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DESIGN GUIDE
EMC VSPEX WITH EMC XTREMSF AND
EMC XTREMSW CACHE
EMC VSPEX
Abstract
This Design Guide describes how to use EMC® XtremSF™ and EMC XtremSW™ Cache
in a virtualized environment with an EMC VSPEX™ Proven Infrastructure for VMware
vSphere or Microsoft Hyper-V. This Design Guide also illustrates how to choose
XtremSF and allocate XtremSW Cache resources following best practices for
maximum effectiveness, and use all the benefits that XtremSW Cache offers.
May 2013
Copyright © 2013 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Published in the USA.
Published May 2013.
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The information is subject to change without notice.
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EMC VSPEX with EMC XtremSF and EMC XtremSW Cache
Design Guide
Part Number H11704.1
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EMC VSPEX with EMC XtremSF and EMC XtremSW Cache
Design Guide
Contents
Contents
Chapter 1
Introduction
9
Purpose .................................................................................................................... 10
Business value ......................................................................................................... 10
Scope ....................................................................................................................... 10
Audience .................................................................................................................. 11
Terminology.............................................................................................................. 11
Chapter 2
Before You Start
13
Deployment workflow overview ................................................................................ 14
Essential reading ...................................................................................................... 14
VSPEX Solution Overviews ................................................................................... 14
VSPEX Implementation Guides............................................................................. 14
VSPEX Proven Infrastructures ............................................................................... 15
Chapter 3
Solution Overview
17
Introduction ............................................................................................................. 18
EMC VSPEX Proven Infrastructure.............................................................................. 18
EMC XtremSW Cache: The business case .................................................................. 19
Introduction to XtremSF and XtremSW Cache ............................................................ 19
XtremSF ............................................................................................................... 20
XtremSW Cache ................................................................................................... 20
Business benefits of XtremSF and XtremSW Cache ................................................... 21
XtremSF ............................................................................................................... 21
XtremSW Cache ................................................................................................... 21
XtremSW Cache features .......................................................................................... 22
Solution architecture ................................................................................................ 26
How XtremSW Cache works.................................................................................. 26
XtremSW Cache in a virtualized environment ....................................................... 29
Chapter 4
Solution Design Considerations and Best Practices
33
Overview .................................................................................................................. 34
VSPEX environments that can benefit from XtremSW Cache ...................................... 34
XtremSF card selection ............................................................................................. 35
Overview.............................................................................................................. 35
Design best practices .......................................................................................... 35
EMC VSPEX with EMC XtremSF and EMC XtremSW Cache
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Contents
Virtualization design considerations ........................................................................ 37
Overview.............................................................................................................. 37
Sizing recommendations ..................................................................................... 37
XtremSW Cache placement considerations ............................................................... 38
Overview.............................................................................................................. 38
Design best practices .......................................................................................... 38
VMware considerations ............................................................................................ 40
Overview.............................................................................................................. 40
Design best practices .......................................................................................... 40
Hyper-V considerations ............................................................................................ 42
Overview.............................................................................................................. 42
Design best practices .......................................................................................... 42
Chapter 5
XtremSW Cache Solution for Applications
45
Overview .................................................................................................................. 46
Architecture of XtremSW Cache deployment on VMware ........................................... 46
Architecture of XtremSW Cache deployment on Hyper-V ........................................... 47
XtremSW Cache for SQL Server OLTP database ......................................................... 48
Overview.............................................................................................................. 48
Benefits of XtremSW Cache in a SQL Server OLTP environment ............................ 49
Best practices ...................................................................................................... 49
Use case design and deployment ........................................................................ 50
Configuration of XtremSW Cache in the VMware environment .............................. 52
Test results .......................................................................................................... 52
XtremSW Cache for Exchange Server......................................................................... 54
Overview.............................................................................................................. 54
Benefits of XtremSW Cache in an Exchange environment ..................................... 54
Best practices ...................................................................................................... 55
Use case design and deployment ........................................................................ 56
Configuration of XtremSW Cache in the VMware environment .............................. 58
Test results .......................................................................................................... 62
XtremSW Cache for SharePoint ................................................................................. 65
Overview.............................................................................................................. 65
Benefits of XtremSW Cache in a SharePoint environment ..................................... 65
Best practices ...................................................................................................... 65
Use case design and deployment ........................................................................ 66
Configuration of XtremSW Cache in the VMware environment .............................. 68
Test results .......................................................................................................... 68
XtremSW Cache for Oracle OLTP database ................................................................ 70
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Overview.............................................................................................................. 70
Benefits of XtremSW Cache in an Oracle environment .......................................... 70
Best practices ...................................................................................................... 70
Use case design and deployment ........................................................................ 70
Configuration of XtremSW Cache for Oracle in a VMware environment ................. 72
Test results .......................................................................................................... 72
XtremSW Cache for private cloud .............................................................................. 73
Overview.............................................................................................................. 73
Benefits of XtremSW Cache in a private cloud environment.................................. 73
Best practices ...................................................................................................... 74
Use case design and deployment ........................................................................ 74
Configuration of XtremSW Cache for a private cloud in the VMware environment . 76
