EMC XTREMIO ALL-FLASH SOLUTION FOR SAP

Technical White Paper
EMC XTREMIO ALL-FLASH SOLUTION FOR SAP
With EMC XtremIO and SAP Business Suite
 Storage consolidation for substantial savings
 Consistently improved performance for a consolidated SAP
landscape
 Transform SAP application lifecycle management
 Fast and simplified storage deployment
 Lower TCO
EMC Solutions
Abstract
This paper explains the advantages of consolidating an SAP landscape on an
EMC XtremIO all-flash array, which enables extreme performance, quick nonproduction systems provisioning, data protection, and substantial storage
footprint savings.
February 2015
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Part Number H13859
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Table of contents
Executive summary............................................................................................................................... 5
Business case .................................................................................................................................. 5
Key results/ recommendations ........................................................................................................ 6
Purpose ........................................................................................................................................... 6
Scope .............................................................................................................................................. 6
Audience ......................................................................................................................................... 6
Acronyms ......................................................................................................................................... 6
Technology overview ............................................................................................................................ 8
Overview .......................................................................................................................................... 8
EMC XtremIO .................................................................................................................................... 8
XtremIO Data Protection .............................................................................................................. 8
Writeable snapshots ................................................................................................................. 10
XtremIO Management Server ..................................................................................................... 10
VAAI support ............................................................................................................................. 11
EMC PowerPath/VE ........................................................................................................................ 11
VMware vSphere ............................................................................................................................ 11
SAP Business Suite ........................................................................................................................ 11
Solution architecture .......................................................................................................................... 12
Overview ........................................................................................................................................ 12
Architecture diagram ...................................................................................................................... 12
Hardware resources ....................................................................................................................... 13
Software resources ........................................................................................................................ 13
Solution best practices....................................................................................................................... 14
Overview ........................................................................................................................................ 14
XtremIO storage design considerations .......................................................................................... 14
Network design considerations overview ....................................................................................... 15
Physical and ESXi servers best practices ........................................................................................ 16
Execution Throttle ..................................................................................................................... 16
Queue depth ............................................................................................................................. 17
Multipathing ............................................................................................................................. 18
Configurations for VMware vSphere ........................................................................................... 18
Testing and validation ........................................................................................................................ 20
Improving SAP performance ........................................................................................................... 20
Test procedure .......................................................................................................................... 20
Test results................................................................................................................................ 21
Empowering full SAP landscape with XtremIO snapshot ................................................................. 22
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Test procedure .......................................................................................................................... 23
Test result ................................................................................................................................. 25
Supplementing SAP backup solution with XtremIO Snapshot ......................................................... 25
Test procedure .......................................................................................................................... 25
Test result ................................................................................................................................. 27
Sizing XtremIO for SAP ....................................................................................................................... 28
Overview ........................................................................................................................................ 28
Form factor..................................................................................................................................... 28
Performance .................................................................................................................................. 28
Capacity ......................................................................................................................................... 28
New use cases ............................................................................................................................... 28
Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 29
Summary ....................................................................................................................................... 29
Findings ......................................................................................................................................... 29
References.......................................................................................................................................... 30
White papers ................................................................................................................................. 30
Product documentation.................................................................................................................. 30
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Executive summary
Business case
As business needs change, companies must transform their SAP infrastructure to
provide greater agility; consistent and predictable performance; and a reinvigorated,
modernized SAP platform for mission-critical applications.
However, it is time consuming and difficult to enable new development, testing, and
deployment methodologies for SAP applications. In terms of non-production systems,
application development teams face challenges such as:

Inadequate storage capacity to hold full copies of production data

Inability to provide production-level performance

Denied requests for refreshes and additional copies because of limited disk
capacity

Inability to perform a quick backup before a destructive test on a test system
Moving large amounts of data siloed between tier 1 production and tier 2 nonproduction storage uses a lot of an infrastructure team’s time and resources. Many
infrastructure managers lack the budget to provide the capacity and service levels
required for non-production storage.
Operational teams face additional challenges including lack of available personnel
for tuning databases and the need to manage downtime for creating system copies
and reorganizing databases. These delays can negatively impact service level
agreements (SLAs).
Architecture teams need to simplify SAP infrastructure to facilitate changes to drive IT
agility and functional team productivity.
EMC® XtremIO™ all-flash-arrays enhance IT performance by:

