Blog Posts

IT organizations have started to deploy server virtualization technology in data center because it brings benefits such as server consolidation, capability elasticity, resource pooling, and server high availability.  As a critical component of server virtualization enabling these benefits, FC SAN is used by the majority of data centers due to its performance and robust reliability.  Brocade, NetApp, and Oracle jointly developed a validated configuration for OVM.  The Brocade/NetApp configuration consists of:

• 2 X SuperMicro 2 Quad core AMD servers with 16G memory
• 2 X Brocade 825 8Gb dual port PCIe FC
• Brocade 340 FC switch
• NetApp FAS 3140

In this blog, I will address the values of FC SAN and the advantages of Brocade technologies to server virtualization followed by a brief introduction of OVM and NetApp product features.

The values of FC SAN to server virtualization

The values of FC SAN that bring to a virtualized environment are summarized in the following:

• Data resiliency and disaster recovery - Having all data stored on a SAN can greatly facilitate remote storage of data backups.  One can restart virtual machines on remote VM for recovery if his site is compromised.  A user can store data redundantly and configures multiple FC fabrics with multipath IO to eliminate a single point of failure. 
• Resource flexibility – In a virtualized environment, CPU and memory are shared resources among VMs.  A VM image stored in a FC SAN enables a user to unilaterally provision computing resources, such as server CPU and storage, as needed.  FC SAN also exposes the inherent built-in automatic load balancing of server virtualization with the dynamic provisioning capability.
• Capability elasticity – When SAN is used, capability can be rapidly and elastically provisioned to quickly scale out  and rapidly released in according to user demand.  The user can develop a self-tuning system that dynamically provision VMs based on this capability elasticity feature.
• Management simplicity - If shared storage is on the SAN, the datacenter administrator can perform maintenance without interruptions to the user by live migrating a VM to other servers.   The administrator at start reserves a large LUN using FC SAN.  When additional storage is needed, portions of the LUN can be allocated to virtual machines to meet storage requirement.
• Better performance – FC SAN helps to meet Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for mission-critical applications by extending QoS to applications.   FC QoS enables individual traffic flows to be specifically configured, prioritized, and optimized from end-to-end throughout the data center.   Thus application performance is ensured and VM becomes more scalable.

Brocade FC products have unique values.

As a leader of FC product provider, Brocade has some unique technologies that enable its product to add values to server virtualization:

• Quality of service (QoS) - Brocade Server Application Optimization (SAO) enables mission critical application and virtual machines to share a single HBA while meeting performance requirements.  SAO uses dedicated hardware-based Virtual Channels (VCs) per virtual port for flexible allocation of resources.  This allows Brocade HBAs to provide per port granularity control of traffic flow into VMs.  From the virtual machine through the fabric to the storage port, Brocade provides the only true end-to-end QoS available today.
• Data Center Fabric Manager (DCFM) – DCFM provides easy, centralized management of the SAN, as well as quick access to all product configuration applications. Using DCFM, one can configure, manage, and monitor his storage networks with ease.  The highlights of DCFM are:
  • High Availability -  Proactively anticipate network congestion, Eliminate human error through automation, Proactive monitoring
  • Simplified management - Dynamic resource utilization tracking, Anticipate hardware purchases, Automate repetitive tasks
  • Robust Security -  Ensure consistent security policies, Manage fabric-based encryption services, RBAC and enterprise AAA
  • Unified management - HBA/CNA management with VM support, FC, FCoE/CEE, FCIP, FICON, FCR, Third-party integration
• FCoE/CEE – The converged FCoE/CEE technology allows the organizations to extend the reliability and network services of FC to a broader range of server environments, reducing the cost and complexity for customers implementing a virtualized data center.  Brocade takes an evolutionary approach by offering a choice of products with the most flexibility for deploying FCoE in a current infrastructure thus minimizing risk and allowing storage network administrators to plan for FCoE while taking advantage of existing FC infrastructure.
• Superior performance –Multiple third party tests have validated Brocade HBA’s superior performance over competitors. Brocade relies on third party testing to prove performance as compared to our competition that use in-house testing as the basis for their claims.
• N_Port ID Virtualization (NPIV) – NPIV is an extension to the FC standard that enables a single physical Host Bus Adapter (HBA) port to register multiple World Wide Port Names (WWPNs) with the fabric. When used with FC Zoning, NPIV delivers security and QoS to each VM.

