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EMC Integrated Infrastructure for VMware Business Continuity enabled by EMC Celerra Unified Storage and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager Reference Architecture

EMC Integrated Infrastructure for VMware · The EMC Integrated Infrastructure for VMware is a validated reference blueprint for ... Introduction : ... the same SRM protection group

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Page 1: EMC Integrated Infrastructure for VMware · The EMC Integrated Infrastructure for VMware is a validated reference blueprint for ... Introduction : ... the same SRM protection group

EMC Integrated Infrastructure for VMware

Business Continuity

enabled by EMC Celerra Unified Storage and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

Reference Architecture

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EMC Integrated Infrastructure for VMware Business Continuity enabled by EMC Celerra Unified Storage and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

Reference Architecture 2

Copyright © 2010 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Published February, 2010 EMC believes the information in this publication is accurate as of its publication date. The information is subject to change without notice. Benchmark results are highly dependent upon workload, specific application requirements, and system design and implementation. Relative system performance will vary as a result of these and other factors. Therefore, this workload should not be used as a substitute for a specific customer application benchmark when critical capacity planning and/or product evaluation decisions are contemplated. All performance data contained in this report was obtained in a rigorously controlled environment. Results obtained in other operating environments may vary significantly. EMC Corporation does not warrant or represent that a user can or will achieve similar performance expressed in transactions per minute. No warranty of system performance or price/performance is expressed or implied in this document. Use, copying, and distribution of any EMC software described in this publication requires an applicable software license. For the most up-to-date listing of EMC product names, see EMC Corporation Trademarks on EMC.com. All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners. Part number: H6917

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EMC Integrated Infrastructure for VMware Business Continuity enabled by EMC Celerra Unified Storage and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

Reference Architecture 3

Table of Contents

Reference architecture overview....................................................................................................... 4 Key components of the Integrated Infrastructure .............................................................................. 6 Physical architecture ......................................................................................................................... 7 NFS use case storage layout and configuration ............................................................................... 9 iSCSI use case storage layout and configuration ........................................................................... 11 NFS use case network layout and configuration ............................................................................. 13 iSCSI use case network layout and configuration ........................................................................... 14 Hardware and software resources .................................................................................................. 15 Use cases ........................................................................................................................................ 16 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 17

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Reference architecture overview

EMC Integrated Infrastructure for VMware Business Continuity enabled by EMC Celerra Unified Storage and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

Reference Architecture 4

Reference architecture overview

Document purpose

This document describes the reference architecture of the EMC Integrated Infrastructure for VMware solution with business continuity. This solution is enabled by: • EMC® Celerra®, • VMware vSphere 4, and • VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager.

Solution purpose

The purpose of this solution is to present a reference architecture that provides business continuity for the EMC Integrated Infrastructure for VMware using VMware vSphere 4 with vCenter Site Recovery Manager. The solution focuses on two use cases to validate the environment: • recovery of a virtualized Microsoft Exchange 2007 environment, and • recovery of a virtualized Microsoft DFS file sharing environment. The solution is validated with both NFS and iSCSI datastores on EMC Celerra, and the recovery is managed using VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager.

The business challenge

Businesses of all sizes face the challenge of restoring operations in the wake of site disasters, and bringing their critical applications and data online quickly with little or no data loss. Whether they are located at the primary data center or in a remote office, business users, for example, must be able to send and receive e-mail, and access their documents from the fileshare. Tested, validated plans are critical to ensuring the continuation of your business and the protection of your revenue. The consolidation and virtualization of critical business applications are crucial to maximizing data center efficiency; however, this can add a layer of complexity to your disaster recovery plans. These challenges demand a solution that offers effective, affordable, and efficient protection of critical business functions while offering the flexibility to ensure the needs of different applications are met.

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Reference architecture overview

EMC Integrated Infrastructure for VMware Business Continuity enabled by EMC Celerra Unified Storage and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

Reference Architecture 5

The technology solution

The EMC Integrated Infrastructure for VMware is a validated reference blueprint for an “integrated data center in a rack.” All of the components needed for complete data center functionality including servers, EMC Celerra storage, VMware, and other services are included in a standard, baseline build that is easily customized. This proven configuration makes the Integrated Infrastructure for VMware easy to procure and deploy in both the data center and in remote branches. EMC Integrated Infrastructure for VMware helps customer to consolidate servers on fewer physical machines and helps to save energy and physical space. Virtual machine configurations are stored in just a few files and therefore can be recovered more easily than from a physical machine. In this solution, EMC Integrated Infrastructure for VMware hosts Microsoft Exchange virtual machines and file server virtual machines. The virtual machines are replicated to another EMC Integrated Infrastructure for VMware at a different site using EMC Celerra Replicator™. The domain controllers exist at each site, and the domain data is replicated through default Windows domain replication. VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager handles the management and execution of recovery plans. Note: This solution provides crash-consistent recovery. If your environment requires application-consistent recovery of Exchange databases consider using EMC Replication Manager.