Delivering reliable performance for SAP applications and transactions that
require all-flash-style sub-millisecond latency for mixed SAP workloads

Concurrently handling mixed SAP workload landscapes (OLTP and DW)

Enabling the high number of random reads and writes found in SAP ECC and
SAP BW

Accelerating development cycles for faster application rollouts

Supporting innovative and flexible testing and development environments with
XtremIO snapshots

Consolidating different SAP systems into a unified platform that achieves new
planning and optimization efficiencies with zero performance and capacity
impact on the SAP Landscape

Reducing the data footprint which lowers capital and operating expenses

Improving consolidation through inline deduplication, compression, thin
provisioning, and snapshots

Simplifying deployment and operations
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Key results/
recommendations
This solution shows that the XtremIO all-flash storage array delivers:

Fast and simple setup with little to no storage tuning required. SAP client copy
job duration decreases 55 percent with consistent 10 percent array response
time, compared with traditional tiered storage

Consistent extreme performance for consolidated SAP environments

Near zero performance degradation on a production system while running a
workload on its snapshot

Substantial storage footprint savings by using XtremIO inline deduplication and
compression. Deploying three additional instances (SDX, QAS, and PRE) uses
only 3 percent more storage (7 GB) than a production system at the beginning
of their lifecycle
Deploying all-flash storage for SAP also has the following benefits:

XtremIO's unique architecture simplifies and consolidates production, real-time
analytics, and rapid development and testing for SAP environments, and
provides an agile multi-workload all-flash SAP infrastructure.

XtremIO eliminates traditional storage challenges associated with
overprovisioning, tuning, performance, and scalability.
Purpose
This white paper describes a highly available and scalable solution for the SAP
Business Suite that is deployed in both physical and virtualized vSphere
environments with XtremIO storage.
Scope
This white paper:

Introduces the key enabling technologies

Describes the solution architecture and design

Describes and validates the key components and processes

Identifies the key business benefits of the solution
Audience
This white paper is intended for SAP BASIS administrators, VMware administrators,
storage administrators, IT architects, and technical managers responsible for
designing, creating, and managing SAP deployment, infrastructure, and data centers.
Acronyms
Table 1 lists some of the acronyms used in this white paper.
Table 1.
Acronyms
Term
Definition
FC HBA
Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapter
LAM
Loadable Array Module
RDMA
Remote Direct Memory Access
XDP
XtremIO Data Protection
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Term
Definition
XMCLI
XtremIO Command Line
XMS
XtremIO Management Server
XSMA
XtremIO Storage Management Application
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Technology overview
Overview
EMC XtremIO
The key technology components used in this white paper are:

EMC XtremIO

VMware vSphere

EMC PowerPath®/Virtual Edition (VE)

SAP Business Suite
The EMC XtremIO storage array is an all-flash system based on scale-out architecture.
The system uses building blocks, called X-Bricks, which can be clustered together to
grow performance and capacity as required. This solution was validated using one XBrick.
XtremIO Data Protection
Storage administrators are often required to make difficult decisions regarding
capacity, data protection level, and performance. Performance-oriented workloads
are typically provisioned on RAID 1, but at the high cost of 50 percent capacity
overhead. Less sensitive workloads can use RAID 5, and large data sets with lower
performance needs can be highly protected with RAID 6.
However, it is not always possible to know which type of data is being stored. Data
centers are dynamic, and today’s choice might leave data on a less-than-optimal
RAID level in the future. Some storage systems allow live migration between RAID
levels, but this requires proactive administration and may need to be repeated as
data continues to evolve.
XtremIO represents a new type of data protection scheme that combines the best
attributes of pre-existing RAID levels, while avoiding their drawbacks. Furthermore,
since flash endurance is a special consideration in an all-flash array, XtremIO
features a data protection algorithm that requires fewer write cycles. This maximizes
the service life of the array’s SSDs while also delivering higher performance, since
more I/O cycles are available for host writes (front-end I/Os) as compared to internal
array operations (back-end I/Os). The benefits of XtremIO Data Protection (XDP) are
illustrated in Figure 1.
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Figure 1.
XtremIO Data Protection benefits
With the traditional storage design for an application database, multiple RAID groups
of different drive types are created, each with different levels of protection and
distributed across multiple controllers.
With XtremIO, all drives are under XDP protection, and data in the array is distributed
across the X-Bricks to maintain consistent performance and equivalent flash wear
levels.
Databases like Oracle generate both random and sequential I/O as shown in Figure 2.
With XtremIO, these are treated equally as data is randomized and distributed in a
balanced fashion throughout the array.
Figure 2.
Database front-end random and sequential I/O
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Writeable snapshots
XtremIO snapshots feature performance, property, and functions comparable to a
production system. Figure 3 shows how XtremIO works in an environment with a
demand for large amounts of testing, development, and quality assurance (QA) data
from a writeable snapshot.
Figure 3.
XtremIO snapshot usage scenarios
XtremIO Management Server
XtremIO Management Server (XMS) is a standalone, dedicated Linux-based server
that is used to manage XtremIO system operations, such as:

Initializing and formatting new systems

Monitoring system health and events

Monitoring system performance

Maintaining a performance statistics history database

Providing GUI and CLI services to clients

Implementing volume management and data protection operations

Maintaining (stopping, starting and restarting) the system
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XMS is preinstalled with and accessed by an easy-to-use GUI—the XtremIO Storage
Management Application (XSMA)—and connects to the management ports on the XBrick storage controllers through TCP/IP. The XtremIO cluster provides storage that
would be unaffected by a disconnected XMS.
XMS can be deployed in a virtual machine running on top of a VMware HA-enabled
cluster to improve its high availability in the event of server failure.
VAAI support
XtremIO is fully integrated with vSphere through the vSphere VAAI plug-in for virtual
machine provisioning and cloning, virtual machine disk (VMDK) provisioning, and
overall seamless deployment of large-scale virtualization. XtremIO delivers highperformance, low-latency response times, and low provisioning times for all storage
provisioning choices at the VMDK level.
XtremIO supports the VAAI block-zero primitive and writes zero blocks in a way that
removes the performance drawbacks of provisioning eager-zero-thick (EZT) volumes
for virtual disks.
EMC PowerPath/VE EMC PowerPath/VE for vSphere delivers multipathing features that optimize vSphere
virtual environments. PowerPath/VE is installed as a kernel module on the VMware
ESXi host and works as a multipathing plug-in (MPP) that provides enhanced path
management and load-balancing capabilities for ESXi hosts.
VMware vSphere
The virtualization layer decouples the application from the underlying physical
resources. This enables greater flexibility in the application layer by eliminating
hardware downtime for maintenance and changes to the physical system without
affecting the hosted applications. In a server virtualization use case, this layer
enables multiple independent virtual machines to share the same physical hardware.
VMware vSphere is a complete and robust virtualization platform that uses dynamic
resource pools to virtualize business-critical applications with unprecedented
flexibility and reliability. It transforms a computer's physical resources by virtualizing
the CPU, RAM, hard disk, and network controller. This transformation creates fully
functional virtual machines that run isolated and encapsulated operating systems
and applications.
SAP Business
Suite
SAP Business Suite is a bundle of business applications that provide integration of
information and processes, collaboration, industry-specific functionality, and
scalability. SAP Business Suite is based on the SAP NetWeaver technology platform .
We used SAP ERP 6.0 in the featured test environment.
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Solution architecture
Overview
This solution provides cost-effective performance for the SAP application
environment through the use of the EMC XtremIO array. The SAP applications are
deployed on both physical and virtual platforms. The XtremIO snapshots protect the
applications and database data. Additionally, virtualized testing and development
systems can access directly mounted snapshots of the production database with no
performance impact on the production system.
Architecture
diagram
The architecture of this solution is shown in Figure 4.
Figure 4.
EMC XtremIO high performance consolidation solution architecture diagram
The architecture is composed of the following layers:
Compute layer: Two ESXi servers are configured as a VMware ESXi cluster with a total
of eighty 2.27GHz processor cores and a total of 768 GB RAM. This cluster is
supporting one or more virtualized SAP production systems and several snapshots,
repurposed to become QAS/PRE, for example. One server with 40 2.27GHz processor
cores and 384 GB RAM supports the physical SAP system.
Network layer: Encompasses two director-class SAN switches and two IP switches.
The SAN switches are designed for deployment in storage networks supporting both
virtualized and physical SAP systems.
Storage layer: One single X-Brick with two storage controllers and 7.58 TB of usable
physical capacity provide storage for the SAP application and the database.
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Hardware
resources
Table 2 lists the hardware resources used in the solution.
Table 2.
Hardware resources
Hardware
Quantity
Configuration
Storage array
1
EMC XtremIO with single X-Brick
ESXi host
2
Four 10-core CPUs, 384 GB RAM