Test results .......................................................................................................... 76
Chapter 6
References
79
EMC documentation ................................................................................................. 80
Other documentation ............................................................................................... 81
Links ........................................................................................................................ 81
Appendix A Ordering Information
83
XtremSF and XtremSW Cache ordering information ................................................... 84
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Contents
Figures
6
Figure 1.
VSPEX Proven Infrastructure ................................................................ 18
Figure 2.
I/O gap between the processor and storage subsystems ..................... 19
Figure 3.
XtremSW Cache data deduplication ..................................................... 23
Figure 4.
XtremSW Cache data deduplication architecture overview ................... 24
Figure 5.
Split-card mode used for SQL Server configuration .............................. 25
Figure 6.
Read Hit example with XtremSW Cache ............................................... 26
Figure 7.
Read Miss example with XtremSW Cache............................................. 27
Figure 8.
Write example with XtremSW Cache .................................................... 28
Figure 9.
XtremSW Cache implementation in a VMware environment ................. 29
Figure 10.
XtremSW Cache in a VMware environment ........................................... 30
Figure 11.
XtremSW Cache in a Hyper-V environment ........................................... 31
Figure 12.
XtremSW Cache use cases ................................................................... 35
Figure 13.
Comparison between SLC and MLC Flash cell data storage .................. 36
Figure 14.
XtremSW Cache configuration using EMC VSI plug-in ........................... 40
Figure 15.
XtremSW Cache implementation in VMware environment for VSPEX .... 41
Figure 16.
XtremSW Cache implementation in Hyper-V environment for VSPEX .... 42
Figure 17.
Architecture of the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for XtremSW Cache
deployment on VMware ....................................................................... 47
Figure 18.
Architecture of the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for XtremSW Cache
deployment on Hyper-V ....................................................................... 48
Figure 19.
Architecture design for XtremSW Cache enabled SQL Server virtual
environment ........................................................................................ 51
Figure 20.
SQL Server AlwaysOn XtremSW Cache deployment .............................. 52
Figure 21.
Performance boost after enabling XtremSW Cache .............................. 53
Figure 22.
Architecture design for XtremSW Cache-enabled Exchange virtual
environment ........................................................................................ 57
Figure 23.
XtremSW Cache deployment for Exchange 2010 on vSphere ............... 58
Figure 24.
Enabling data deduplication on the XtremSW Cache device ................. 59
Figure 25.
Cold cache start post migration warning .............................................. 61
Figure 26.
EMC XtremSW Cache VSI-plug-in for virtual machine migration
wizard ................................................................................................. 61
Figure 27.
Exchange 2010 performance with XtremSW Cache and LoadGen
workload ............................................................................................. 63
Figure 28.
XtremSW Cache statistics with data deduplication .............................. 63
Figure 29.
Exchange server CPU utilization with XtremSW Cache data
deduplication ...................................................................................... 64
Figure 30.
Exchange server disk latencies with XtremSW Cache data
deduplication ...................................................................................... 64
Figure 31.
Exchange database LUN performance with XtremSW Cache data
deduplication ...................................................................................... 65
EMC VSPEX with EMC XtremSF and EMC XtremSW Cache
Design Guide
Contents
Figure 32.
Architecture design for XtremSW Cache enabled SharePoint
environment ........................................................................................ 67
Figure 33.
XtremSW Cache deployment for SharePoint 2010 on vSphere ............. 68
Figure 34.
Content database latency dropped after enabling XtremSW Cache ...... 69
Figure 35.
Full crawl performance improved after enabling XtremSW cache.......... 69
Figure 36.
Architecture design for XtremSW Cache enabled Oracle 11g R2
environment ........................................................................................ 71
Figure 37.
XtremSW Cache deployment for Oracle 11g R2 on vSphere .................. 72
Figure 38.
OLTP TPM improvement ....................................................................... 72
Figure 39.
Architecture design for XtremSW Cache-enabled private cloud
environment with multiple applications ............................................... 75
Figure 40.
Deduplication statistics for SQL Server OLTP ....................................... 77
Tables
Table 1.
Terminology......................................................................................... 11
Table 2.
Deployment process: XtermSF and XtremSW Cache overlay on VSPEX
Proven Infrastructure ........................................................................... 14
Table 3.
Performance characteristics of selected XtremSF cards........................ 20
Table 4.
SLC and MLC Flash comparison ........................................................... 36
Table 5.
Recommended cache for each application .......................................... 37
Table 6.
Performance data with OLTP load ........................................................ 54
Table 7.
XtremSW Cache deployment in a private cloud environment................ 76
Table 8.
Performance summary for the private cloud environment .................... 78
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Contents
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EMC VSPEX with EMC XtremSF and EMC XtremSW Cache
Design Guide
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 1
Introduction
This chapter presents the following topics:
Purpose ................................................................................................................. 10
Business value ...................................................................................................... 10
Scope .................................................................................................................... 10
Audience ............................................................................................................... 11
Terminology .......................................................................................................... 11
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Chapter 1: Introduction
Purpose
EMC® VSPEX™ Proven Infrastructures are optimized for virtualizing business-critical
applications. VSPEX provides partners with the ability to plan and design the virtual
assets to support applications such as Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft SharePoint,
Microsoft Exchange, and Oracle Database among others on a VSPEX Private Cloud.
The EMC VSPEX with EMC XtremSF™ and EMC XtremSW™ Cache solution provides
partners with a server-based caching solution that reduces application latency and
increases throughput. This solution runs on VMware vSphere or Microsoft’s Hyper-V
virtualization layer, backed by the highly available EMC VNX® family of storage
systems. The computing and network components, while vendor-definable, are
designed to be redundant and are sufficiently powerful to handle the processing and
data needs of the virtual machine environment.
This Design Guide describes how to design XtremSW Cache for a VSPEX Proven
Infrastructure and includes best practices and the results of use case testing.
Business value
IT administrators running applications with heavy input/output (I/O) loads are often
challenged to improve performance, while continuing to minimize the cost of the
supporting IT systems. These I/O sensitive applications are typically limited by
storage latency and response times. XtremSW Cache is intelligent caching software
that uses server-based Flash technology to improve performance by reducing latency
and accelerating throughput for dramatic application performance improvement.
XtremSW Cache accelerates read performance by putting the data closer to the
application. It also protects data by using a write-through cache to the networked
storage array to deliver persistent high availability (HA), integrity, and disaster
recovery. XtremSW Cache, coupled with array-based EMC FAST™ software, creates
the most efficient and intelligent I/O path from the application to the datastore. The
result is a networked infrastructure that is dynamically optimized for performance,
intelligence, and protection for both physical and virtual environments.
Scope
This Design Guide is an overlay solution that describes how to design and deploy
XtremSW Cache on a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for VMware vSphere or Microsoft
Hyper-V. Furthermore, this guide illustrates best practices and recommendations for
using XtremSW Cache to improve the performance of virtualized applications running
on a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure.
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EMC VSPEX with EMC XtremSF and EMC XtremSW Cache
Design Guide
Chapter 1: Introduction
Audience
This guide is intended for qualified EMC VSPEX partners. The guide assumes that
VSPEX partners who intend to deploy XtremSF and XtremSW Cache on respective
applications are:

Qualified to sell and implement the application(s) that will be used in
conjunction with the XtremSW Cache solution

Qualified by EMC to sell, install, and configure the EMC VNX family of storage
systems

Certified for selling VSPEX Proven Infrastructures

Qualified to sell, install, and configure the network and server products
required for VSPEX Proven Infrastructures

Trained in and familiar with EMC’s XtremSF hardware and XtremSW Cache
software
Readers must also have the necessary technical training and background to install
and configure:

EMC VSPEX Server virtualization solutions for VMware vSphere or Microsoft
Hyper-V, depending on the hypervisor in use

Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V or VMware vSphere as the virtualization
platforms
External references are provided where applicable and EMC recommends that readers
are familiar with these documents. For details, see Essential reading.
Terminology
Table 1 includes the terminology used in this guide.
Table 1.
Terminology
Term
Definition
Cache page size
The smallest unit of allocation inside the cache, typically a few
kilobytes in size. The default XtremSW Cache page size is 8 KB.
CSV
Cluster-shared volume. A Windows Server clustering feature that
enables multiple clustered virtual machines to use the same logical
unit number (LUN).
DAS
Direct-attached storage.
DSS
Decision support system.
IOPS
Input/output operations per second.
NFS
Network File System.
PCIe
Peripheral Component Internet Express.
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Chapter 1: Introduction
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Term
Definition
tempdb
Refers to a system database used by Microsoft SQL Server as a
temporary working area during processing.
VHDX
Hyper-V virtual hard disk format.
VMDK
VMware virtual machine disk format.
Working set
The frequently accessed data that is likely to be promoted to
XtremSW Cache.
XtremSF
EMC Peripheral Component Internet Express (PCIe) Flash cards with
industry-leading performance.
XtremSW
EMC software for server-side caching on PCIe Flash cards.
XtremSW Cache
EMC server Flash-caching software as part of XtremSW software suite.
EMC VSPEX with EMC XtremSF and EMC XtremSW Cache
Design Guide
Chapter 2: Before You Start
Chapter 2
Before You Start
This chapter presents the following topics:
Deployment workflow overview .............................................................................. 14
Essential reading ................................................................................................... 14
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Chapter 2: Before You Start
Deployment workflow overview
EMC recommends that you refer to the process flow in Table 2 to design and
implement your XtremSF and XtremSW Cache overlay on the VSPEX Proven
Infrastructure.
Table 2.
Deployment process: XtremSF and XtremSW Cache overlay on VSPEX Proven
Infrastructure
Step
Action
Reference
1
Review the XtremSW Suite products and features.
EMC documentation
2
Determine if the XtremSW Cache solution is
appropriate for your application.
Solution Design
Considerations and Best
Practices
3
Select and order the right VSPEX Proven
Infrastructure.
VSPEX Proven
Infrastructures
4
Select the required XtremSW Cache hardware and
determine where to place the cards.
XtremSW Cache Solution for
Applications
5
Deploy and test your virtualized applications
VSPEX Implementation
Guides
Essential reading
EMC recommends that you read the following documents, available from the VSPEX
space in the EMC Community Network or from the VSPEX Enablement Center.
VSPEX Solution
Overviews
VSPEX
Implementation
Guides
14
Refer to the following VSPEX Solution Overview documents:

EMC VSPEX Server Virtualization for Midmarket Businesses

EMC VSPEX Server Virtualization for Small and Medium Businesses
Refer to the following VSPEX Implementation Guides:

EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft Exchange 2010 with Microsoft Hyper-V

EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft Exchange 2010 with VMware vSphere

EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SharePoint 2010 with Microsoft Hyper-V

EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SharePoint 2010 with VMware vSphere

EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server with Microsoft Hyper-V

EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server with VMware vSphere

EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Oracle Database 11g OLTP
EMC VSPEX with EMC XtremSF and EMC XtremSW Cache
Design Guide
Chapter 2: Before You Start
VSPEX Proven
Infrastructures
Refer to the following VSPEX Proven Infrastructures:

EMC VSPEX Private Cloud VMware vSphere 5.1 for up to 100 Virtual Machines

EMC VSPEX Private Cloud VMware vSphere 5.1 for up to 500 Virtual Machines

EMC VSPEX Private Cloud Microsoft Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V for up to
100 Virtual Machines

EMC VSPEX Private Cloud Microsoft Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V for up to
500 Virtual Machines
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Chapter 2: Before You Start
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EMC VSPEX with EMC XtremSF and EMC XtremSW Cache
Design Guide
Chapter 3: Solution Overview
Chapter 3
Solution Overview
This chapter presents the following topics:
Introduction........................................................................................................... 18
EMC VSPEX Proven Infrastructure ........................................................................... 18
EMC XtremSW Cache: The business case ................................................................ 19
Introduction to XtremSF and XtremSW Cache ......................................................... 19
Business benefits of XtremSF and XtremSW Cache ................................................. 21
XtremSW Cache features ........................................................................................ 22
Solution architecture ............................................................................................. 26
EMC VSPEX with EMC XtremSF and EMC XtremSW Cache
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Chapter 3: Solution Overview
Introduction
This Design Guide can help customers to deploy a simple, efficient, and flexible
VSPEX Proven Infrastructure with XtremSF and XtremSW Cache solution. The guidance
applies to all VSPEX Proven Infrastructures unless specifically stated otherwise.
This chapter provides an overview of VSPEX Proven Infrastructure, XtremSF and
XtremSW Cache, and the key technologies used in the XtremSF and XtremSW Cache
overlay for the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure. A VSPEX Proven Infrastructure includes
servers, storage, network components, and application components that focus on
small and medium business private cloud environments. The XtremSF and XtremSW
Cache overlay provides latency reduction and accelerates throughput for dramatic
application performance improvement.
EMC VSPEX Proven Infrastructure
VSPEX Proven Infrastructure, as shown in Figure 1, is a modular, virtualized
infrastructure validated by EMC and delivered by EMC partners. VSPEX includes a
virtualization layer, server, network, and storage, designed by EMC to deliver reliable
and predictable performance.
Figure 1.
VSPEX Proven Infrastructure
VSPEX provides the flexibility to choose network, server, and virtualization
technologies that fit a customer’s environment to create a complete virtualization
solution. VSPEX delivers faster deployment for EMC partner customers, with greater
simplicity and efficiency, more choice, and lower risk to a customer’s business.
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EMC VSPEX with EMC XtremSF and EMC XtremSW Cache
Design Guide
Chapter 3: Solution Overview
EMC XtremSW Cache: The business case
Since the latest servers have faster processors, there is a potential for a performance
bottleneck in the storage layer. As processing capacity and workloads increase, the
storage system is challenged to keep pace with growing I/O demands. The
performance of the magnetic disk remains relatively flat while CPU performance
improves 100-fold every decade, as shown in Figure 2. XtremSF Flash drives can help
to close the gap.
Figure 2.
I/O gap between the processor and storage subsystems
Flash technology can be used in different ways in the storage environment. EMC’s
architectural approach is to use the right technology in the right place at the right
time. This includes using Flash in the following ways:

In the storage array

As an array-side cache

As a server-side cache

As a tier

As the storage for the entire application
Introduction to XtremSF and XtremSW Cache
XtremSW Cache (formerly known as EMC VFCache) is the first step in EMC’s long-term
server Flash strategy, which delivers a server-side storage product featuring a
combination of intelligent caching software—XtremSW Cache—and server-based
Peripheral Component Internet Express (PCIe) Flash hardware—XtremSF. XtremSW
Cache software turns the XtremSF card into a caching device, to enhance the
performance of a wide variety of critical transactional and decision support
applications. XtremSW Cache can run with a wide variety of enterprise multilevel cell
(eMLC) and single-level cell (SLC) XtremSF Flash cards. For more information, see
Appendix A: Ordering Information.
EMC VSPEX with EMC XtremSF and EMC XtremSW Cache
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Chapter 3: Solution Overview
XtremSF
XtremSW Cache
XtremSF is single, low-profile server Flash hardware card that fits in any rack-mounted
server within the power envelope of a single PCIe slot, available with a broad set of
eMLC and SLC capacities. It can be deployed:

As local storage that sits within the server to deliver high performance

In combination with XtremSW Cache server-caching software to improve
network storage array performance, while maintaining the level of protection
required by critical application environments
XtremSW Cache is EMC server-caching software for Flash PCIe cards, which is used to
populate XtremSF with data in order to use it as a cache.
XtremSW Cache is designed to follow these basic principles:

Performance: Reduce latency and increase throughput to dramatically improve
application performance.