OVM is high performance, low cost, and tightly integrated.

Oracle VM (OVM) is a Xen-based hypervisor with Oracle enhanced virtual machine manager.  OVM provides a low cost, efficient virtualization alternative to current market leader.  It supports Windows, Linux, and Solaris guest operating systems.  Oracle provides a list of VM Templates for a quick deployment of an integrated, tested, and configured stack.

To enable an easy, fast, and low cost deployment of OVM, Oracle publishes a list of validated configurations for OVM.   The program offers pre-tested, validated architectures, with documented best practices to help improve the performance, scalability, and reliability of solutions. With Brocade’s unique FC value propositions, it is not surprised to see that Brocade’s FC products are widely used in many OVM’s validated configurations

NetApp partnered  with Brocade to deliver its first validated configuration for OVM.   The Brocade/NetApp configuration is one of the most frequently accessed OVM validated configurations. In this configuration, NetApp brings a range of storage efficiency technologies, including Snapshot copies, thin replication with SnapMirror, deduplication, RAID-DP, and MultiStore that are built in and can help reduce data center costs.

The Brocade/NetApp/OVM solution provides many benefits.

With OVM, one can leverage the x86 based servers and virtualization to provide a low cost and proven environment for maximizing development and testing efficiency.  By utilizing Brocade FC products, one gets not only the FC reliability and performance but added manageability with DCFM, QoS, NPIV, and the converged FCoE/CEE technologies.   The NetApp storage ensures quick disaster recovery, redundancy, and integrity of data.  The jointly validated configuration provides a cost-effective, proven, risk-reduced, high performance and reliable solution that meet the data center requirements.

Brocade’s recent appointment of Redington as its distributor for the SAARC region encompassing India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Bhutan is significant because the data center market is growing at a robust pace in this region. Market researcher IDC predicts that the data center market in India alone will continue to grow at a CAGR of almost 35 per cent over the next two years.

Much of this growth will result from the business growth and expansion of large and medium enterprises across diverse industry sectors including Telecom, BFSI and Retail and Infrastructure.  The Telcos, for instance, will scale up their networks to offer 3G and other services. A number of leading banks, both in the private and public sector are on a branch expansion mode and many are experimenting on new product delivery on internet and mobile platforms. Infrastructure and retail sectors are also expected to scale up their business operations considerably over the next couple of years, hence the need for greater data center capacities and the growth in data center networks.

The growth in data center capacities will mean a corresponding growth in both structured and unstructured data on the networks which will eventually lead to increased complexity. Consequently, enterprises will have to look for new ways to manage the complexity and at the same time derive greater efficiencies out of their IT infrastructure. Moving forward, enterprises will be looking increasingly at virtualized infrastructure and highly optimized converged networks that not only deliver high performance but also bring benefits in terms of considerable cost reductions.

In such a scenario, Cloud Computing is the technology paradigm that has the potential to help IT departments get the most out of their networks.  While critics and pundits alike tend to question the readiness of Indian enterprises to adopt the cloud computing paradigm, there are ample signs to indicate that cloud computing services have many takers. A few players have already launched cloud services and many more are in the pipeline.

The other interesting development is that Indian enterprises, both large and mid-sized, are evincing keen interest in the private cloud computing model. Many organizations which have already made considerable investments in IT infrastructure are evaluating how they can create a cloud environment within their firewalls.

This is because private cloud helps an organization provision or de-provision IT as a service to its various departments depending on requirements and will even bill the departments for usage.  It is in this context that the Brocade One unified network architecture assumes significance. As enterprises in India transition to virtual environments and experiment with cloud computing models, they will require platforms and building blocks that take out the complexity and configurable. In addition, changes to the infrastructure have to be made in coordination with other data center resources such as storage and computing elements—effectively blurring the line between what have traditionally been silos of IT resources.