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Key components of the Integrated Infrastructure

EMC Integrated Infrastructure for VMware Business Continuity enabled by EMC Celerra Unified Storage and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

Reference Architecture 6

Key components of the Integrated Infrastructure

Introduction This section briefly describes the key components of the EMC Integrated

Infrastructure for VMware used in this solution including: • EMC Celerra NS-120 • Cisco Catalyst 3750-E switches • VMware vSphere 4 • VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager For details on all of the components that make up the reference architecture, refer to the hardware and software section.

EMC Celerra The EMC Celerra unified storage platform is a flexible, affordable, and powerful

network storage system that is easy to deploy and simple to manage. EMC Celerra provides unified storage for customers looking for enterprise-class capabilities packaged for specific applications, departments, or locations. In this solution, we are using both iSCSI and NFS exports on Celerra as well as EMC Celerra Replicator to replicate the data to the other site to protect from disaster.

Cisco Catalyst switch

The Cisco Catalyst 3750-E series is a line of enterprise-class stackable wiring closet switches that are included as part of the EMC Integrated Infrastructure for VMware. In this solution, we used link aggregation to provide fault tolerance and to improve network performance of storage network ports. We used VLAN to isolate storage traffic from the other network traffic.

VMware vSphere 4

VMware vSphere 4 is the market-leading virtualization solution that allows you to turn your infrastructure into an efficient and flexible internal cloud, enabling you to:

• decrease your capital and operating costs, • run a greener data center and reduce energy costs, • control your application service levels with advanced availability and security

features, and • streamline IT operations and improve flexibility.

VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager is a software application that provides disaster recovery automation for virtual machines. Site Recovery Manager automates the recovery process and ensures reliable recovery by enabling non-disruptive testing. It simplifies recovery by eliminating complex manual steps and centralizes management of your recovery plan. EMC Celerra Storage Replication Adapter handles the storage tasks for EMC Celerra requested by Site Recovery Manager.

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Physical architecture

EMC Integrated Infrastructure for VMware Business Continuity enabled by EMC Celerra Unified Storage and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

Reference Architecture 7

Physical architecture

EMC Integrated Infrastructure for VMware architecture

The following illustration identifies the major components of the EMC Integrated Infrastructure for VMware.

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Physical architecture

EMC Integrated Infrastructure for VMware Business Continuity enabled by EMC Celerra Unified Storage and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

Reference Architecture 8

Architecture diagram

The following illustration depicts the overall physical architecture of the solution.

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NFS use case storage layout and configuration

EMC Integrated Infrastructure for VMware Business Continuity enabled by EMC Celerra Unified Storage and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

Reference Architecture 9

NFS use case storage layout and configuration

vCenter and domain controller

The VMDK files of vCenter and the domain controller reside on an NFS datastore that is not replicated to the other site. The Domain DFS links hosted on the domain controller are replicated to the other domain controllers using the default Windows domain replication.

Microsoft Exchange

The mailbox virtual machine binary files and the HubCAS virtual machine are installed on VMDK files residing on an NFS datastore. The mailbox Exchange server contains four databases and four storage groups based on the Microsoft guideline of one database per Exchange storage group. Each database is hosted on its own drive of 150 GB. All of the database VMDK files share a single NFS datastore that is 600 GB. In addition: • The log files for each storage group are hosted on their own 15 GB drive. • All of the log VMDK files are located on a single NFS datastore. • Binaries are stored on RAID 5 filesystem. • Database and log volumes are stored on the RAID 10 file system • All of the NFS datastores that hold Exchange virtual machines are configured into

the same SRM protection group.

File server Two fileserver virtual machines are created, as follows:

• Each fileserver hosts the standalone DFS roots that are the targets for the domain DFS links.

• Each fileserver OS and data VMDK files are stored on the OS’s own NFS datastore.

Configuration Each datastore is mounted with its own IP address on the private storage network. In

addition: • The default setting for thin provisioning of the virtual machines hosted on the NFS

datastore is used. • The Paravirtual SCSI driver is used for the data disks. • On the EMC Celerra, SparseTWS is enabled for using thin LUNs for the LUN

snapshot. • The Celerra filesystem is replicated using Celerra Replicator. • Celerra Storage Replication Adapter enables VMware Site Recovery Manager to

automate the Celerra NFS management tasks that are needed during the recovery.