Physical host
1
Four 10-core CPUs, 384 GB RAM
Ethernet switches
2
10 GbE (gigabit Ethernet)
SAN switches
2
8 Gb FC
Software resources Table 3 lists the software resources used in this solution.
Table 3.
Software resources
Software
Version
Notes
VMware vSphere
5.5.0
Hypervisor
VMware vCenter Server
5.5.0
vSphere management server
SUSE Linux
11 SP3
Operating system for SAP system
EMC PowerPath/VE
5.8
Multipathing software used in the
virtual environment
EMC PowerPath
5.7 SP 5
Multipathing software used in the
physical environment
SAP ERP
6.0 EHP 7
SAP system
Oracle database
11g R2
Database for the SAP systems
EMC XtremIO
3.0.0
All-flash storage
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Solution best practices
Overview
In this solution, EMC XtremIO provides storage services for physical and virtualized
SAP environments. This section describes a few specific design considerations for
SAP systems and covers the storage, network and compute layers.
XtremIO storage
design
considerations
XtremIO uses its multi-controller scale-out design and remote direct memory access
(RDMA) fabric to maintain all metadata in memory. This makes XtremIO arrays
impervious to changes in workload. It does not matter what LUN sizes are used,
whether the I/O patterns are random or sequential, or whether there is locality of
reference. The performance is always consistent and predictable.
A careful, painstaking storage design for optimized performance is no longer
necessary. With XtremIO, disruptive database workloads can coexist in the same LUN
with write-intensive transaction logs and still provide excellent performance.
XtremIO’s patented data protection scheme is extremely efficient in every situation at
limiting extra writes for parity. With overhead for parity at only 8 percent, it is the
industry’s most efficient data protection scheme, optimized for flash media and
tuned for partial stripe updates. XDP eliminates the need to configure different RAID
protection levels for database and log files to balance the performance and cost,
which dramatically simplifies management.
With XtremIO virtual provisioning, the database storage design can be simplified. In
this solution, two SAP systems running on vSphere ESXi (one for production and one
for development) are deployed on the XtremIO array. We created uniform volumes for
the database data, log, and SAP binary files for easy management, allocating storage
as needed. We separated the redo volumes, not for performance considerations, but
for database recovery.
As shown in Table 4, we provisioned two 600GB volumes to store the relevant
database data files, two 100GB volumes for database log files, and two 80GB
volumes for SAP binary files and OS for both PRD and DEV systems. Table 4 defines
the SAP volume design for the solution.
Table 4.
Volumes design for SAP system
Detail
System
System name
PRD
DEV
Database data volume size
600GB
600GB
Database log volume size
100GB
100GB
SAP binary and OS volume size
80GB
80GB
Actual database size
340GB
126GB
Total volumes size
1.56TB
Total data and log size
466GB
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Note: This design is based on our test workload. In a production environment, database and
log file sizes can vary depending on the type of transactions and queries.
With built-in thin provisioning, storage is only allocated when it is needed. This
enables you to create larger LUNs to accommodate future or unexpected growth for
databases, without wasting any physical space on storage.
Most importantly, heavy metadata operations such as inline data reduction, thin
provisioning allocations, and internal array copy operations are conducted entirely in
memory without impacting I/O.
For this solution, one single X-Brick is configured with 7.58 TB of usable physical
capacity. We provision LUNs with a total 1.56 TB volume capacity for two systems.
After XtremIO data reduction and thin provisioning savings, the solution uses only
227 GB physical capacity and the overall space saving efficiency is 7:1 as shown in
Figure 5.
Figure 5.
Network design
considerations
overview
XtremIO Storage Management Application (XSMA) dashboard storage panel
This section briefly describes the best practices used in this solution for SAN and IP
network configuration, and for an ESXi server network configuration. When you
deploy a critical production application such as SAP, EMC recommends that you
consider both compute and network redundancy when designing your network for
fault tolerance.
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EMC recommends that you use the following SAN best practices:

Use path management and dynamic multipathing software, such as
PowerPath/VE and PowerPath, on the hosts to enable the failover process to
alternate paths and to provide load balancing.

Partition each FC port from the servers to the ports on the XtremIO X-Bricks for
high availability and performance.

Use multiple HBAs on the servers and two SAN switches to provide multiple
paths between the servers and the XtremIO cluster.
An XtremIO single X-Brick cluster is used in this solution. A host can have up to four
paths per volume. Figure 6 shows the logical connection schemes for four paths.
Figure 6.
Connection between a single X-Brick XtremIO and host
EMC recommends that you follow these IP network best practices:
Physical and ESXi
servers best
practices

Use multiple network cards and switches for network redundancy.

Use 10 GbE for ESXi HA cluster interconnection.

Use virtual local area networks (VLANs) to logically group devices that are on
different network segments or subnetworks.
In this test environment, we deployed SAP ERP systems on physical servers running
SUSE Linux, and on virtual machines running on vSphere ESXi 5.5. This section
describes the best practices for physical and virtualized server configuration
including the following parameters:

Execution Throttle

Queue depth

Multipathing

Configurations for VMware vSphere
Execution Throttle
For optimal operation with XtremIO, we set the Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapter (FC
HBA)’s execution throttle to the maximum value, which controls the amount of
outstanding I/O requests per HBA port.
This can be done on the HBA firmware level using the HBA BIOS or CLI utility provided
by the HBA vendor. In this solution, both physical and ESXi servers use the Qlogic
HBA. We set the Qlogic HBA’s execution throttle to the maximum value of 65,535
using the management utility (QConverge Console) as shown in Figure 7.
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Figure 7.
Adjust Qlogic HBA Execution Throttle settings
Note: Most server default HBA throttle settings are not optimized for the high throughput
provided by a flash array. It is important to choose the highest value for this setting so it will
not limit the I/O throttle.
Queue depth
The queue depth setting controls the amount of outstanding I/O requests for a single
path. For optimal performance with XtremIO storage, follow the HBA and server
vendor recommendations. As a general rule, you should set the queue depth to the
highest setting allowed by the HBA manufacturer.
In this solution, we set the maximum queue depth to 256 for the Qlogic HBA. For a
physical server running SUSE Linux:
1.
Download and install the HBA driver from the Qlogic website.
2.
Create or edit the /etc/modprobe.d/qla2xxx.conf file and add or modify the
following parameter:
options qla2xxx ql2xmaxqdepth=256
3.
Reboot the server and then verify that the parameter is set as shown in Figure
8.
Figure 8.
Verify Qlogic queue depth of physical server
For servers running vSphere ESXi:
1.
Open an SSH session to the host as root user.
2.
Run the following command to adjust the HDB queue depth:
3.
Reboot the ESXi server and verify that the parameter is set as shown in Figure
9
# esxcli system module parameters set -p ql2xmaxqdepth=256 –m qla2xxx
Figure 9.
Verify Qlogic queue depth of ESXi server
Note: The highest execution throttle and queue depth values are different for other HBA
manufacturers. Refer to the EMC XtremIO Storage Array Host Configuration Guide for details.
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Multipathing
EMC PowerPath software provides array-customized LAMs (native class support) for
XtremIO volumes. PowerPath array-customized LAMs feature optimal failover and
load balancing behaviors for the XtremIO volumes. PowerPath and PowerPath/VE
multipathing are recommended with XtremIO arrays for physical servers and ESXi
servers as shown in Figure 10 and Figure 11. For details on native class support with
XtremIO for your host, refer to the EMC PowerPath Release Notes document for the
PowerPath version installed.
Figure 10.
XtremIO multipathing with PowerPath
Figure 11.
XtremIO multipathing with PowerPath/VE
Configurations for VMware vSphere
To optimally configure the ESXi host for XtremIO storage:
1.
Set the SchedQuantum to 64, DiskMaxIOSize to 4,096, and
SchedNumReqOutstanding to 256 using the following ESXi command lines:
# esxcfg-advcfg -s 64 /Disk/SchedQuantum
# esxcfg-advcfg -s 4096 /Disk/DiskMaxIOSize
# esxcli storage core device set -d naa.xxx -O 256
Note: naa.xxx is the NAA for XtremIO LUNs presented to ESXi hosts.
2.
Confirm that VAAI features are enabled on the ESXi server through vSphere
Client, as shown in Figure 12.
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Figure 12.
3.
Enable VAAI
Format virtual machines on XtremIO storage using Thick Provision Eager
Zeroed as shown in Figure 13. Using this format, the required space for the
virtual machine is allocated and zeroed at creation time. However, with native
XtremIO data reduction, thin provisioning, and VAAI support, no actual
physical capacity allocation occurs.
Figure 13.
Format of virtual disk
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Testing and validation
This section provides detailed information about the following test scenarios:
Improving SAP
performance