The tie-up with Redington is therefore prime as it uniquely positions Brocade in the SAARC region, reaching out to the most diverse and remote part of the region through Redington’s 15000 strong reseller network.

I am almost two weeks into my life at Brocade and I am pleased to say that I have hit the ground running and am proud to be spearheading the company’s EMEA operations, and positing my first blog. My first couple of days at Brocade were spent in Staines, near London, meeting my EMEA management team. While Staines itself is... um, interesting... getting to meet members of my team was an invigorating experience. The passion and commitment from the organisation is unmatched and coupled with the market opportunity ahead of us, I am relishing the challenge ahead.

While this was my first visit to Staines, it wasn’t my first to the area. As London Heathrow airport is merely a few miles away, I recognized a lot of the surrounding area – albeit, normally seen from a few thousand feet up and through layers of cloud. However, as a frequent traveller based in Europe, I am sick and tired of hearing about clouds! “Alberto, what are you going on about?” I hear you say. You probably remember reading about how travel schedules across most of Europe were terrorised by a plume of volcanic ash during April and May. Southern Iceland's Eyjafjallajoekull volcano grounded flights across European air space, leaving countless travellers stranded.

Now, you are probably wondering why I mention clouds and volcanic ash? At the same time travel chaos hit Europe, Brocade conducted a survey of 200 European CIOs to find out how they were embracing cloud-based computing models. Our findings showed that European enterprises are beginning to embrace the business opportunities offered by virtualizing assets and accessing applications through the cloud.

More than 60 percent of enterprises are expecting to have started the planning and migration to a distributed – or cloud – computing model within the next two years. Why? Well, respondents told us that the key business drivers for doing so are to reduce cost (30 percent), improve business efficiency (21 percent) and enhance business agility (16 percent).

The findings reinforce Brocade’s vision that data centers and networks will evolve to a highly virtualized, services-on-demand state enabled through the cloud. Brocade recently outlined its vision, called Brocade One™, at its annual Technology Day. Brocade One is a unifying network architecture and strategy that enables customers to simplify the complexity of virtualizing their applications. By removing network layers, simplifying management and protecting existing technology investments, Brocade One helps customers migrate to a world where information and services are available anywhere in the cloud.

The days when the majority of computing power was in the data center are behind us. Today, we have incredibly smart end points with lots of computing power that are remote, distributed and mobile. Information and applications are virtualized and can reside anywhere within the cloud. While our findings show that European adoption is on the rise, businesses need to address a number of very real challenges/concerns to reap the benefits of the cloud – enterprises, in the majority of cases, are investing in the development of a private cloud infrastructure due, in part, to concerns over security. Over a third of respondents cited security as the most significant barrier to cloud adoption, closely followed by the complexities of virtualizing data centers, network infrastructure and bandwidth.

As data centers become distributed, the network infrastructure must take on the characteristics of a data center. And if the network becomes your data center, then the network is your business. For the cloud to work, the network needs to be scalable and deliver high performance and security – without these traits any migration is doomed. What our research tells us is that companies are now recognising the profound economic implications of adopting cloud solutions and are ready to make the journey of adoption, but only if the foundation infrastructure is sound.

Brocade is once again ahead of the competition with Brocade One as the unifying architectural vision. We can help ensure that businesses can migrate to a cloud-based environment, and deliver that sound foundation they require. Now, if we can figure out how to keep planes in the air during volcano eruptions I will be a very happy man.

While sitting at the airport, I looked around and noticed nearly every person was thumbing away on their smartphones or browsing online multimedia via their laptops. We are literally connected every minute of the day and the number of devices has only increased.  Even during this economic downturn, North American smartphone sales jumped to nearly 50 million units in 2009, that’s up 25 percent over 2008. As analysts foresee the smartphone trend to climb at an even steeper rate due to younger and older customers (450 million smartphone’s predicted to be sold per yet by 2013!), Internet Service Providers are frantically looking to strengthen their network infrastructure to satisfy our bandwidth needs for today and prepare them for the massive growth in the coming years.

