Category: SRM

Migrating Workloads onto vSAN

by pgkeilty, posted in SRM, Virtual SAN, VMware, VSAN

You’ve built your vSphere cluster with vSAN enabled, now what? Of course, you can start provisioning VM’s in the cluster and their vmdk’s onto the vSAN datastore. But, what if you want to move existing VM’s onto your new cluster? Well, there are several methods to consider, each with their own benefits and detractors. This topic has been explored a few times and here are some useful links:
Migrating VMs to vSAN
Migrating to vSAN

I had the opportunity to record an overview of this topic using our Lightboard technology at VMware headquarters in Palo Alto. You can check it out here:

Migrating Workloads onto vSAN

The video lightboard explores the following methods:

Backup

Simply, you can backup your VMs sitting in one cluster, shut them down, then restore them onto the new cluster.

Cross Cluster vMotion (AKA XvMotion), Cross vCenter vMotion, Long Distance vMotion (LDM)

You can migrate live VM’s from one cluster to another cluster (Cross cluster vMotion) and those clusters could be managed by different vCenters (Cross vCenter vMotion). This can be great for a few VM’s but if it’s a lot of VM’s and a lot of data then it can take a while. There’s no downtime for the VM’s, but, you could be waiting a long time for the migration to complete. For more details, see one of my previous posts:

XvMotion, Cross-vCenter vMotion, VVols, LVM active/active, LVM active/passive, SRM & Stretched Storage, VAIO Filters

Storage vMotion

This is only possible if your source and destination hosts are connected to the same source storage system LUN/Volume. If so, you can have both clusters mount the same LUN/Volume and move the VM from the source cluster to the destination cluster and also move the data from the source datastore (LUN/Volume on SAN/NAS) to the destination datastore (vSAN). If you are moving off a traditional fibre channel SAN then you’ll need to put fibre channel HBA’s in the hosts supporting the new vSAN datastore.

VMware vSphere Replication

VMware’s vSphere Replication replicates any VM on one cluster to any other cluster. This host based replication feature is storage agnostic so it doesn’t matter what the underlying storage is on either cluster. A vSphere snapshot of the VM is taken and that snapshot is used as the source of the replication. Once you know the data is in sync between the source cluster and destination cluster you can shut down the VM’s in the source cluster and power them up in the destination cluster. So, there is downtime. If something doesn’t go right, you could revert back to the source cluster. Here’s a good whitepaper on vSphere Replication.

VMware vSphere Replication + Site Recovery Manager

VMware’s vSphere Replication replicates any VM on one cluster to any other cluster. VMware Site Recovery Manager allows you to test and validate the failover from the source to the destination. It allows you to script the order in which VM’s are powered on as well as Re-IP them if necessary and can automate running pre and post scripts if necessary. Once you validate the failover will happen as you want it to, you can do it for real knowing it’s been pretested. If something goes wrong it has a “revert” feature to reverse the cut-over and go back to the source cluster until you can fix the problem. Here are a few good whitepapers on Site Recovery Manager.

3rd Party Replication

DellEMC RP4VMs replicates data prior to cut over. Once you know the data is in sync between the source cluster and destination cluster you can shut down the VM’s in the source cluster and power them up in the destination cluster. So, there is downtime. If something doesn’t go right, you could revert back to the source cluster. There are other 3rd party options on the market including solutions from Zerto and Veeam.

What About VMware Cloud on AWS?

Since vSAN is the underlying storage on VMware Cloud on AWS, all the options above will work for migrating workloads from on Premises to VMware Cloud on AWS.

Summary

Personally, I like the ability to test the failover migration “cut over” using Site Recover Manager so I’d opt for the vSphere Replication + Site Recovery Manager option if possible.  if it’s only a few VM’s and a small amount of data then XvMotion would be the way to go.

