IBM Cloud VMware Guide

Dedicated SAN/NAS Appliances for VMware

QuantaStor storage servers provide VMware certified NFS and iSCSI storage with advanced features including encryption, compression, and remote-replication. iSCSI storage is also VMware VAAI integrated which greatly improves the performance of VM cloning and other network-intensive operations.

QuantaStor storage servers for VMware include SSD to accelerate write performance and combined with a RAM-based read cache will deliver between 10K and 15K read/write IOPS (70/30). Automatic Snapshot Schedules with optional long term retention options make it easy to protect and recover data and virtual machines from previous points in time.

Compression usually improves usable capacity by 30% or higher for virtual machine workloads while also boosting performance. Remote-replication features allow replication to-from any QuantaStor appliances across IBM data centers and even to other locations to form a hybrid cloud Storage Grid. To ensure high availability in the event of a hardware outage it is recommended that one replicate VMware datastores to a second QuantaStor appliance in the same or remote IBM data center. Replication is block-level incremental, asynchronous, and may be configured to run at certain times of day or every few minutes to meet strong SLA requirements.

QuantaStor’s Storage Grid technology makes it easy to add storage appliances and manage all appliances through a single-pane-of-glass management interface which is built into the appliances.

OSNEXUS QuantaStor is an available operating-system option on most server types and is available in all IBM Cloud datacenters worldwide. The QuantaStor license selection is a SaaS offering which includes access to all QuantaStor features with no additional feature add-on fees.

USE CASES

• Highly-available block storage for virtualization (VMware, Hyper-V, XenServer)
• Scale-out block storage with Cinder integration for KVM based OpenStack deployments
• Highly-available block storage for databases

EXPANDABLE

Add additional drives and/or additional appliances to expand capacity. Drives can be different sizes, appliances can have different numbers of drives but for optimal performance uniform drive count and capacities per QS server/appliance are recommended.

EXPECTED PERFORMANCE

Adding appliances will boost performance as the configuration scales-out. Small 3x appliance configurations will deliver between 400MB/sec and 1.2GB/sec sequential throughput depending on block size and number of concurrent client connections. Erasure-coding is recommended for best write performance and replica mode is recommended for best read performance.

QUICK CONFIGURATION STEPS

Step One: Storage Management Tab → Create Grid → Click OK
Step Two: Storage Management Tab → Add Grid Node → Enter 2nd Appliance IP → Click OK
Step Three: Storage Management Tab → Add Grid Node → Enter 3nd Appliance IP → Click OK
Step Four: Storage Management Tab → Controllers & Enclosures → right-click Controller → Configure Pass-thru devices → Select all → Click OK (do this for each controller on each appliance)
Step Five: Cluster Resource Management → Create Site Cluster → Select All → Click OK
Step Six: Cluster Resource Management → Add Site Interface → Enter IP address for SMB/NFS Access → Click OK
Step Seven: Storage Management Tab → Storage Pool → Create Storage Pool → Create one pool (XFS type) per device per appliance
Step Eight: Scale-out File Storage Tab → Gluster Volumes → Peer Setup → Select all appliances → Click OK
Step Nine: Scale-out File Storage Tab → Gluster Volumes → Create Volume → Enter name, select all Pools and Erasure Coding mode → Click OK
Step Ten: Storage Management Tab → Network Shares → right-click share for volume → Select Modify Share & SMB Access → Adjust access settings → Click OK

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Hardware	Networking	Licenses and Fees
Small and Medium Tier configurations use 2RU server with 12x drive bays. Large Tier configurations use 4RU server with 24x or 36x drive bays. All configurations include mirrored boot, redundant power. All configurations include 2x 800GB SSD for write acceleration.	2x 10GbE Private Network ports recommended for all configurations. Use LACP bonding for network redundancy and improved throughput.	Select the OSNEXUS operating system QuantaStor license tier based on the amount of raw storage capacity. License, maintenance, upgrades and support included.

CONFIGURATIONS

Scale-out iSCSI Block Storage Configuration Options

Small Tier - Hybrid Block Storage – 16TB	Medium Tier - Hybrid Object Storage – 48TB	Large Tier - Hybrid Block Storage – 128TB
2x E5-2650v4 or 4110, 64GB RAM, 8x 2TB SATA, QS Small Tier License, 1x 800GB SSDs (write log), 2x 1TB SATA (mirrored boot), 2x 10GbE Private Network ports	2x E5-2620v4 or 4110, 128GB RAM, 8x 6TB, QS Medium Tier License, 1x 800GB SSDs (write log), 2x 1TB SATA (mirrored boot), 2x 10GbE Private Network ports	2x E5-2620v4 or 4110, 128GB RAM, 16x 8TB SATA, QS Large Tier License, 2x 800GB SSDs (write log), 2x 1TB SATA (mirrored boot), 2x 10GbE Private Network ports