If you’ve ever been to Las Vegas for a convention, then you know first-hand what it means when too many mobile users are on a limited number of 3G towers.  It’s almost like reverting back to dial-up days without the modem beeps and pings. This is a perfect example of the statistic that shows that only eight percent of Smartphone users are able to drive about 75 percent of total data usage. The future introduction of Long Term Evolution along with the recent amendment to IEEE standard 802.11 only complicate the issue further and heighten the amount of congestion over mobile networks. With all of this driving up the network bandwidth over the current network infrastructure, it is obvious that something must be done to strengthen and widen these over-trafficked pipes. So what are the options? Today Brocade has the unique ability to trunk 32-ports of 10 GbE connections into a single link, but while this is a cost effective and currently available solution, it isn’t the panacea large Service Providers need for the long haul (no pun intended). Carriers worldwide are banging their fists for significantly higher speed solutions and the reality of it being available for purchase took a giant step forward on June 22 with the IEEE 802.3ba standard ratification for 40/100 GbE.

Brocade has been an active member in the IEEE standards and we already have pre-orders for 100 GbE blades months prior to our general availability date…even Apple addicts aren’t that fanatical. We clearly understand that higher speed technology is not only important for carrying the world's network traffic, but a critical source of revenue for equipment manufacturers, as a relatively small percentage of high speed ports capture a much larger portion of manufacturer revenue. So we’ll let Service Providers do what they do best, provide you with the affordable connectivity you need to run your bandwidth hungry applications and we’ll do what we do best, creating next generation high performance networking solutions to help transform the world.

In my last post, I talked about how we all – in our personal, and for those of us in technology, our professional lives – are trying to simplify and do more with less. This all sounds good in a data center unless it increases risk and/or lessens our actual visibility for control over our data and applications. We all get great offers and PowerPoint slides about how vendors A, B and C can easily simplify our data center and consolidate tier 1 and tier 2 applications down to virtualized servers.... but often, I am left wondering several things: Have these vendors done this before? Will they be around to support it? Will it really be cheaper when I calculate the OpEx required to manage all those virtual server sessions I can no longer see and touch?

Enter the HP StorageWorks P2000 G3 virtualization bundle!

Today Brocade and HP launched a solution that has been specifically developed and designed to help customers migrate their real tier 1 and tier 2 applications to the cost-optimized world of server virtualization. HP is utilizing specific technologies from Brocade (adaptive networking and server application optimization) to make sure, as you move those applications to a virtualized environment, you can truly identify, monitor and assign QoS to each virtual machine (VM) and application all the way through the network. By providing true application and VM-aware networking, Brocade and HP together have addressed the top two concerns of providing performance under load and manageability in deploying server virtualization.

In addition to developing a turnkey solution with application visibility and control to allow top-tier applications to enjoy the benefits of the virtualized world, Brocade and HP are providing the HP StorageWorks P2000 G3 virtualization bundle to the market with a starting list price of $25,000, with significant savings to the aggregated component pieces.

Now, you just may be wondering, have these two partners ever done this before? In addition to pioneering the SAN industry, HP and Brocade have led -- by a wide margin -- true enterprise SAN development and enterprise implementations. Recently, HP has crossed the seven million Brocade SAN switch and director port milestone, and is rapidly well on the way to eight million. If that’s not experience, I don't know what is.

Happy virtualizing!

Ever since we first started designing it, there’s been a great deal of focus on maximizing efficiency at the new Brocade San Jose campus. From the outset, we’ve put considerable thought and effort into how to contain space, power, cooling, and management costs. In terms of operational costs, servers are both a significant portion of the IT spend for Brocade and a good way to drive efficiency.