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NFS use case storage layout and configuration

EMC Integrated Infrastructure for VMware Business Continuity enabled by EMC Celerra Unified Storage and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

Reference Architecture 10

Storage configurations

The following table displays the storage configurations used in this solution.

File or activity type

Number of NFS datastores

RAID level

Celerra storage pool

SRM protection group

vCenter/Domain Controller

1 RAID 5 (4+1)

Clar_r5_performance N/A

Exchange OS 1 RAID 5 (4+1)

Clar_r5_performance Exchange

Exchange Database 1 RAID 10 DBPool Exchange Exchange Logs 1 RAID 10 LogPool Exchange File Server 1 1 RAID 5

(4+1) Clar_r5_performance FS1

File Server 2 1 RAID 5 (4+1)

Clar_r5_performance FS2

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iSCSI use case storage layout and configuration

EMC Integrated Infrastructure for VMware Business Continuity enabled by EMC Celerra Unified Storage and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

Reference Architecture 11

iSCSI use case storage layout and configuration

VMware vCenter and domain controller

The VMDK files of vCenter and the domain controller are stored using vMotion to the iSCSI datastore that is not replicated to the other site.

Microsoft Exchange

The mailbox virtual machine binary files and HubCAS virtual machine are moved using SVMotion from the NFS datastore to the iSCSI datastore. The database and log disks are moved to its corresponding iSCSI datastore. In addition: • Binaries are stored on the RAID 5 filesystem. • Database and log volumes are stored on the RAID 10 filesystem.

File server Both the file server OS disk and the data disk are moved to their corresponding

iSCSI datastore.

Configuration PowerPath®/VE 5.4 SP1 automatically owns and manages the EMC Celerra iSCSI

volumes. Two VMKernel ports are created, one on each private subnet.

The vSwitch is configured with an IP Hash load balancing policy. On EMC Celerra, SendTargetsMode is enabled to further enhance the security of iSCSI LUNs. SparseTWS is enabled to use Thin LUNs for the LUN snapshot. Celerra iSCSI LUNs are replicated to the remote array using Celerra Replicator. EMC Celerra Storage Replication Adapter enables VMware Site Recovery Manager to automate LUN management tasks that are needed during recovery.

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iSCSI use case storage layout and configuration

EMC Integrated Infrastructure for VMware Business Continuity enabled by EMC Celerra Unified Storage and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

Reference Architecture 12

Storage configurations

The following table displays the storage configurations used in this solution.

File or activity Type

Number of iSCSI datastores

RAID level

Celerra storage pool

SRM protection group

vCenter/Domain Controller

1 RAID 5 (4+1)

Clar_r5_performance N/A

Exchange OS 1 RAID 5 (4+1)

Clar_r5_performance Exchange

Exchange Database 1 RAID 10 DBPool Exchange Exchange Logs 1 RAID 10 LogPool Exchange File Server 1 1 RAID 5

(4+1) Clar_r5_performance FS1

File Server 2 1 RAID 5 (4+1)

Clar_r5_performance FS2

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NFS use case network layout and configuration

EMC Integrated Infrastructure for VMware Business Continuity enabled by EMC Celerra Unified Storage and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

Reference Architecture 13

NFS use case network layout and configuration

EMC Celerra All storage ports in the Data Mover are configured as link aggregated devices. One

virtual interface is created for replication and assigned an IP in the public network. For six NFS exports, six virtual interfaces are created and each was assigned an unique IP address in the private subnet.

Cisco Catalyst switch

VLANs are created to separate the network traffic. All the ports connected to storage array Data Mover ports and the uplink ports of a storage vSwitch on the ESX servers are configured as trunk ports. Link aggregation was enabled with a source-destination-ip policy for the ports connected to the storage Data Mover and the storage vSwitch uplink ports of the ESX servers.

ESX servers The vSwitch is created with IP-Hash as the load-balancing policy. In IP-Hash, the

route is based on a hash of the source and destination IP addresses for each packet. For NFS, a single VMkernel port is used. Because the network ports are configured as trunk port, VLAN tagging is required to separate the traffic.

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iSCSI use case network layout and configuration

EMC Integrated Infrastructure for VMware Business Continuity enabled by EMC Celerra Unified Storage and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

Reference Architecture 14

iSCSI use case network layout and configuration

EMC Celerra All the storage ports in the Data Mover are configured as link aggregated devices.

One virtual interface is created for replication and assigned an IP in the public network. Four virtual interfaces are created with two of them in each subnet and each assigned a unique IP address in the private subnet.

Cisco Catalyst switch

VLANs are created to separate the network traffic. All ports connected to the storage array Data Mover ports and the uplink ports of the storage vSwitch on the ESX servers are configured as trunk ports. Link aggregation is enabled with a source-destination-ip policy for the ports connected to the storage Data Mover and the storage vSwitch uplink ports of the ESX servers.