Intelligence: Add another tier of intelligence by extending FAST array-based
technology into the server.

Protection: Deliver performance with protection by using the high availability
and disaster recovery features of EMC networked storage.
VSPEX partners can order XtremSW Cache software and XtremSF hardware through
Channel Express. For ordering information, refer to Appendix A: Ordering Information.
Table 3 shows the performance characteristics of some selected XtremSF cards.
Table 3.
20
Performance characteristics of selected XtremSF cards
Measurement
550 GB eMLC
2.2 TB eMLC
350 GB SLC
700 GB SLC
Read Bandwidth
1.36 GB/s
2.47 GB/s
2.9 GB/s
2.9 GB/s
Write Bandwidth
512 MB/s
1.1 GB/s
756 MB/s
1.8 GB/s
Random 4K Read IOPS
174K
343K
715K
712K
Random 4K Write IOPS
49K
105K
95K
197K
Random 4K Mixed IOPS
96K
206K
267K
411K
Read Access Latency
87 µs
87 µs
50 μs
50 μs
Write Access Latency
37 µs
30 µs
13 μs
13 μs
EMC VSPEX with EMC XtremSF and EMC XtremSW Cache
Design Guide
Chapter 3: Solution Overview
Business benefits of XtremSF and XtremSW Cache
XtremSF
XtremSF delivers high performance with extremely high IOPS and low latencies. It
enables applications to achieve memory-class performance without having to acquire
additional memory, and high storage capacity with a small footprint.
The XtremSF family of server-based PCIe Flash cards offers customers with the
following benefits:
XtremSW Cache

Leading performance: XtremSF Flash devices are proven to deliver a record 1.13
million IOPS in a standard form factor—an achievement unmatched in the
industry. The XtremSF device’s next-generation design delivers twice the
throughput of other offerings in the market to enhance realworld workloads in
Web-scale and other applications.

Unmatched flexibility: The XtremSF Flash device is available in a broad range of
eMLC (from 550 GB up to 2.2 TB) and SLC (350 GB and 700 GB) capacities. In
addition, when deployed with XtremSW Cache, XtremSF devices can be used as
caching devices for accelerated performance with array protection for
applications such as Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, and Microsoft Exchange.

New levels of efficiency: XtremSF Flash devices deliver the industry’s lowest
total cost of ownership (TCO)—up to 58 percent better TCO than other offerings.
All XtremSF products are standard half-height, half-length, 25W PCIe cards,
providing the highest storage capacity with the smallest footprint for maximum
performance, best density, and lowest power consumption—reducing CPU
utilization by up to 50 percent.
XtremSW Cache delivers the following major benefits:

Provides performance acceleration for read-intensive workloads

As a write-through cache, enables accelerated performance with the protection
of the back-end, networked storage array

Provides an intelligent path for the I/O and ensures that the right data is in the
right place at the right time

In split-card mode, enables you to use part of the server Flash for cache and the
other part as DAS for temporary data

By offloading Flash and wear-level management onto the PCIe card, uses
minimal CPU and memory resources from the server

Achieves greater economic value when data deduplication is enabled by
providing an effective cache size larger than the physical size, and longer card
life expectancy

Works in both physical and virtual environments

Integrated with EMC Virtual Storage Integrator (VSI) plug-ins for vSphere makes
it simple to manage and monitor XtremSW Cache in a VMware environment

Works in Active/Passive clustering environments
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Chapter 3: Solution Overview

Works with VMware live migration

Provides a highly scalable performance model in the storage environment
XtremSW Cache features
Server-side Flash
caching for
maximum speed
XtremSW Cache software caches the most frequently referenced data on the serverbased PCIe card XtremSF, thereby putting the data closer to the application.
Write-through
caching for total
protection
XtremSW Cache accelerates reads and protects data by using a write-through cache
to the storage array to deliver persistent high availability, integrity, and disaster
recovery.
Application and
storage agnostic
XtremSW Cache is transparent to applications, so no rewriting, retesting, or
recertification is required to deploy XtremSW Cache in the environment.
The XtremSW Cache caching optimization automatically adapts to changing
workloads by determining which data is most frequently referenced and promoting it
to the server Flash cache. This means that the “hottest” (most active) data
automatically resides on the PCIe card in the server for faster access.
XtremSW Cache works with any storage array in the enviornment. Regardless of the
vendor or type of the storage, it works seamlessly to improve the performance of the
storage array.
XtremSW Cache offloads much of the read traffic from the storage array, which allows
it to allocate greater processing power to other applications. While one application is
accelerated with XtremSW Cache, the array’s performance for other applications is
maintained or even slightly enhanced.
Integrated with
vSphere
XtremSW Cache enhances both virtulized and physical environments. Integration with
VSI plug-ins for vSphere makes it simple to manage and monitor XtremSW Cache.
Integrated with
Hyper-V
XtremSW Cache works seamlessly with the Windows Hyper-V host and the virtual
machines that build on top.
Minimum impact
on system
resources
XtremSW Cache does not require a significant amount of memory or CPU cycles
because all Flash and wear-level management is done on the PCIe card and does not
use server resources. Unlike other PCIe solutions, there is no significant overhead
from using XtremSW Cache on the server resources.
XtremSW Cache creates the most efficient and intelligent I/O path from the
application to the datastore, which results in an infrastructure that is dynamically
optimized for performance, intelligence, and protection for both physical and virtual
environments.
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Data deduplication Currently, EMC is the only vendor to provide customers with a deduplication option
on a server cache Flash card. Deduplication can provide the following benefits:

Better cost per gigabyte: Using effective cache size, which is larger than the
physical cache size