Brocade IT has standardized on blade platforms for all of our X86 processing needs. Although replacing individual legacy X86 platforms required investment, the efficiencies gained through standardized management—lower cooling costs, better power and space management—are expected to deliver significant OpEx reduction and long-term cost savings. Another underestimated bonus of blade platforms is physical footprint standardization. On the face of it, having the “same size box” doesn’t seem to be a huge advantage, but once you consider issues like rack and cable plant planning, hot-aisle containment, and installation simplification, standardization has a significantly positive cost impact.

With the new campus deployment, the “heavy lift” server for monolithic workloads is the Sun M Series platform. This platform’s virtualization capabilities, coupled with SAN storage accessed via Brocade HBAs, provides a very stable foundation for code management systems and business applications. Migrating from a legacy environment with multiple UNIX variants into a single form factor with virtualization should improve the availability and performance experienced by engineering staff. Development code is replicated to and from Brocade HQ to multiple Brocade development sites worldwide, so performance and availability of these systems is paramount.

Virtualization has become the standard within Brocade, and a large part of the campus migration has been from physical to virtualized servers: 63% of our servers in the campus are now virtualized. The benefits of virtualization are well known and we’ve applied them to both our legacy and current needs. For instance, our customer and OEM partner relationships require long-term support of many legacy products. To back this support commitment, virtualization has allowed us to support multiple generations of legacy development environments without the corresponding plethora of physical servers that would otherwise have been needed. In addition, we can meet our current application needs with a reduced number of physical servers that each provide a platform for multiple VMs. Our virtualization approach is not dogmatic, and we use the best solution for the need at hand – e.g., Microsoft Hyper-V for Windows, and Sun Solaris Containers for Solaris systems and VMware for Linux systems. Moreover, virtualization is enabling Brocade IT to further its “cloud” computing strategy as well as lay the foundation for more effective business continuity solutions.

It should be stressed that the key component to making all of these standardized platforms a reality is centralized storage. One common factor in choosing blades and the Sun M series was that the systems, by design, only have sufficient storage to boot an operating system (if at all). This leaves all application and business data on centralized SAN and NAS storage and avoids the “islands” that occur with DAS. What makes all this storage viable is a robust high-performance networking infrastructure that utilizes the full range of Brocade SAN and IP products (data center, enterprise, and carrier).

Employee move-ins started last month and about 50 percent of all San Jose staff is now onsite at the new campus. And, with very few exceptions, it’s been a smooth transition. From a business continuity standpoint, the rigorous attention to detail throughout the planning and design phases of the new campus is now paying dividends. Thank you for your continued interest in the new campus and Brocade IT’s contributions.

In today’s environment of natural disasters, power outages, virus outbreaks and other IT interruptions that can bring business to a halt, it’s crucial for companies to have reliable IT solutions that give them always-on access to critical enterprise data. Some companies have learned the hard way – through life experience – that application downtime and data loss can be extremely costly, even to the point of decimating businesses altogether.

In addition, we are seeing companies depend more heavily on data centers that are remote and dispersed. It wasn’t too long ago that doing any type of data replication or migration “over distance” would have been an extremely novel, cutting-edge (and even scary) concept. Today, companies routinely manage systems across the world to gain efficiencies and scale for competitive advantages.

Given the importance of these trends, we are excited today to announce the Hyper-V Live Migration over Distance solution, which has been jointly architected and tested with our partners Hitachi Data Systems and Microsoft. Live Migration over Distance builds on the Hitachi Storage Cluster for Microsoft Hyper-V to take virtual machine (VM) mobility to the next level. This solution provides technology and integration that help organizations to proactively migrate Hyper-V VMs and data across distance, without worrying about user interruption or data loss. This can provide reliable, high performance, predictable VM-mobility for disaster recovery, application workload balancing, routine maintenance, and decommissioning or integration of new data centers.

Brocade provides the virtualization-aware network infrastructure (Brocade Fibre Channel SAN and IP) – and the end-to-end network management capabilities that optimize the environment. There are three advantages to Brocade’s technology for this solution:

1. The network reliability for this solution should not be underestimated. Brocade’s nonstop networking gives companies a reliable networking solution – without dragging down server performance.
   
