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 E-Guide

HOW APPLICATION

PERFORMANCE

DEPENDS ON YOUR

NETWORK

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Virtualization

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HE   DECISIONS  MADE   by a system adminregarding network and I/O could affect

application performance.T

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APPLICATION PERFORMANCE DEPENDENT ONNETWORK, I/O

 Brian Kirsch

 Application performance is going to be different depending on a system admin-

istrator’s decisions. When it comes to network, I/O, memory and CPU, there

are choices that need to be made depending on what you’re looking for. This

is the second part of a two-part series about factors that affect virtualized ap-

plication performance.

Networking is the bridge that connects our applications to each other and

ultimately to us. It is a necessary piece but where does it fit in the application

profile? We know that networking is critical for our infrastructure; however,

that is not exactly the same as the needs for an application. One of the common

speeds in the data center today is the 1 gigabyte (GB) connection and outside of

over the network backups, it can be hard to find applications that use it all. Part

of this is due to other limiting factors in the hardware such as the hard drives.

The other is that most applications simply are designed to be more efficient in

communications.

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 When virtualizing 30 standardized servers that have an existing 1 GB link,the raw math reflects 30 GB of bandwidth needed. However, if each of those

servers only used 100 megabytes per second, suddenly that 30 GB of bandwidth

drops to 3 GB. While not all applications will have that level of use, it often be-

comes more likely that your application will run into another constraint before

networking. With networking speeds beyond 10 GB and moving into the 25

GB and 100 GB range, this is one celling that most applications will never see.

 With regards to software-defined networking  in the application space, the ap-

plication server itself should have no knowledge of the networking infrastruc-

ture below the virtualized “physical layer.” So the question of using SDN is a

business and infrastructure decision. Will these technologies be the future?

Mostly likely yes but the timing of your adoption will be the key, leading edge

or bleeding edge.

MANAGING IOPS TO REDUCE BOTTLENECKS

I/O is the real wild card of the collection. Storage has experienced some of the 

most radical changes  in the data center of any of the four. In the traditional

server, storage was typically the bottle neck of the server due to storage being

mechanical in nature. Unlike CPU or memory, storage had moving parts which

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limited its performance. Once you add multiple VMs onto the same storagesystem, the bottle necks become even more apparent. However, larger RAID 

groups, meta-luns and solid-state disks (SSDs) have continued to increase the

number of (IOPS) you can have access too. Add in the converged infrastructure

where the storage is brought into the same frame as the servers and the amount

of IOPS increases further. But storage is unique among the categories as the

newer technology doesn’t simply replace the older ones. SSD has not done away

with spinning media, while the performance is much higher and the capacity

grows the price difference is still too great to be ignored.

HOW TO BUILD YOUR NETWORK AND STORAGE INFRASTRUCTURE

This often leads to a hybrid approach of both spinning media and SSD. With

the price differences in the disk it is no longer a performance question, but a

cost question. Asking an application owner about performance or capacity will

typically yield the same answer: SSD. Seeking the vendor recommendations

should be a bit more realistic but can still be more theoretical than realistic.

Monitoring the application I/O will be the only true measure because it is op-

erating in your environment with your users. Of course monitoring after the

fact doesn’t really help you in purchasing now -- except for storage. Storage is

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unique among the four because it’s normally the easiest to modify and expand. Adding disk to most storage frames is a nondisruptive event and using multiple

different classes of storage is supported by most storage systems.

The ability to move virtual workloads between different classes of storage 

without interruption makes one of the most difficult issues to determine in a

virtual environment one of the easiest to work with. Capacity is fairly cut and

dry and taking advantage of thin provisioning can help your efforts. Using the

vendor’s guidelines, you can get an idea of a starting point. From there you can

grow your storage depending on the application profiles. Not purchasing every-

thing at once gives you more freedom to see where your pain points will be and

adjust accordingly. Since storage is often a shared environment you also gain

insight into how different applications will react with each other. This can help

you avoid common pitfalls such as VDI boot storms or backups.

Having insight into your applications is the best way to know how to grow

your virtual environment. Virtualization has many features and can have amaz-

ing impact to your infrastructure and organization. However, don’t forget that

while virtualization may get all of the attention, it’s the applications and how

we support them with virtualization that is the real key.

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