EMC VSPEX Private Cloud: Microsoft Windows 2012 R2 with Hyper-V for up to 700 Virtual Machines

102 Pages·2015·2.62 MB·English

Proven Infrastructure Guide

EMC VSPEX PRIVATE CLOUD
Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 with Hyper-V
for up to 700 Virtual Machines
Enabled by EMC XtremIO and EMC Data Protection

EMC VSPEX
Abstr act
ThiPs roven Infrastruc tduersec Griubiedse th® eVSP EEX M® CProven Infrastructure
solution for private cloud deployments with Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 with
Hyper - V and EMC Xtrem IO ™ all-flash array technology.

July 2015
Copyright © 2015 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Published in the USA.
Published July 2015
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EMC VSPEX Private Cloud: Microsoft Windows 2012 R2 with Hyper-V for up to 700
Virtual Machines
Enabled by EMC XtremIO and EMC Data Protection
Proven Infrastructure Guide
Part Number: H14157.1

2 EMC VSPEX Private Cloud: Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 with Hyper-V
for up to 700 Virtual Machines
Proven Infrastructure Guide
Contents
Contents

Chapter 1 Executive Summary 10
Introduction ............................................................................................................. 11
Target audience ........................................................................................................ 11
Document purpose ................................................................................................... 11
Business benefits ..................................................................................................... 12
Chapter 2 Solution Overview 13
Introduction ............................................................................................................. 14
Virtualization ............................................................................................................ 14
Private cloud foundation ...................................................................................... 14
Compute .................................................................................................................. 14
Network .................................................................................................................... 15
Storage ..................................................................................................................... 15
Challenges ........................................................................................................... 15
Scalability ............................................................................................................ 16
Operational agility ............................................................................................... 16
Deduplication ...................................................................................................... 17
Thin provisioning ................................................................................................. 17
Data protection .................................................................................................... 17
Microsoft ODX support ......................................................................................... 17
EMC ViPR integration ........................................................................................... 17
API support .......................................................................................................... 18
Benefits of using XtremIO .................................................................................... 18
Chapter 3 Solution Technology Overview 19
Overview .................................................................................................................. 20
VSPEX Proven Infrastructures ................................................................................... 20
Key components ....................................................................................................... 22
Virtualization layer ................................................................................................... 22
Overview .............................................................................................................. 22
Microsoft Hyper-V ................................................................................................ 23
Virtual Fibre Channel ports ................................................................................... 23
Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager .............................................. 23
High availability with Hyper-V Failover Clustering ................................................. 23
Hyper-V Replica ................................................................................................... 24

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Cluster-Aware Updating ....................................................................................... 24
EMC Storage Integrator for Windows Suite ........................................................... 25
Compute layer .......................................................................................................... 25
Network layer ........................................................................................................... 27
Storage layer ............................................................................................................ 28
EMC XtremIO ........................................................................................................ 28
EMC Data Protection ................................................................................................. 30
Overview .............................................................................................................. 30
EMC Avamar deduplication .................................................................................. 31
EMC Data Domain deduplication storage systems ............................................... 31
EMC RecoverPoint ................................................................................................ 31
Other technologies ................................................................................................... 31
Overview .............................................................................................................. 31
EMC PowerPath .................................................................................................... 31
EMC ViPR Controller ............................................................................................. 32
Public-key infrastructure ...................................................................................... 32
Chapter 4 Solution Architecture Overview 33
Overview .................................................................................................................. 34
Solution architecture ................................................................................................ 34
Overview .............................................................................................................. 34
Logical architecture ............................................................................................. 34
Key components .................................................................................................. 35
Hardware resources ............................................................................................. 37
Software resources .............................................................................................. 38
Server configuration guidelines ................................................................................ 39
Overview .............................................................................................................. 39
Intel Ivy Bridge updates ....................................................................................... 39
Hyper-V memory virtualization ............................................................................. 40
Memory configuration guidelines ......................................................................... 42
Network configuration guidelines ............................................................................. 42
Overview .............................................................................................................. 42
VLANs .................................................................................................................. 43
Enable jumbo frames (for iSCSI) .......................................................................... 44
Storage configuration guidelines .............................................................................. 44
Overview .............................................................................................................. 44
XtremIO X-Brick scalability ................................................................................... 44
Hyper-V storage virtualization .............................................................................. 46
VSPEX storage building blocks ............................................................................. 47

