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FAST with Different IO Type and TEST systems
Hi All,
I'm new to EMC FAST technology so I'm looking for some opinions.
We are deploying a very IO intensive database application. The IO Pattern is around 60% Read and 40% Write.
When I understand the benefit of FAST on a storage dedicated to a single production environment , I'm worried about the possible impact that could have production and non production systems deployed within the same storage pool ( physical disks ) , which would include a mix of SSD , FC and SATA.
Until now I always configured separated storage pool to isolate IOPS by non production , production systems and IO type , but apparently with FAST the recommendation is to create a single large pool.
My concerns are with the possible impact that a very high intensive IO operation running within a non production environment could actuality impact the performance of the production environment which would resides within the same pool.
Most of the concern I have is with writing but also reading , including with FAST Cache. Would be disk block from the TEST system marked as hot and moved to SSD for instance ?
Referring to write , if a non production environment is generating enough IO to saturate the disk pool , how the production system would re-act ? Is there a way to reserve IO at storage level ?
Thanks for your time.
Luca
Swanson1
116 Posts
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February 26th, 2014 07:00
Hello Luca,
I think your questions would be better answered in either the Enterprise Storage with VMAX or the Unified Storage community. I'd be happy to move your discussion to one of those communities, if you tell me which arrays you're using today.
Thanks,
Paula
LucaP1
3 Posts
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February 26th, 2014 08:00
HI Paula,
I'm using VNX5400 .
thanks
Luca
Swanson1
116 Posts
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February 26th, 2014 08:00
Luca,
I've moved your discussion to the Unified Storage community. Thanks for posting your questions.
Paula
fvandun1
30 Posts
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February 27th, 2014 03:00
Hello Luca,
There is off course the VNX Quality of Service Manager, which would allow to set different performance targets per LUN.
See also discussion VNX5300 UniSphere QoS Manager
This QoS is included in the Fast Suite. But I never heard of people actually using QoS on the VNX.
If you are using VMware or Hyper-V on the hosts, then you can use VM-based I/O control, which I think is a better option.
Rgds
francis
LucaP1
3 Posts
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February 27th, 2014 05:00
Thanks Francis,
do you know if EMC recommend to split critical production environment IO
from Test/Non production system IO creating separate disk pools?
Would you expect a performance impact if IO does not get split or no QoS is
used ?
Thanks
Luca
fvandun1
30 Posts
0
February 27th, 2014 06:00
Hello Luca,
There can surely be impact if non-production and production are sharing the same spindles/pool. We experienced that couple of times (like one Biztalk test server doing over 15K IOPS and effectively slowing down production servers, or antivirus being updated on servers all at the same time ...). Dedicated pools would solve that issue, but you could also play with the Tiering Policy, reserving the SSD Tier for production luns.
If you want to dedicate Fast Cache to production, then you need seperate pools as well, because Fast Cache is on a pool level.
About segregating pools, the only official recommendation form EMC I know about is to put DB Logs and DB Tables on different pools, but honestly a lot of customers even then prefer 1 overall pool.
rgds
Francis