Longer card life expectancy: Reduction in the number of write operations to the
Flash card resulting in lower wear out
Data deduplication can eliminate redundant data by storing only a single copy of
identical chunks of data, while enabling this data to be referenced. As shown in
Figure 3, when deduplication is enabled, only one copy of data is actually stored in
XtremSW Cache. With some additional memory space for pointers, the data that can
be cached increases dramatically.
Figure 3.
XtremSW Cache data deduplication
Data deduplication uses server memory to process the deduplication function to
maximize the capacity of XtremSW Cache. You can enable or disable this functionality
as needed. Figure 4 shows the deduplication architecture in XtremSW Cache.
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Chapter 3: Solution Overview
Figure 4.
XtremSW Cache data deduplication architecture overview
Active/Passive
clustering support
XtremSW Cache supports the Active/Passive clustering of the native operating system
(OS). Configuring the XtremSW Cache cluster scripts ensures that stale data is never
retrieved. The scripts use cluster management events to trigger a mechanism that
purges the cache. The XtremSW Cache-enabled Active/Passive cluster can ensure
data integrity while accelerating the application performance.
Multiple cards per
server
If necessary, you can install multiple XtremSF cards on a single server and configure
them as cache devices to improve application performance. Each source device can
be associated only with one cache card.
Orchestrated
VMware vMotion
XtremSW Cache supports live migration for VMware. During the migration process,
the virtual machine is operational and the cache is purged with a temporary I/O
performance impact.
Orchestrated VMware vMotion can be easily initiated from the XtremSW Cache VSI
plug-in while the virtual machines are up and running. This live migration offers
easier environment maintenance along with business continuity. XtremSW Cache is
the only certified solution that is interoperable with vMotion standards and listed in
the VMware Compatibility Guide.
XtremSW Cache support for orchestrated VMware vMotion automatically removes
XtremSW Cache devices on the virtual machine, deletes the cache on the local virtual
device, and migrates the virtual machines to the target host. After migration, the
cache device is recreated on the target host’s XtremSW Cache card datastore with the
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same properties as those on the source host machine. The virtual machine on the
target host has the same XtremSW Cache configuration as that on the source host
after migration.
Split-card mode
support
XtremSW Cache includes a unique software option that enables you to split the
XtremSF card between the cache and the local storage. You can simultaneously use
the card as a caching device for critical data and as a read-and-write storage device
for temporary data. You can fully optimize your workload by adjusting caching or
storage without having to change your card deployment.
With this feature, both read and write operations from the application to the local
storage are performed directly on the Flash capacity in the server. Since the data on
the local Flash storage does not persist in any storage array, it is best used for
ephemeral data only, such as the operating system swap space and temporary file
space.
Figure 5 shows an example of a use case for the split-card mode of XtremSW Cache.
In a SQL Server, where the tempdb needs acceleration for both read and write
operations but the database file only needs read acceleration, XtremSF can be
configured so that part of the card can be used for the local storage as tempdb, and
part of it can be used as a cache. However, there is a limitation in this configuration
as vMotion is not viable when the tempdb storage is local.
Figure 5.
Split-card mode used for SQL Server configuration
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Chapter 3: Solution Overview
Solution architecture
How XtremSW
Cache works
If the application I/O is for a source volume on which XtremSW Cache has not been
enabled, then the XtremSW Cache driver is transparent to the application I/O and
works as if there is no XtremSW Cache driver in the server I/O stack. In the following
examples, the application I/O is assumed for a source volume which is being
accelerated by XtremSW Cache.
Read Hit example
In this example, XtremSW Cache has been running for some time and the application
working set has already been promoted into XtremSW Cache. The application issues
a read request, and the data is present in XtremSW Cache. This process is called
“Read Hit”, as shown in Figure 6.
Figure 6.
Read Hit example with XtremSW Cache
The sequence of the steps in Figure 6 is:
26
1.
The application issues a read request that is intercepted by the XtremSW
Cache driver.
2.
Because the application working set has already been promoted into
XtremSW Cache, the XtremSW Cache driver determines that the data being
requested by the application already exists in the XtremSW Cache. Therefore,
the read request is sent to the PCIe XtremSF card rather than to the back-end
storage.
3.
Data is read from the XtremSW Cache and returned to the application.
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Read Hit provides all the throughput and latency benefits of XtremSW Cache to the
application because the read request is fulfilled within the server rather than
incurring latencies in going over the network to the back-end storage.
Read Miss example
In this example, the application issues a read request and the data is not present in
XtremSW Cache. This process is called “Read Miss”, as shown in Figure 7. The data is
not present in XtremSW Cache either because the card has just been installed in the
server or the application working set has changed so that the application has not yet
referenced this data.
Figure 7.
Read Miss example with XtremSW Cache
The sequence of the steps in Figure 7 is:
1.
The application issues a read request that is intercepted by the XtremSW
Cache driver.
2.
The XtremSW Cache driver determines that the requested data is not in
XtremSW Cache and forwards the request to the back-end storage.
3.
The data is read from the back-end storage and returned to the application.
4.
Once the application read request is completed, XtremSW Cache driver writes
the requested data to the XtremSF card. This process is called “promotion”.
This means that when the application reads the same data again, it will be a
Read Hit for XtremSW Cache, as described in the previous example.
If all the cache pages in XtremSW Cache are already used, XtremSW Cache uses a
least-recently-used (LRU) algorithm to write new data. If needed, the data that is least
likely to be used in future is discarded first to create space for the new XtremSW
Cache promotions.
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Write example
In this example, the application has issued a write request, as shown in Figure 8.
Figure 8.
Write example with XtremSW Cache
The sequence of the steps in Figure 8 is:
1.
The application issues a write request that is intercepted by the XtremSW
Cache driver.
2.
Since this is a write request, the XtremSW Cache driver passes this request to
the back-end storage for completion. The data in the write request is written
to the XtremSW Cache card in parallel.
If the application is writing to a storage area that has already been promoted
to XtremSW Cache, the copy of that data in XtremSW Cache is overwritten.
Therefore, the application does not receive a stale or old version of data from
the XtremSW Cache in response to future read requests. XtremSW Cache
algorithms ensure that, if the application writes some data and then reads the
same data later on, the read requests will find the requested data in XtremSW
Cache.
3.
Once the write operation is completed on the back-end storage, an
acknowledgment for the write request is sent back to the application.
The process of promoting new data into XtremSW Cache, as described in the previous
two examples, is called “cache warm-up”. Any cache needs to be warmed up with the
application working set before the application starts seeing the performance
benefits. When the working set of the application changes, the cache automatically
warms up with the new data over a period of time.
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XtremSW Cache in
a virtualized
environment
The implementation of XtremSW Cache in a virtualized environment is slightly
different from an implementation in a physical environment. In a virtualized
environment, multiple virtual machines on the same server may share the
performance advantages of a single XtremSW Cache card.
VMware environment
Figure 9 shows an XtremSW Cache implementation in a VMware virtualized
environment.
Figure 9.
XtremSW Cache implementation in a VMware environment
An XtremSW Cache implementation in a VMware environment consists of the
following components:

A physical XtremSF card on the VMware ESX Server.

XtremSF firmware and driver on the ESX Server.

XtremSW Cache software in each virtual machine that needs to be accelerated
using XtremSW Cache. This includes the XtremSW Cache driver, command line
interface (CLI) package, and XtremSW Cache Agent. Only virtual machines that
need to be accelerated with XtremSW Cache must have XtremSW Cache
software installed.