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Contents
High-availability and failover .................................................................................... 48
Overview .............................................................................................................. 48
Virtualization layer ............................................................................................... 48
Compute layer ..................................................................................................... 48
Network layer ....................................................................................................... 49
Storage layer ....................................................................................................... 50
XtremIO Data Protection....................................................................................... 50
Backup and recovery configuration guidelines.......................................................... 50
Chapter 5 Environment Sizing 51
Overview .................................................................................................................. 52
Reference workload .................................................................................................. 52
Overview .............................................................................................................. 52
Defining the reference workload .......................................................................... 52
Scaling out ............................................................................................................... 53
Reference workload application................................................................................ 53
Overview .............................................................................................................. 53
Example 1: Custom-built application ................................................................... 53
Example 2: Point-of-sale system .......................................................................... 54
Example 3: Web server ........................................................................................ 54
Example 4: Decision-support database ............................................................... 54
Summary of examples ......................................................................................... 55
Quick assessment .................................................................................................... 55
Overview .............................................................................................................. 55
CPU requirements ................................................................................................ 56
Memory requirements .......................................................................................... 56
Storage performance requirements ...................................................................... 56
IOPS .................................................................................................................... 56
I/O size ................................................................................................................ 57
I/O latency ........................................................................................................... 57
Unique data ......................................................................................................... 57
Storage capacity requirements ............................................................................ 58
Determining equivalent reference virtual machines ............................................. 58
Fine-tuning hardware resources ........................................................................... 61
EMC VSPEX Sizing Tool ........................................................................................ 63
Chapter 6 VSPEX Solution Implementation 64
Overview .................................................................................................................. 65
Pre-deployment tasks ............................................................................................... 65
Deployment resources checklist .......................................................................... 66

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Customer configuration data ................................................................................ 67
Network implementation .......................................................................................... 67
Preparing the network switches ........................................................................... 67
Configuring the infrastructure network ................................................................. 67
Configuring VLANs ............................................................................................... 68
Configuring jumbo frames (iSCSI only) ................................................................. 69
Completing network cabling ................................................................................ 69
Microsoft Hyper-V hosts installation and configuration ............................................. 69
Overview .............................................................................................................. 69
Installing the Windows hosts ............................................................................... 69
Installing Hyper-V and configuring failover clustering ........................................... 70
Configuring Windows host networking ................................................................. 70
Installing and configuring Multipath software ...................................................... 70
Planning virtual machine memory allocations ...................................................... 70
Microsoft SQL Server database installation and configuration .................................. 71
Overview .............................................................................................................. 71
Creating a virtual machine for SQL Server ............................................................ 72
Installing Microsoft Windows on the virtual machine ........................................... 72
Installing SQL Server ............................................................................................ 72
Configuring SQL Server for SCVMM ...................................................................... 72
System Center Virtual Machine Manager server deployment ..................................... 73
Overview .............................................................................................................. 73
Creating a SCVMM host virtual machine ............................................................... 74
Installing the SCVMM guest OS ............................................................................ 74
Installing the SCVMM server ................................................................................ 74
Installing the SCVMM Admin Console .................................................................. 74
Installing the SCVMM agent locally on a host ....................................................... 74
Adding the Hyper-V cluster to SCVMM .................................................................. 74
Storage array preparation and configuration ............................................................. 74
Overview .............................................................................................................. 74
Configuring the XtremIO array .............................................................................. 75
Preparing the XtremIO array ................................................................................. 75
Setting up the initial XtremIO configuration ......................................................... 75
Creating the CSV disk .......................................................................................... 80
Creating a virtual machine in SCVMM................................................................... 80
Performing partition alignment ........................................................................... 80
Creating a template virtual machine..................................................................... 81
Deploying virtual machines from the template ..................................................... 81

6 EMC VSPEX Private Cloud: Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 with Hyper-V
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Chapter 7 Solution Verification 82
Overview .................................................................................................................. 83
Post-installation checklist ........................................................................................ 84
Deploying and testing a single virtual machine ......................................................... 84
Verifying solution component redundancy ................................................................ 84
Chapter 8 System Monitoring 85
Overview .................................................................................................................. 86
Key areas to monitor ................................................................................................. 86
Performance baseline .......................................................................................... 86
Servers ................................................................................................................ 87
Networking .......................................................................................................... 87
Storage ................................................................................................................ 88
XtremIO resource monitoring guidelines ................................................................... 88
Monitoring the storage......................................................................................... 88
Monitoring the performance ................................................................................ 90
Monitoring the hardware elements ...................................................................... 91
Using advanced monitoring ................................................................................. 93
Appendix A Reference Documentation 95
EMC documentation ................................................................................................. 96
Other documentation ............................................................................................... 96
Appendix B Customer Configuration Worksheet 98
Customer configuration worksheet ........................................................................... 99
Appendix C Server Resource Component Worksheet 101
Server resources component worksheet ................................................................. 102