Migrating Workloads onto vSAN.png

 

 

 

 

 

VMware Storage Technology Names & Acronyms

by pgkeilty, posted in SDS, Software Defined Storage, SPBM, SRM, VAIO Filters, VASA, Virtual SAN, VSAN, VVols
  • vSAN = VMware’s Software Defined Storage Solution formerly known as Virtual SAN or VSAN. Now the only acceptible name is “vSAN” with the little “v”.
  • SPBM = Storage Policy Based Management
  • VASA = vSphere API’s for Storage Awareness
  • VVol = Virtual Volume
  • PE = Protocol Endpoint
  • VAAI = vSphere API’s for Array Integration
  • VAIO Filtering = vSphere API’s for IO Filtering
  • VR = vSphere Replication
  • SRM = Site Recovery Manager
  • VDP = vSphere Data Protection
  • vFRC = vSphere Flash Read Cache
  • VSA = vSphere Storage Appliance (end of life)
  • VMFS = Virtual Machine File System
  • SvMotion = Storage vMotion
  • XvMotion – Across Host, Cluster, vCenter vMotion (without shared storage)
  • SDRS = Storage Distributed Resource Scheduler
  • SIOC = Storage Input Output Control
  • MPIO = Multi Path Input Output

Replays of Virtual SAN Sessions at VMworld 2016 That You Didn’t Want to Miss

by pgkeilty, posted in HCI, Hyper-converged, Ready Nodes, SDDC, SDS, Software Defined Storage, SRM, Stretched Storage, Uncategorized, Virtual SAN, VMware, VSAN, VxRail

What a great week last week at VMworld 2016. I had many good meetings with customers, participated in 3 breakout sessions, met up with some old friends and met some new ones. If you missed VMworld, well, then you missed a bunch of great sessions. There’s no way you could have seen them all, so, VMware has made them available here: http://www.vmworld.com/en/sessions/2016.html.

I participated in two sessions:

The first one was a customer panel discussion on Tuesday afternoon. I need to thank Glenn Brown from Stanley Black & Decker, Mike Caruso from Synergent, Tom Cronin from M&T Bank, and Andrew Schilling from Baystate Health who all did a fantastic job representing themselves, their companies, and their use of Virtual SAN. We had great interaction from the audience with lots of good questions. For a replay of the session check this out:

Four Unique Enterprise Customers Deployment of VMware Virtual SAN [STO7560]
Glen Brown, System Engineer, Stanley Black and Decker
Michael Caruso, AVP Corporate Information Systems, Synergent
Tom Cronin, Sr. Staff Specialist – Platforms Engineering Group, M&T Bank
Frank Gesino, Senior Technical Account Manager, VMware
Andrew Schilling, Team Leader – IT Infrastructure, Baystate Health Inc.
Tuesday, Aug 30, 5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.

The other session I was involved in was on Wednesday and repeated on Thursday. I had the good fortune to present with two VSAN Product Managers who are responsible for making VSAN great. Vahid Fereydounkolahi is responsible for driving new features into the VSAN product and Rakesh Radhakrishnan is responsible for making sure all the vendor hardware components are properly qualified for VSAN and for looking out into the future of new technologies like NVMe and RDMA to adopt into VSAN. For a replay of the two sessions check these out:

Peter Keilty, Office of the CTO, Americas Field – Storage and Availability, VMware, Inc.
Rakesh Radhakrishnan, Product Management & Strategy Leader, VMware
Wednesday, Aug 31, 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Vahid Fereydounkolahi kicked this one off discussion VSAN features, capabilities, and how it works, I took over in the middle to discuss Day 2 operations, and Rakesh Radhakrishnan finished it off discussing the Ready Node program as well as current and future flash and IO technology that VSAN incorporates or will incorporate.
Virtual SAN Technical Deep Dive and What’s New [STO8246R]

Thursday, Sep 01, 10:30 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.
Vahid wasn’t able to make this time so I kicked things off talking about VSAN features, capabilities, how it works, and Day 2 operations, and Rakesh Radhakrishnan finished it off discussing the Ready Node program as well as current and future flash and IO technology that VSAN incorporates or will incorporate.
Virtual SAN Technical Deep Dive and What’s New [STO8246R]