Improving SAP performance

Empowering a full SAP landscape with XtremIO snapshot features

Supplementing an SAP backup solution with XtremIO snapshot features
This test scenario was used to measure SAP performance improvement through the
use of the XtremIO array with default system settings. To simulate a massive data
transfer we created seven SAP ERP systems, all on one non-XtremIO array with tiered
storage (FLASH+SAS+NLSAS), to run client copies simultaneously. After the job was
complete, we migrated these systems to the XtremIO array without changing any
applications, databases, or the operating system configuration.
We gathered the system performance metrics through SAP transaction code ST03N. In
addition, we gathered metrics for I/O throughput and latency at the storage level.
Notes: The results are highly dependent on workload-specific application requirements,
system design and implementation, and underlying infrastructure. Relative system
performance can vary significantly as a result of these and other factors. This workload
should not be used as a substitute for a specific customer benchmark when planning critical
capacity and/or evaluating products.
Test procedure
Follow these steps to test if XtremIO can improve SAP’s performance:
1.
On the non XtremIO array, run the SAP client copy operation on all SAP
systems simultaneously, as shown in Figure 14.
Figure 14.
Run SAP client copy
2.
Migrate all SAP systems to XtremIO without changing any system level
settings.
3.
Perform Step 1 again on the XtremIO array.
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Test results
The EMC XtremIO all-flash array effectively delivered higher bandwidth performance
and ultra-low latency as compared to the non-XtremIO array.
It took an average of 84 minutes to complete the client copy operation for each SAP
system. As shown in Figure 15, the client copy operation started at 07:52 and
finished at 09:16. The average disk response time was 2.84ms and average
bandwidth was 64.53MB/s on the non-XtremIO array.
Figure 15.
Average response time and bandwidth on non XtremIO array
After we migrated the entire environment to the XtremIO array, the client copy
operation took only an average of 38 minutes to complete for every SAP system. As
shown in Figure 16, the client copy operation started at 19:18 and finished at 19:56,
the average bandwidth increased to 181MB/s. The average LUN disk response time
was consistently centered around 0.29ms.
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Figure 16.
Average response time and total bandwidth on XtremIO array
Overall, with XtremIO, the client copy operation duration decreased by 55 percent,
disk response time was reduced by 90 percent, and the total bandwidth increased by
180 percent, as shown in Figure 17.
Figure 17.
Overall performance evaluation results
Note: We simulated a typical workload using the SAP client copy to show the performance
improvement for SAP by XtremIO. For more scenarios, refer to the white paper Redefining
SAP Infrastructure with EMC XtremIO on the EMC website.
Empowering full
SAP landscape
with XtremIO
snapshot
This test scenario involved using XtremIO snapshots to reduce the SAP landscape
storage footprint and enable extreme storage performance for the whole SAP
landscape. As shown in Figure 18, we created two snapshots of the PRD system to be
used as the base for quality control (QAS) and production preparation (PRE), and one
snapshot of the DEV system to be used as the base for the sandbox (SDX).
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Figure 18.
Full SAP landscape powered by XtremIO snapshot
We implemented snapshots using the redirect-on-write methodology, in which new
writes to the source volume (or snapshot) were redirected to new locations, and only
metadata was updated to point to the new data location. This method guaranteed
that no performance degradation would occur while snapshots were being created.
In this solution, we simulated an additional workload on QAS using SAP client copy to
demonstrate that the snapshot of PRD (QAS) would have no performance impact on
PRD.
Test procedure
1.
Create XtremIO snapshots for the PRD volumes as shown in Figure 19.
Figure 19.
Create snapshot on XSMA
2.
Map the snapshot volume to the ESXi server.
3.
Assign a new signature when mounting the snapshot datastore, as shown in
