Cloud Ready: an example based discussion

Neil S. SteinJanuary 2013

Design Considerations

Infrastructure capacity needs to be easily scalable both vertically and horizontally

Management overhead should not scale with it

Very resilient with no single points of failure

Multiple site architectures leverage best-of-breed virtualization and replication technologies

Extendable from private to: public and hybrid cloud models (federated)

Components sized for expansion and growth

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Design Considerations:Hot / Warm Provide multi datacenters with capability for failover in

either direction

Run production at each site or use secondary for test/dev

Easily perform DR testing and failover

Lower cost while still providing excellent resiliency

Components

Storage – EMC Storage, Data Domain /Avamar

Replication – RecoverPoint/SE

Compute – Cisco UCS

Management – vCenter Operations, CapIQ, Chargeback

Hot / Warm (discussion example only)

Design Considerations: Continuous Availability

Provides multiple active datacenters with full production capabilities and HA resiliency

Continuous Availability more than Disaster Recovery

Allows for horizontal / vertical scaling

Components

Storage – EMC Storage, Data Domain/Avamar

Replication – VPLEX

Compute – Cisco UCS

Management – vCenter Operations, CapIQ, Chargeback

Continuous Availability (discussion example only)

Storage(discussion example only) VNX 5500 or 5700

Maximum Cap: 250 or 500 Drives

Proposed: 200 GB EFDs for FAST Cache or Tier 0

300 GB & 600 GB 15k SAS for Tier 1

2TB NL-SAS for Tier 2/Archive

Connectivity = Any protocol desired (FC, FCoE, iSCSI, NFS, CIFS)

Software licensing FAST VP

FAST Cache

Local and Remote Protection

Application Protection

Compute(discussion example only)

Cisco UCS

Maximum Cap: ~160 Blades (Current)

Proposed: ~24 Blades Future State

Each blade is 12-cores and 96GB of RAM

Benefits = Density, Service Profiles, Management.

Connectivity

Network – 10Gb to Network Core

Storage – 8Gb FC to FC Core

All Compute running vSphere 5

Replication RecoverPoint(discussion example only) RecoverPoint provides replication and journal rollback

capability far exceeding other replication technologies

Proposal for Hot/Warm – RecoverPoint CRR (Continuous Remote Replication) at both sites

Implementation will include 2-4 appliances at each site utilizing the simple array splitter technology

No invasive FC fabric configuration needed

Also proposed are application plugins allowing for application consistent rollback, if desired.

Integration with Site Recovery Manager

Replication – VPLEX(discussion example only)

VPLEX provides for active/active storage

Combine that with vSphere or other cluster-aware applications and you have a very resilient environment

Allows for easy horizontal scaling of arrays once you reach capacity

Future solution is single-engine (dual storage processor) VPLEX Geo at each location

Backup/Recovery

Data Domain/Avamar

Multiple central tier

Remote capabilities

Additional Tools

From VMware

vCenter Operations – Provides sophisticated, but very easy to use, virtual environment performance monitoring and prediction

vCenter Capacity IQ – Allows for trending and “what if” analysis

vCenter Chargeback – or “showback”

vCloud Director – enable cloud self-service from internal customers.

Multi-level monitoring, alerting capabilities

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Team Knowledge

Technology areas: VMware, EMC, Cisco UCS

Implementation in Healthcare

Compliance focused

Ongoing Services Portfolio

Proactive Maintenance

Reactive Support

On-going Architecture and Advisory

Services

Engineering and

Administration

Health ChecksTrend AnalysisCapacity/Utilization ReportingContinuous Monitoring

On demand supportTicketingEscalationsSeverity LevelsRoot Cause Analysis

Day to day managementOperational tasks Patching, code revisions

Continued consulting, design and architecture servicesImplementing recommended changes

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