The XtremSW VSI Plug-in for XtremSW Cache management in the VMware
vCenter client.
Both the raw device mapping (RDM) and Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) volumes
are supported with XtremSW Cache. Network File System (NFS) file systems in
VMware environments are supported as well.
Figure 10 shows details of an implementation in a VMware environment.
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Figure 10. XtremSW Cache in a VMware environment
XtremSW Cache provides the flexibility to implement its caching capacity for one or
many virtual machines in the ESX host from the VCenter server, with the VSI plug-in
providing a single view for configuration and management:
30

The XtremSF card installed on the ESX host should be configured as a
datastore.

Create a virtual disk (vDisk) in the XtremSW Cache datastore for the virtual
machine as cache device. The size of the vDisk can be determined by the
caching needs of the specific virtual machine.

After the vDisk created on the XtremSW Cache datastore is added to the virtual
machine, it can be used as the caching device just as in the physical
environment. Any devices in the virtual machine that need XtremSW Cache
acceleration can be configured to use this vDisk as the XtremSW Cache device
for caching purposes.

The caching on the same XtremSF card acts independently for each virtual
machine.
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Hyper-V environment
Figure 11 shows an implementation in a Hyper-V virtualized environment.
Figure 11. XtremSW Cache in a Hyper-V environment
An XtremSW Cache implementation in a Hyper-V environment consists of the
following components:

A physical XtremSF card on the Windows Hyper-V server

XtremSF driver and firmware on the Windows Hyper-V server

XtremSW Cache software on the Windows Hyper-V server
In a Hyper-V environment, all the devices that need to be accelerated are configured
at the Hyper-V root server level. The installation procedure is identical to the
procedure for the physical Windows server.
Unlike the VMware implementation, all virtual machines in the Hyper-V environment
share the same physical XtremSF card installed on the Hyper-V server. Caching is
provided through the Hyper-V host.
In the Hyper-V environment, XtremSW Cache provides the caching capacity to support
one or many virtual machines in the Hyper-V host:

Virtual disks can be defined either before or after configuring the LUN as a
source device.

All virtual disks allocated on a source device LUN will be accelerated.

NFS, Hyper-V virtual hard disk (VHDX), and physical pass-through disk types are
all supported. Currently, cluster- shared volumes (CSV) are not supported.
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Chapter 4: Solution Design Considerations and Best Practices
Chapter 4
Solution Design Considerations and
Best Practices
This chapter presents the following topics:
Overview ............................................................................................................... 34
VSPEX environments that can benefit from XtremSW Cache ................................... 34
XtremSF card selection .......................................................................................... 35
Virtualization design considerations ...................................................................... 37
XtremSW Cache placement considerations ............................................................ 38
VMware considerations ......................................................................................... 40
Hyper-V considerations.......................................................................................... 42
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Chapter 4: Solution Design Considerations and Best Practices
Overview
This chapter provides best practices and considerations for the XtremSW Cache
implementation within the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for various applications
solution. We1 considered the following aspects during the solution design:

XtremSF card selection

XtremSW Cache layout design

Virtualization design
VSPEX environments that can benefit from XtremSW Cache
This section discusses the workload environments that can benefit from XtremSW
Cache, as follows:

Applications that have high read-to-write workload ratios:

Maximum effectiveness is gained where the same chunks of data are read
many times and seldom written.

Applications with a small working set receive the maximum possible boost.

Applications with predominantly random workloads:

Sequential workloads tend to have a significantly larger, active dataset in
proportion to the available XtremSW cache size (such as data
warehousing), and so do not benefit greatly from XtremSW Cache.

Applications with a high degree of I/O concurrency (that is, multiple I/O
threads).

Applications with smaller I/O sizes (8 KB or lower):

However, applications that generate large I/O sizes, such as Exchange
Server 2010, can still benefit. The XtremSW Cache software enables you to
tune features such as page size and maximum I/O sizes, which greatly
helps in these environments to continue to accelerate particular I/Os and
avoid other I/Os (such as backup read I/Os).
As explained in Chapter 3: Solution Overview, XtremSW Cache can accelerate read
operations, while all write operations are written to the storage array and are not
affected by XtremSW Cache. In many cases, improvement in write-throughput
performance can be observed as XtremSW Cache offloads the read operations,
enabling the array to handle more write operations as a side benefit. XtremSW Cache
may not be suitable for more write-intensive or sequential applications such as data
warehousing, streaming, media, or Big Data applications. Figure 12 shows these use
cases.
1
34
In this guide, “we” refers to the EMC Solutions engineering team that validated the solution.
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Figure 12. XtremSW Cache use cases
The horizontal axis represents a typical read-to-write ratio for an application
workload. The left side represents write-heavy applications such as backups. The
right side represents read-heavy applications such as reporting tools.
The vertical axis represents the working set of the application’s workload. The lower
end represents applications that have a very large working set and the top of the
chart represents applications with a small working set, where the majority of the I/O
goes to a very small set of data. Typically, applications with a small working set
occupy less space in XtremSW Cache.
The greatest performance improvement can be achieved with XtremSW Cache in highread applications with a highly concentrated, small working set of data.
To summarize, you can use XtremSF as the local storage for read and write
acceleration, temporary data, and large working sets, while XtremSF with XtremSW
Cache can be used for read acceleration of mission-critical data with small working
sets that require data protection.
XtremSF card selection
Overview
In general, the two major technologies used in all Flash drives are:

SLC NAND-based Flash cell

Multilevel cell (MLC) NAND-based Flash cell
This section discusses which card to select when designing an XtremSW Cache
solution. EMC XtremSF has both SLC and MLC cards in different sizes to fit the
different needs of a customer environment. For more information about XtremSF card
sizes, see Table 3
Design best
practices
Flash storage devices store information in a collection of Flash cells made from
floating gate transistors. SLC devices store only one bit of information in each Flash
cell (binary). MLC devices store more than one bit per Flash cell by choosing between
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Chapter 4: Solution Design Considerations and Best Practices
multiple levels of electrical charge to apply to the floating gates in the transistors, as
shown in Figure 13.
Figure 13. Comparison between SLC and MLC Flash cell data storage
Because each cell in MLC Flash has more information bits, an MLC Flash-based
storage device offers increased storage density compared to an SLC Flash-based
version. However, MLC NAND has lower performance and endurance because of its
inherent architectural tradeoffs. Higher functionality further complicates the use of
MLC NAND, which makes it necessary to implement more advanced Flash
management algorithms and controllers.
Table 4 compares the SLC and MLC Flash characteristics with some typical values.
Table 4.
SLC and MLC Flash comparison
Features
MLC
SLC
Bits per cell
2
1
Endurance (erase/write cycles)
About 10,000
About 100,000
Read service time (Avg.)
129 μs
38 μs
Write service time (Avg.)
1,375 μs
377 μs
Block erase (Avg.)
4,500 μs
1,400 μs
Although SLC NAND Flash offers a lower density, it also provides an enhanced level of
performance in the form of faster reads and writes. Because SLC NAND Flash stores
only one bit per cell, the need for error correction is reduced. SLC also allows for
higher write and erase cycle endurance, making it a better fit for use in applications
that require increased endurance and viability in multiyear product life cycles.
SLC and MLC NAND offer capabilities that serve two different types of applications—
those requiring high performance at an attractive cost per bit (MLC), and those that
are less cost sensitive and seeking even higher performance over time (SLC).
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Virtualization design considerations
Overview
Sizing
recommendations
XtremSW Cache is fully supported when deployed in a virtual environment with
VMware vSphere ESXi technology or Windows Server Hyper-V technology. The
following describes the best practices and design considerations for XtremSW Cache
in virtualized environments:

Identify the virtual machines on the ESXi server that would be a good candidate
for XtremSW Cache to accelerate its performance with reasonable cost.

