual SAN”. Today I have the pleasure to inform you that the paper copy has also hit the streets and is being shipped by Amazon as of today. So for those who were waiting with ordering until the paper version was available… Go here, and order it today, and have it in house by tomorrow! The book covers the architecture of Virtual SAN, operational and architectural gotchas and sizing guidance, design examples and much more. Just pick it up,

Good Read: Virtual SAN data locality white paper

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I was reading the Virtual SAN Data Locality white paper. I think it is a well written paper, and really enjoyed it. I figured I would share the link with all of you and provide a short summary. (http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/files/2014/07/Understanding-Data-Locality-in-VMware-Virtual-SAN-Ver1.0.pdf)

The paper starts with an explanation of what data locality is (also referred to as “locality of reference”), and explains the different types of latency experienced in Server SAN solutions (network, SSD). It then explains how Virtual SAN caching works, how locality of reference is implemented within VSAN and also how VSAN does not move data around because of the high cost compared to the benefit for VSAN. It also demonstrates how VSAN delivers consistent performance, even without a local read cache. The key word here is consistent performance, something that is not in the case for all Server SAN solutions. In some cases, a significant performance degradation is experienced minutes long after a workload has been migrated. As hopefully all of you know vSphere DRS runs every 5 minutes by default, which means that migrations can and will happen various times a day in most environments. (Seen environments where 30 migrations a day was not uncommon.) The paper then explains where and when data locality can be beneficial, primarily when RAM is used and with specific use cases (like View) and then explains how CBRC aka View Accelerator (in RAM deduplicated read cache) could be used for this purpose. (Does not explain how other Server SAN solutions leverage RAM for local read caching in-depth, but sure those vendors will have more detailed posts on that, which are worth reading!)

Couple of real gems in this paper, which I will probably read a couple of times in the upcoming days!