Figure 20.
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Figure 20.
Specify a VMFS mount option
4.
Start the virtual machine based on the mounted-snapshot datastore.
5.
Change the IP address and start the SAP application.
6.
Change the SAP and DB SID name to PRE using the SAP provisioning tool and
convert the logical system name as shown in Figure 21.
Figure 21.
Rename the SAP system
7.
Repeat steps 1 – 6 to create QAS and SDX systems from the snapshots of PRD
and DEV.
8.
Run Client Copy to simulate workload on PRD and measure performance.
9.
Run Client Copy to simulate workload on both PRD and QAS and measure
performance.
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Test result
Creating snapshots consumed no additional physical capacity. As shown in Table 5,
after creating a writable snapshot, the XtremIO overall space saving efficiency
increased. After changing the SID and logical system name for each system, only 7 GB
of physical storage capacity were required to prepare three additional SAP systems
(PRE, QAS, and SDX) for use.
Table 5.
Reduction in SAP landscape storage footprint by XtremIO snapshots
SAP systems on
XtremIO array
Overall
efficiency
Data
reduction
ratio
Thin
provisioning
savings
Volume
capacity
Occupied
capacity
PRD, DEV
7:1
2:1
68 percent
1.56 TB
227GB
PRD, DEV, PRE,
QAS and SDX
(after changing
logical system)
17:1
2:1
86 percent
3.90TB
234GB
We measured the difference in PRD client copy duration between scenarios with and
without additional workload added on QAS (a snapshot of PRD). Table 6 shows that
performance on PRD was sustained with near zero degradation, while the additional
client copy workload was added on QAS.
Table 6.
Supplementing
SAP backup
solution with
XtremIO Snapshot
Client copy duration comparison
Scenario
Client copy duration (minutes)
Client copy on PRD
38:04
Client copy on both PRD and QAS
38:23
This test scenario created a snapshot for DEV data protection. We incorporated the
command line shown in Step 1 into an automated script to protect against logical
corruption in a complete SAP landscape. We simulated a logical error on DEV and
recovered the system from the most recent snapshot.
Test procedure
Follow these steps to generate snapshots at a fixed interval:
1.
Run the add-user-account XMCLI command with the "public-key"
parameter as shown below. The user account snapshot does not require
credentials to login to the XtremIO CLI from the remote host.
xmcli (admin)> add-user-account usr-name="snapshot" password=
“<password>” role="<role>" public-key="<public-key>"
2.
Create a snapshot with XMCLI. Figure 22 shows an example creating
snapshots for all volumes of the DEV system at once. As shown in Figure 22,
we created the snapshot with XMCLI on the remote host. The command line
can be incorporated into a script to implement, schedule, and automate data
protection.
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Figure 22.
3.
Create snapshot using XtremIO command line
Delete SAP Client 812 using SAP transaction code SCC5 to simulate the
deletion of a client as shown in Figure 23.
Figure 23.
Remove SAP Client 812
4.
Delete the DEV virtual machine in vSphere vCenter.
5.
Map all the snapshot volumes to the ESXi server as shown in Figure 24.
Figure 24.
Map snapshot volumes to the ESXi server
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6.
Rescan the storage and register the virtual machine in vSphere vCenter.
7.
Start the SAP application.
Test result
The snapshot is a point-in-time image of the entire SAP system. During restart of the
SAP system on the snapshots, the system automatically performs recovery so that all
committed transactions are reflected and all uncommitted transactions are rolled
back. As shown in Figure 25, Client 812 is recovered from the snapshot.
Figure 25.
Client 812 is recovered
With powerful XtremIO snapshot scheduling functionality, snapshots can be mounted
to different hosts to perform SAP backup without introducing performance impact to
original systems.
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Sizing XtremIO for SAP
Overview
Sizing the XtremIO for SAP architecture is a departure from traditional array sizing
practices due to the unique system architecture and new features. In this section, we
discuss the differences and implications of the following aspects to help you navigate
your sizing exercise:

Form factor

Performance

Capacity

New use cases
Form factor
XtremIO XDP not only provides the most efficient data protection scheme, but it also
eliminates the need to consider different RAID types to balance performance and
capacity. Since all drives are under XDP protection, incoming I/Os are randomized
and distributed evenly across the X-brick(s) regardless of the I/O profile. As a result,
sizing for SAP applications is simplified by taking protection, I/O profile, and complex
drive count calculation out of the equation. The output is simplified to the number of
X-brick(s) and the capacity for each X-brick.
Performance
XtremIO’s architecture delivers predictable ultra-low latency and high bandwidth for
varying I/O profiles. It allows scale-out for growth while consistently delivering high
performance. As a result, sizing for SAP applications (with multiple system
consolidation) only needs to take total IOPS and read/write ratio into consideration.
Capacity
With regard to capacity, zeros on XtremIO do not consume any storage space.
Together with thin provisioning, sizing for the SAP application should only consider
the actual size of the system (consumed space) rather than provisioned space (zeros
and reserved space for future growth). On the other hand, for a single SAP system, the
deduction rate is low (our tests resulted in a deduction rate of 2).
For a single system landscape, expect a high deduplication rate if downstream
systems (QAS, DEV and so on) are copies of the production system. For a solutions
landscape (multiple system landscapes), expect a low compression and
deduplication rate across applications.
New use cases
XtremIO’s full-performance, space-efficient, and writeable snapshots enable SAP
landscape consolidation with production systems that do not compromise SLAs.
Renaming the system and changing the logical system name do not result in a
significant amount of changed data. When planning to use a snapshot for a
downstream system, carefully consider the additional workload on the X-brick.
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Conclusion
Summary
EMC XtremIO is transforming SAP landscape management. SAP customers using
traditional storage face many challenges including limitations on capacity,
performance, refresh frequency, and the inability to perform destructive testing.
These challenges make it difficult to quickly and thoroughly test changes before
moving them to a production system. XtremIO fully addresses these challenges.
EMC XtremIO all-flash array technology is designed to maximize effective capacity
and provide ultra-low latency for SAP landscape applications. This solution enables
you to achieve efficient resource utilization with XtremIO’s built-in thin provisioning,
data deduplication, and compression. In this solution, the overall space-saved
efficiency reaches 17:1; the SAP client copy time is reduced by 55 percent as
compared to the non-XtremIO array.
The unique architecture simplifies storage management and drives rapid
development and testing for an SAP environment. Taking snapshots of the SAP
production system enables you to replicate the production environment for SAP
development and testing purposes. The redirect-on-write methodology for snapshots
guarantees no performance degradation when taking snapshots.
Findings
This solution provides:

Fast and simple setup with little to no storage tuning

Significant space-savings and efficiency

Consistent, predictable performance for the SAP landscape with ultra-low
latency

Rapid development and testing for SAP environments using snapshot, with zero
impact on the production system

Offloading for the backup process using scheduled snapshots capabilities
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References
White papers
Product
documentation
For additional information, see the white papers listed below, available from
EMC.com:

Redefining SAP Infrastructure With EMC XtremIO

EMC XtremIO High-Performance Consolidation Solution for Oracle

EMC XtremIO Optimized Flash Storage For Oracle Databases
For additional information, see the product documents listed below:

EMC XtremIO Storage Array User Guide

EMC XtremIO Storage Array Host Configuration Guide

XtremIO Storage System CLI Reference Guide
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