In my previous blog post I highlighted the sessions you wouldn’t want to miss. So here, I’ll provide the links to those sessions. A few either haven’t been uploaded yet or won’t because of legal or future looking reasons:

Christos Karamanolis is literally the brains behind VSAN since its inception and our chief visionary for Storage. If you want the whole picture wrapped up in a 1 hour session, this is it.
An Industry Roadmap: From storage to data management [STO7903]
Christos Karamanolis, VMware Fellow – CTO of Storage and Availability, VMware
Wednesday, Aug 31, 4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Continue reading “Replays of Virtual SAN Sessions at VMworld 2016 That You Didn’t Want to Miss” →

VMware Virtual SAN at Storage Field Day 9 (SFD9) – Making Storage Great Again!

by pgkeilty, posted in Hyper-converged, SDS, Software Defined Storage, SPBM, SRM, Stretched Storage, Uncategorized, Virtual SAN, Virtual SAN 6, VMware, VSAN, vSphere 6

On Friday, March 18 I took the opportunity to watch the live Webcast of Storage Field Day 9. If you can carve our some time, I highly recommend this.

Tech Field Day‎@TechFieldDay
VMware Storage Presents at Storage Field Day 9

The panel of industry experts ask all the tough questions and the great VMware Storage team answers them all.

Storage Industry Experts VMware Virtual SAN Experts
  • Alex Galbraith @AlexGalbraith
  • Chris M Evans @ChrisMEvans
  • Dave Henry @DaveMHenry
  • Enrico Signoretti @ESignoretti
  • Howard Marks @DeepStorageNet
  • Justin Warren @JPWarren
  • Mark May @CincyStorage
  • Matthew Leib @MBLeib
  • Richard Arnold @3ParDude
  • Scott D. Lowe @OtherScottLowe
  • Vipin V.K. @VipinVK111
  • W. Curtis Preston @WCPreston
  • Yanbing Le @ybhighheels
  • Christos Karamanolis @XtosK
  • Rawlinson Rivera @PunchingClouds
  • Vahid Fereydouny @vahidfk
  • Gaetan Castelein @gcastelein1
  • Anita Kibunguchy @kibuanita

 

The ~2 hour presentation was broken up into easily consumable chunks. Here’s a breakdown or the recoded session:

VMware Virtual SAN Overview

In this Introduction, Yanbing Le, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Storage and Availability, discusses VMware’s company success, the state of the storage market, and the success of HCI market leading Virtual SAN in over 3000 customers.

What Is VMware Virtual SAN?

Christos Karamanolis, CTO, Storage and Availability BU, jumps into how Virtual SAN works, answers questions on the use of high endurance and commodity SSD, and how Virtual SAN service levels can be managed through VMware’s common control plane – Storage Policy Based Management.

VMware Virtual SAN 6.2 Features and Enhancements

Christos continues the discussion around VSAN features as they’ve progressed from the 1st generation Virtual SAN released in March 12, 2014 to the 2nd, 3rd, and now 4th generation Virtual SAN that was just released March 16, 2016. The discussion in this section focuses a lot on data protection features like stretched clustering and vSphere Replication. They dove deep into how vSphere Replication can deliver application consistent protection as well as a true 5 minute RPO based on the built in intelligent scheduler sending the data deltas within the 5 minute window, monitoring the SLAs, and alerting if they cannot be met due to network issues.

VMware Virtual SAN Space Efficiency

Deduplication, Compression, Distributed RAID 5 & 6 Erasure Coding are all now available to all flash Virtual SAN configurations. Christos provides the skinny on all these data reduction space efficiency features and how enabling these add very little overhead on the vSphere hosts. Rawlinson chimes on the automated way Virtual SAN can build the cluster of disks and disk groups that deliver the capacity for the shared VSAN datastore. These can certainly be built manually but VMware’s design goal is to make the storage system as automated as possible. The conversation moves to checksum and how Virtual SAN is protecting the integrity of data on disks.