Calculate the total capacity needed for XtremSW Cache.

If needed, adjust the placement of the virtual machines in the environment to
best utilize XtremSW Cache.

Select the appropriate XtremSF card for both capacity and performance.
Sizing recommendations are available for each different application type. The
implementation also varies for each different environment. The following are the
minimum configurations recommended for each application, based on our testing in
a controlled environment with a typical database workload and application workload.
Use the numbers provided as a guideline.
To determine the sizing that best fits a specific application and environment, it is
important to consider both the performance level you need and the cost you can
afford. In most cases, adding more XtremSW Cache gives better performance until the
size of the cache is equal to or greater than the working set.
Table 5 provides XtremSW Cache recommendations for each application. The cacheto-storage ratio (the cache and database storage size ratio, a 1:10 ratio, represents a
1 GB XtremSW Cache for each 10 GB of data) largely depends on the active working
set of the database, and will change based on actual usage.
Table 5.
Recommended cache for each application
Application
Database type
Read-to-write
ratio
Recommended XtremSW
Cache-to-storage ratio2
SQL Server/ Oracle
OLTP
90:10
1:10
SQL Server/ Oracle
OLTP
70:30
1:5
SharePoint Server
Content/crawl
100% read
1:5
Exchange Server
Mailbox
60:40
1:100
For Oracle or SQL Server online analytical processing (OLAP) applications, such as a
data warehouse environment, eMLC XtremSF (alone, or in split-card mode) can be
used as the tempdb to improve the query performance. Consider at least 200 GB
tempdb space for every 1 TB of database.
2
XtremSW Cache-to-storage ratio is the cache and database storage size ratio. If the ratio is
1:10, then for each 10 GB of data, provide at least 1 GB of XtremSW Cache.
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XtremSW Cache placement considerations
Overview
EMC XtremSW Cache can accelerate performance on demand for applications in a
VSPEX Proven Infrastructure.
The flexibility of an XtremSW Cache implementation enables you to place XtremSF on
the server that hosts the specific virtual machines requiring performance
acceleration. In those virtual machines, you enable only the specific storage LUNs
that need XtremSW Cache. To ensure that those virtual machines continue to have
access to XtremSW acceleration, set the appropriate affinity rules for the hypervisor
so the virtual machines can reside only on those servers that are accelerated with
XtremSF Cache.
Additionally, you can install XtremSF Flash cards in all physical servers in the server
infrastructure, and then install and enable XtremSW Cache across all servers.
Design best
practices
Working from the base configuration of VSPEX, for each application you intend to run
within the environment, determine which applications need XtremSW Cache
acceleration.
Next, consider the following for the best placement of the XtremSF card within the
server infrastructure:

Use XtremSF with XtremSW Cache for read acceleration of mission-critical data
with small working sets that require data protection.

Put at least two XtremSF cards within your VSPEX server infrastructure when
redundancy is required.

If vMotion is required, calculate the XtremSF capacity and placement so that
the remaining server and XtremSF capacity still can serve the configured
XtremSW Cache settings of all virtual machines when vMotion takes place.
For example, if 10 virtual machines are configured to use 100 GB of XtremSW
Cache, which requires a total of 1 TB of XtremSW Cache capacity, in the event of
vMotion, the remaining servers in the virtualized cluster with XtremSW Cache
need to facilitate at least 1 TB of cache space.
38

If applications only need a small part of the XtremSF card capacity for each
virtual machine, the virtual machines with these applications could share the
same physical card and are best placed on the same ESXi or Hyper-V host.

If a certain application demands all the available capacity of the XtremSF card,
then the host should dedicate that specific card to the virtual machine.

Multiple XtremSF cards can be installed on the same server, if required.

Multiple XtremSF can be configured to the same hypervisor to create multiple
cache devices for that virtual machine.

For specific application workloads that have been selected to use the split-card
feature, part of the card can be configured to serve the caching needs of the
virtual machine; the other part can be configured as XtremSF storage to serve
the need for a temporary datastore such as a tempdb storage space.
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Additional considerations for the portability of the virtual machine in the
virtualized environment are necessary for this configuration as the virtual
machine now depends on the storage that is local to that server.


XtremSW Cache configuration specifics:

The XtremSW Cache page size is the smallest unit of allocation inside the
cache. The default page size is 8 KB. The XtremSW Cache maximum I/O size
is the maximum I/O size that will be promoted into the cache. The default
maximum I/O size is set to 64 KB.

Where possible, understand the I/O size distribution of all applications
selected for acceleration. If an application generates significantly large I/O
sizes (such as Exchange Server), this may warrant a change of the default
page size and maximum I/O size configurations for XtremSW Cache.