Figures
Figure 1. I/O randomization brought by server virtualization .............................. 15
Figure 2. VSPEX Proven Infrastructures .............................................................. 21
Figure 3. Compute layer flexibility examples ...................................................... 26
Figure 4. Example of highly available network design ........................................ 27
Figure 5. Logical architecture for the solution ..................................................... 35
Figure 6. Hypervisor memory consumption ........................................................ 41
Figure 7. Required networks for XtremIO storage ................................................ 43
Figure 8. Single X-Brick XtremIO storage ............................................................ 44
Figure 9. Cluster configuration as single and multiple X-Brick clusters ............... 45
Figure 10. Hyper-V virtual disk types .................................................................... 46

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Figure 11. XtremIO Starter X-Brick building block for 300 virtual machines .......... 47
Figure 12. XtremIO single X-Brick building block for 700 virtual machines ........... 47
Figure 13. High availability at the virtualization layer ........................................... 48
Figure 14. Redundant power supplies .................................................................. 49
Figure 15. Network layer high availability ............................................................. 49
Figure 16. XtremIO high availability ..................................................................... 50
Figure 17. Resource pool flexibility ...................................................................... 55
Figure 18. Required resources from the RVM pool ................................................ 59
Figure 19. Aggregate resource requirements - Stage 2 .......................................... 61
Figure 20. Customizing server resources .............................................................. 62
Figure 21. Sample Ethernet network architecture ................................................. 68
Figure 22. XtremIO initiator group ........................................................................ 76
Figure 23. Adding volume .................................................................................... 77
Figure 24. Volume summary................................................................................. 78
Figure 25. Volumes and initiator group ................................................................ 79
Figure 26. Mapping volumes ................................................................................ 80
Figure 27. Monitoring the efficiency ..................................................................... 89
Figure 28. Volume capacity .................................................................................. 90
Figure 29. Physical capacity ................................................................................. 90
Figure 30. Monitoring the performance (IOPS)...................................................... 91
Figure 31. Data and management cable connectivity ........................................... 92
Figure 32. X-Brick properties ................................................................................ 92
Figure 33. Monitoring the SSDs ............................................................................ 93

Tables
Table 1. Solution hardware ............................................................................... 37
Table 2. Solution software ................................................................................ 38
Table 3. Hardware resources for the compute layer ........................................... 40
Table 4. XtremIO scalable scenarios with virtual machines ............................... 48
Table 5. VSPEX Private Cloud RVM workload ..................................................... 52
Table 6. Blank worksheet row ........................................................................... 56
Table 7. Reference virtual machine resources ................................................... 58
Table 8. Sample worksheet row ........................................................................ 59
Table 9. Example applications – Stage 1 ........................................................... 60
Table 10. Example applications -Stage 2 ............................................................ 60
Table 11. Server resource component totals ....................................................... 62
Table 12. Deployment process overview ............................................................. 65
Table 13. Pre-deployment tasks .......................................................................... 66

8 EMC VSPEX Private Cloud: Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 with Hyper-V
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Contents
Table 14. Deployment resources checklist .......................................................... 66
Table 15. Tasks for switch and network configuration ......................................... 67
Table 16. Tasks for server installation ................................................................. 69
Table 17. Tasks for SQL Server database setup ................................................... 71
Table 18. Tasks for SCVMM configuration ........................................................... 73
Table 19. Tasks for XtremIO configuration ........................................................... 75
Table 20. Storage allocation for block data ......................................................... 79
Table 21. Testing the installation ........................................................................ 83
Table 22. Advanced monitor parameters ............................................................. 93
Table 23. Common server information ................................................................ 99
Table 24. ESXi server information ....................................................................... 99
Table 25. X-Brick information .............................................................................. 99
Table 26. Network infrastructure information .................................................... 100
Table 27. VLAN information .............................................................................. 100
Table 28. Service accounts ............................................................................... 100
Table 30. Blank worksheet for server resource totals ........................................ 102

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Chapter 1: Executive Summary
Chapter 1 Executive Summary
This chapter presents the following topics:
Introduction ............................................................................................................. 11
Target audience ....................................................................................................... 11
Document purpose ................................................................................................... 11
Business benefits..................................................................................................... 12

10 EMC VSPEX Private Cloud: Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 with Hyper-V
for up to 700 Virtual Machines
Proven Infrastructure Guide