VMware Virtual SAN Performance

OK, this part was incredible! Christos laid down the gauntlet, so to speak. He presented the data behind the testing that shows minimal impact on the hosts when enabling the space efficiency features. Also, he presents performance data for OLTP workloads, VDI, Oracle RACK, etc. All cards on the table here. I can’t begin to summarize, you’ll just need to watch.

VMware Virtual SAN Operational Model

Rawlinson Rivera takes over and does what he does best, throwing all caution to the wind and delivering live demonstrations. He showed the Virtual SAN Health Check and the new Virtual SAN Performance Monitoring and Capacity Management views built into the vSphere Web Client. Towards the end, Howard Marks asked about supporting future Intel NVMe capabilities and Christos’s response was that it’s safe to say VMware is working closely with Intel on ensuring the VMware storage stack can utilize the next generation devices. Virtual SAN already supports the Intel P3700 and P3600 NVMe devices.

This was such a great session I thought I’d promote it and make it easy to check it out. By the way, here’s Rawlinson wearing a special hat!

Make Storage Great Again

 

 

 

XvMotion, Cross-vCenter vMotion, VVols, LVM active/active, LVM active/passive, SRM & Stretched Storage, VAIO Filters

by pgkeilty, posted in Cross-vCenter vMotion, EMC, Enhanced vMotion, LVM, RecoverPoint, SDDC, Software Defined Storage, SRM, Stretched Storage, VAIO Filters, Virtual SAN, VMware, VSAN, VVols, XvMotion

Recently, with the announcement of the availability of VVols in vSphere.NEXT I was asked to give a deep dive presentation to a customer with a focus on what VVols meant for protection VM’s. While at EMC as a vSpecialist I lead a group focused on protecting VM’s so this is something I’ve been interested in for awhile. I’m a big fan of RecoverPoint and am excited about virtual RecoverPoint’s ability to offer continuous data protection for VSAN as I indicated here.   I’m also a huge fan of VPLEX and spent a lot of time during my days at EMC discussing what it could do. The more I dug into what VVols could do to help with various VM movement and data protection schemes the more I realized there was much to be excited about but also much need for clarification. So, after some research, phone calls, and email exchanges with people in the know I gathered the information and felt it would be good information to share.

What follows is kind of a “everything but the kitchen sink” post on various ways to move and protect VM’s. There were several pieces of the puzzle to put together so here are the past, present, and future options.

XvMotion (Enhanced vMotion) – vMotion without shared storage – Released in vSphere 5.1

In vSphere 5.1 VMware eliminated the shared storage requirement of vMotion.

  • vMotion – vMotion can be used to non-disruptively move a VM from one host to another host provided both hosts have access to the same shared storage (i.e. A datastore backed by a LUN or volume on a storage array or shared storage device). Prior to vSphere 5.1 this was the only option to non-disruptively move a VM between hosts.
  • Storage vMotion – this allows VM vmdk’s to be non-disruptively moved from one datastore to another datastore provided the host has access to both.
  • XvMotion – As of vSphere 5.1. XvMotion allows a VM on one host, regardless of the storage it is using, to be non-disruptively moved to another host, regardless of the storage it is using. Shared storage is no longer a requirement. The data is moved through the vMotion network. This was a major step towards VM mobility freedom, especially when you think of moving workloads in and out of the cloud.
  • For more information see: Requirements and Limitations for vMotion Without Shared Storage

Cross-vCenter vMotion – Announced at VMworld 2014, available in vSphere.NEXT (future release)

This new feature was announced during the VMworld 2014 US – General Session – Tuesday.

Continue reading “XvMotion, Cross-vCenter vMotion, VVols, LVM active/active, LVM active/passive, SRM & Stretched Storage, VAIO Filters” →