2. The virtualization-aware element of Brocade’s network means that the network knows when a VM is migrated across servers, and takes appropriate actions for the VM’s network profiles to follow the VM.
   
3. Integrated with the toolset provided by Microsoft, Brocade’s management capabilities enable performance monitoring of virtualized workloads and policy-based migration of virtual machines for workload optimization.
   

Our partners are also supplying key aspects of this solution. Hitachi is providing the storage foundation as well as the storage clustering and synchronous replication software, which enables the movement of the VMs and associated data across distance. And of course, Microsoft’s piece is the Hyper-V virtualized environment, live migration functionality and management.

We think the Microsoft Tech∙Ed 2010 show, taking place this week in New Orleans, is an excellent venue to announce Hyper-V Live Migration over Distance. Brocade is a silver sponsor at the show. If you’re attending, come by and visit us at Booth #501. Also, Brocade is a finalist in the Best of TechEd Awards, so be sure to vote for the Brocade DCX-4S Backbone in the Hardware and Storage category for the Attendees’ Pick Award!

For more information on the Hyper-V Live Migration over Distance solution, please visit: www.hds.com/go/hyperv

There’s an old saying: People may doubt what you say, but they’ll believe what you do. I was reminded of that the other day during a walk-through at our new San Jose campus.

We said we would design and deliver a next-generation network platform capable of supporting the company’s business needs now and into the future. We also said we’d use the project as our opportunity to retire outdated legacy systems, consolidate network platforms and introduce technology solutions that were both eco-friendly and people-friendly. As we near the completion of this 24-month project, I can say without reservation that we’ve achieved all of that and more.

The same Brocade IP network technology that’s been helping us to limit downtime during our data migrations to the new campus will now provide secure, uninterrupted, high-speed connectivity across the campus. So what might we do with 1 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) to the desktop, 10 GbE in the data center core and 1 GbE to the WAN and Internet?

From day one, this high-performance network will help us ensure rich multimedia content delivery by supporting a variety of bandwidth-hungry applications and services. That includes voice communications based on VoIP and videoconferencing using traditional H.320 and Web services.

As we look ahead, the core and edge network infrastructure will deliver the bandwidth Brocade needs for future applications like Fixed Mobile Convergence and Unified Communications, including video to the desktop using Microsoft Office Communicator and high-definition Webcams such as Microsoft LifeCam Cinema.

When it’s completed next month, the next-generation wireless LAN we’ve designed will turn the entire facility into a Wi-Fi hotspot. Because of “always-on” access to business applications, our employees will be able to maximize their productivity, regardless of their location on campus. They will be connected whether they’re working at their desks, hosting multi-site video conferences, or simply moving between buildings.

Another example of how we intend to use our high-bandwidth Brocade IP network to enhance operations is the new fleet of Sharp multi-function peripherals (MFPs), which can print, scan, fax and copy documents. These state-of-the-art peripherals replace myriad workgroup and desktop devices that used too much energy and were expensive to maintain.

The new MFPs enable users to print to a single queue held on a central server in the data center (no more printer selection!), and then walk up to any MFP within the three building campus, swipe their employee badge and release their print job. The multi-10 GbE core-to-intermediate distribution frame (IDF) uplinks enable the fast routing of the print job from the server to the MFP where the user is located.

This means that documents are physically printed only when an employee is at the MFP. As a result, there will be no more waste caused by unclaimed printouts left at the print stations, and persons who previously needed desktop printers due to security concerns can now use the same MFPs as everyone else. Best of all, while this new approach improves the employee experience, it also improves productivity, reduces waste and lowers operating costs. It’s another great example of how doing the right thing from a business perspective is also the right thing to do from a people and environmental perspective.

Individually, these changes may not seem like much, but taken together they will give us the tools to work smarter and more efficiently. As always, thank you for your continued interest in my blog and in IT’s contributions at the new Bay Area campus. We haven’t crossed the finish line, but we’re definitely in the home stretch.