ESX servers The vSwitch is created with IP-Hash as the load-balancing policy. For iSCSI, two

VMkernel ports are created and assigned a unique IP in each private subnet. Because the network ports are configured as trunk ports, VLAN tagging is required to separate the traffic.

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Hardware and software resources

EMC Integrated Infrastructure for VMware Business Continuity enabled by EMC Celerra Unified Storage and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

Reference Architecture 15

Hardware and software resources

Hardware The following table lists the hardware used to validate the solution. Equipment Quantity Configuration EMC Integrated Infrastructure for VMware 2 • 5-node rack with EMC Celerra NS-120

Virtual allocation of hardware resources

The following table lists the allocation of virtual hardware resources for this solution. These are the virtual machine configurations.

Virtual machine Quantity Configuration Domain controller 2 1 vCPU, 2.5 GHz, 2 GB, 40GB VMDK vCenter server 2 1 vCPU, 2.5 GHz, 2 GB, 20 GB VMDK File server 2 2 vCPUs, 2.5 GHz, 4 GB, 40 GB VMDK,

2 x 100 GB VMDK for data HubCas server 1 2 vCPUs, 2.5 GHz, 4 GB, 40 GB VMDK Mailbox server 1 4 vCPUs, 2.5 GHz, 12 GB, 40 GB VMDK,

4 x 150 GB VMDK, 4 x 30 GB VMDK

Software resources

The following table lists the software used to validate the solution.

Software Version VMware vSphere ESX 4.0.0 Build 175625 VMware vSphere vCenter Server 4.0.0 Build 162856 VMware vSphere Site Recovery Manager 4.0.0 Build 192921 EMC PowerPath/VE 5.4.1 Build 033 Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 64-bit Microsoft Windows 2003 R2 32-bit Microsoft Exchange 2007 08.01.0240.006 EMC Celerra SRA 4.0 Build 82160

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Use cases

EMC Integrated Infrastructure for VMware Business Continuity enabled by EMC Celerra Unified Storage and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

Reference Architecture 16

Use cases

Simplified remote deployment

EMC Integrated Infrastructure for VMware Business Continuity is ideally suited to support application and business needs in remote offices. This solution enables customers to deploy a consistent, virtualized infrastructure across remote locations ensuring that the revenue and business at these locations are protected with a robust disaster recovery solution. At these sites, customers can use one, integrated solution and consolidate applications into one infrastructure. With this level of consistency, customers are able to reduce maintenance costs while delivering consistently to service level agreements across all remote locations. The disaster recovery capabilities ensure information and application availability supporting your business continuance objectives.

Application deployment

The EMC Integrated Infrastructure for VMware Business Continuity is a general purpose virtualized data center on a consolidated platform enabling fast deployment of business applications. Customers can quickly deploy Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint, SQL Server, and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure to realize their return on their hardware and software investments. Additionally, customers can consolidate multiple applications into this one environment, reducing management and maintenance costs. With robust disaster recovery capabilities, companies can feel comfortable deploying these mission-critical applications onsite as information will always be available, protecting the business and the revenue.

Business continuity infrastructure deployment

The EMC Integrated Infrastructure for VMware Business Continuity enables you to quickly implement an infrastructure to fail over your information and applications in the event of a disaster or other data center outage. With this solution, you can have a remote site deployed and ready for failover in one day versus weeks of planning and implementation, offering you a significant savings. With this solution, you minimize business interruption and protect business plans and revenue.

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Conclusion

EMC Integrated Infrastructure for VMware Business Continuity enabled by EMC Celerra Unified Storage and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

Reference Architecture 17

Conclusion

Summary EMC Integrated Infrastructure for VMware Business Continuity Enabled By EMC

Celerra NS-120 and VMware vSphere 4 Site Recovery Manager can protect virtual machines on all the datastores supported by VMware. This makes it easier for server consolidation and protection of virtual machines, providing customers with a fault-tolerant solution that: • Reduces configuration time by up to 66 percent • Reduces deployment time by up to 50 percent • Reduces disaster recovery planning by up to 90 percent EMC Integrated Infrastructure for VMware can be used across locations to meet their business needs, and provides freedom for administrators to choose the storage protocol for the datastore. This solution offers customers the ability to quickly implement a virtualized infrastructure to support their mission-critical applications and ensures business continuance with a robust disaster recovery architecture while significantly reducing costs.

Next steps EMC can help to accelerate assessment, design, implementation, and management

while lowering the implementation risks and costs of a backup/disaster recovery solution for a Virtual Infrastructure environment. To learn more about this and other solutions contact an EMC representative or visit www.EMC.com/solutions/.