Re: A-SIS questions

It seems as if you’ve experienced the high CPU yourself, this is not just theory. Can you tell me when this was (during the de-dup scheduled runs, or during the normal writing)? We’re looking to implement this pretty heavily for some of our filers, even for Tier 1 in some cases. I’d like to know what to watch out for before we step into this…

From: Milazzo Giacomo [mailto:G.Milazzo@sinergy.it]
Sent: Thursday, November 01, 2007 7:01 AM
To: Vaughn Stewart; Fote_Philip@emc.com; jack1729@gmail.com; Glenn Walker; jeremy.page@gilbarco.com; toasters@mathworks.com
Subject: R: A-SIS questions

Hi All

sorry but I disagree with the cited "minimal system impact" that Vaughn cites talking about A-SIS.

When we think to dedup processes in a Nearstore VTL appliance I can also accept the high overhead on CPU that this causes because in a "backup" environment we can also accept that this process slows the general I/O values but, as long NetApp offer the choice in the FAS appliances and their NAS usage (http, ftp, nfs, cifs) the dedup processes causes a tremendous impact on performances!

In my experience we've tested and sold both the worst Quantum (formerly ADIC) dedup appliances, NetApp with A-SIS and Falconstor but the leader remains, for the moment of course, Datadomain, both in terms of long term time space saving and performances. Dadadomain borns for "backup" (VTL a/o disk staging) and a dedup appliance, in my opinion, must do only this: to store backup data and save space.

Regards,

Da: owner-toasters@mathworks.com per conto di Vaughn Stewart
Inviato: mar 30/10/2007 19.26
A: Fote_Philip@emc.com; jack1729@gmail.com; ggwalker@mindspring.com; jeremy.page@gilbarco.com; toasters@mathworks.com
Oggetto: Re: A-SIS questions

Phil,

The market offers many data deduplication technologies, most of which
run at the server level, may or may not dedupe the production data
set, and typically incur a performance penalty when enabled.

A-SIS runs on the array, deduplicates the prodcution data set, and
incurs minimal system overhead. in addition, de-duplicated data sets
can be replciated in their deduplicated state providing storage
savings on the prodcution and remote data sets.

As I know you are aware that with any technology one should should
follow best practices to ensure optimal results. I was about to ask
you about your business challenges, but I noticed that as your are
with EMC so I'd suspect that your business challenges aren't focused
on reducing storage costs.

Maybe we could find a customer who would like to compare the benefits
of A-SIS vs Avamar in a head to head evaluation where we could share
the results on toasters! Would you be interested in working together
to pull this off?

Vaughn Stewart

On 10/30/07, Fote_Philip@emc.com <Fote_Philip@emc.com> wrote:
> Just a general question on ASIS. How does it impact system
> performance?
> Is it enough so you need to plan around it?
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-toasters@mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com]
> On Behalf Of Jack Lyons
> Sent: Monday, October 29, 2007 8:02 PM
> To: Glenn Walker
> Cc: M. Vaughn Stewart; Page, Jeremy; toasters@mathworks.com
> Subject: Re: A-SIS questions
>
> I agree that Vmotion and HA / DRS can handle most hardware issues, but
> there is an advantage to using MSCS. An application restart can happen
> in seconds or minutes. I can also force applications over to the other
> node to apply OS patches. We have several Virtual-Virtual clusters for
> test environment and several physical-virtual clusters for production.
>
> Jack
>
> Glenn Walker wrote:
> > I'm still trying to figure out why someone would use MSCS on ESX:
> >
> > MSCS is primarily used for HARDWARE-LEVEL fault tolerance (it won't
> help
> > if the application crashes, so much as if the hardware dies).
> >
> > VMotion can be used in place of MSCS for hardware-level fault
> tolerance,
> > IIRC, which negates the need for MSCS within a VM.
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: owner-toasters@mathworks.com
> [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com]
> > On Behalf Of M. Vaughn Stewart
> > Sent: Saturday, October 27, 2007 5:08 PM
> > To: Jack Lyons
> > Cc: Page, Jeremy; toasters@mathworks.com
> > Subject: Re: A-SIS questions
> >
> > FlexClone will clone a datastore, for VM level cloning granularity you
>
> > gonna have to wait I think something is just around the corner.
> >
> > As for MSCS you need RDMs as VMDKs are not supported with MSCS
> >
> > RDMs can be either FCP or iSCSI
> > VMDKs can be on NFS or VMFS (which is over FCP or iSCSI)
> >
> >
> >
> >> We are in the process of testing ESX on NFS. We have 2 out of 60 on
> >> NFS now. I just started thinking about using flexclones, is any one
> >> using flex clones with NFS for creating clones of VM's.
> >>
> >> Also, from what I have read, to use MSCS I need to use an RDM from
> >> iscsi or FC luns...correct?
> >>
> >> Thanks
> >> Jack
> >>
> >> M. Vaughn Stewart wrote:
> >>
> >>> Jeremy,
> >>>
> >>> A-SIS has a slight write performance penalty (a few points) and
> >>> typically also sees a slight read performance gain (of the same
> >>> amount), so in short customers who are using it love it. Now you
> >>> don't use it everywhere, like on DB files.
> >>>
> >>> As for VMware on NFS, enjoy your solution it rocks, don't take my
> >>> word for it. Google VMware on NFS and sort by date, you'll have
> >>> allot of reading to do. Quotes from executives at EMC and VMware
> >>> just support what you are deploying. Make sure to see NetApp's
> >>> TR3428 for deployment details.
> >>>
> >>> See ya
> >>> Vaughn
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>> I have read some of the info on how A-SIS works but I have a couple
>
> >>>> of questions:
> >>>> 1) Assuming an average compression rate (say /home with random
> docs
> >>>>
> >
> >
> >>>> in it) how much of a performance hit does it impose
> >>>> 2) Does it change how much data is sent over the wire when you use
> >>>> SnapMirror/SnapVault? I.e. if I get 30% compression on a 1 gig
> >>>> snapshot do I send 1 gig or 700 mb to update my target?
> >>>>
> >>>> Oh, and for the folks who helped earlier, we are moving our Oracle
> >>>> and ESX systems to NetApp, the pSeries will be fibre connected, at
> >>>> least at first but the ESX stuff is all going on NFS.
> >>>>
> >>>> ~Jeremy
> >>>> *__*
> >>>> This message (including any attachments) contains confidential
> >>>> and/or proprietary information intended only for the addressee.
> >>>> Any unauthorized disclosure, copying, distribution or reliance on
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> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>

--
Vaughn Stewart