Refer to the relevant XtremSW Cache documents in the References section
for information on how to correctly change these configuration settings.
The minimum size for the XtremSW Cache vDisk is 20 GB for any virtual
machine that needs Flash cache acceleration.
There is minimal resource consumption (overhead) for virtual machines using
XtremSW Cache to accelerate application performance, except when the
deduplication feature is enabled. Resource consumption, including CPU and memory,
depends on the application and especially depends on the size of the working set.
Deduplication introduces very limited memory utilization and CPU consumption when
enabled in an environment with a small working set and high skew. This is detailed in
the Exchange solution example; for more information, see XtremSW Cache for
Exchange Server.
XtremSW Cache can be disabled or enabled any time once the XtremSF card is
installed on the physical host and configured for the virtual machine.
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VMware considerations
Overview
This section provides the most common and important design considerations for
implementing XtremSW Cache in a VSPEX with VMware environment.
Design best
practices
The VMware environment in a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure should follow the general
VSPEX design principles and best practices for specific applications on VMware, as
detailed in the VSPEX Implementation Guides.
XtremSF should be installed on each ESXi server with virtual machines that require
XtremSW Cache acceleration, as determined by customer’s performance and cost
analysis.
After the XtremSF Flash card is installed, it can be configured as the XtremSW Cache
datastore on the ESXi server using the VSI plug-in, as shown in Figure 14.
Figure 14. XtremSW Cache configuration using EMC VSI plug-in
Although multiple XtremSW Cache devices for the same virtual machine are
supported, one XtremSW Cache device for each virtual machine can sufficiently
satisfy the caching needs for the majority of the use cases, as shown in Figure 15.
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Figure 15. XtremSW Cache implementation in VMware environment for VSPEX
The size of the XtremSW Cache should follow the best practices for each different
application, as previously described in the Sizing recommendations section. For
multiple applications or database LUNs, simply add the required XtremSW Cache
device size, and create a single XtremSW Cache device for the virtual machine, as
shown in Figure 15. The only exception to this is when there is a need to segregate
the I/O traffic, or when one XtremSF card is not big enough for the virtual machine,
then multiple cards are needed.
Since each virtual machine in the VMware environment has its own XtremSW Cache
vDisk, there is no contention among different virtual machines for XtremSW Cache
caching. Each deployment should be a careful balance of performance and cost
considerations.
As previously noted, virtual machines are expected to migrate across the VMware
cluster. Ensure that sufficient XtremSW Caching capacity is available on other nodes
to accept an “incoming” virtual machine configured for acceleration. For example, if
you wish to move SQLVM1 (configured with a 50 GB cache) from host ESXServer1 to
host ESXServer2 (through a vMotion migration), ensure that ESXServer2 has at least
50 GB of free XtremSW Cache capacity available.
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Hyper-V considerations
Overview
This section provides the most common and important design considerations for
implementing XtremSW Cache in a Hyper-V environment.
Design best
practices
The Hyper-V environment in a VSPEX implementation should follow the general VSPEX
design best practices for the specific application in the Hyper-V environment, as
detailed in the VSPEX Implementation Guides.
As shown in Figure 16, install XtremSF on each Hyper-V server with virtual machines
that require XtremSW Cache acceleration, as determined by the customer’s
performance and cost analysis.
Once the XtremSF card is installed, configure it as the XtremSW Cache target device
on the Hyper-V server. From the Hyper-V server, configure all the LUNs requiring
XtremSW Cache acceleration as source LUNs for the XtremSW Cache target device.
As shown in Figure 16, all VHDXs for the different virtual machines, as well as the
physical pass-through disks on those LUNs configured as XtremSW Cache source
LUNs, are accelerated by XtremSW Cache.
Figure 16. XtremSW Cache implementation in Hyper-V environment for VSPEX
Since XtremSW Cache in a Hyper-V environment works at the Hyper-V level, all the
source devices from the different virtual machines are accelerated with the same
XtremSW Cache target. This means:

42
Applications may enjoy a higher level of service from XtremSW Cache when
other virtual machines on the same Hyper-V server are not as active. This is
because the source device is not limited to the calculated capacity of the
XtremSW Cache and can potentially use all the available cache capacity.
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
There may be contention between different virtual machines if the workload
and active data set (the hot data) on one of the virtual machines is
overwhelmingly high and using more than its quota. To avoid contention, it is
better to put applications that place a high demand on XtremSW Cache on
different Hyper-V servers, or to configure them with a different XtremSF card on
the same Hyper-V server.

Currently, CSV volumes are not supported with XtremSW Cache 1.5x software.
CSV volumes will be supported in future releases.
Note: Volumes in a Hyper-V cluster do not need to be CSV to avail of the benefits of
Live Migration or other advanced Hyper-V features. Also, in cases where Tier-1
applications require acceleration, it may be best not to enable CSV on those volumes
and ensure they are dedicated to the application from the volume to LUN to storage
array disks.

When using VHDX, all VHDXs on the same LUN that are configured with
XtremSW Cache are accelerated with XtremSW Cache. When designing the
storage layout, consider placing only the VHDXs that require XtremSW Cache
acceleration on the LUNs that are configured with XtremSW Cache.
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Chapter 5
XtremSW Cache Solution for
Applications
This chapter presents the following topics:
Overview ............................................................................................................... 46
Architecture of XtremSW Cache deployment on VMware ......................................... 46
Architecture of XtremSW Cache deployment on Hyper-V ......................................... 47
XtremSW Cache for SQL Server OLTP database....................................................... 48
XtremSW Cache for Exchange Server ...................................................................... 54
XtremSW Cache for SharePoint .............................................................................. 65
XtremSW Cache for Oracle OLTP database ............................................................. 70
XtremSW Cache for private cloud ........................................................................... 73
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Overview
Any VSPEX Proven Infrastructure that needs to boost the performance of applications
such as Oracle and SQL Server OLTP applications, web applications, financial trading
applications, and Exchange can benefit from XtremSW Cache. XtremSW Cache can be
considered as an upgrade or add-on feature for a larger cloud solution.
This section describes application use cases where XtremSW Cache provides value. It
includes the best practices, the deployment scenarios, and the expected benefits for
the following application use cases:

SQL Server

Exchange

SharePoint

Oracle

Private cloud
Architecture of XtremSW Cache deployment on VMware
Figure 17 shows the validated architecture for an XtremSW Cache deployment on a
VSPEX Private Cloud with VMware. The XtremSF card is installed on the physical
VMware ESXi server and an XtremSW Cache datastore is created on it. The XtremSW
Cache vDisk created in that datastore is assigned to the virtual machines hosting the
application that needs to be accelerated. The vDisk can use part or all of the available
storage in the XtremSW Cache datastore.
On each virtual machine, the LUNs that will be accelerated by the XtremSW Cache are
configured as source LUNs for the XtremSW Cache vDisk. After they are enabled, data
is cached just as it is in a physical environment. The source LUN could be any LUN in
the virtual machine, such as virtual machine data file for VMware (VMDK), RDM, and
so on.
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Figure 17. Architecture of the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for XtremSW Cache deployment
on VMware
Architecture of XtremSW Cache deployment on Hyper-V
Figure 18 shows the validated architecture for an XtremSW Cache deployment on a
VSPEX Private Cloud with Hyper-V. In a Hyper-V environment, the XtremSW Cache is
deployed on the Hyper-V host and managed from this level. The I/Os issued by the
virtual machines are accelerated at the Hyper-V level. If there are multiple VHDXs on
the same LUN in the Hyper-V host, they will all be accelerated because the XtremSW
Cache source LUN is configured at the Hyper-V host level.
If a VHDX is used in Hyper-V, the source LUN for XtremSW Cache on the Hyper-V host
should contain only VHDXs that need to be accelerated.
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Figure 18. Architecture of the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for XtremSW Cache deployment
on Hyper-V
XtremSW Cache for SQL Server OLTP database
Overview
In a SQL Server environment, the storage LUNs that host the database data files for
the OLTP database are most likely to benefit from XtremSW Cache acceleration.
The read-to-write ratio of a typical SQL Server OLTP database data file ranges from
70:30 to 90:10, making the database data file LUN ideal for XtremSW Cache
acceleration. In the example use case described in this section, we tested an active
OLTP database with a read-to-write ratio of 90:10. Using about a 100 GB cache to
accelerate a 1 TB OLTP database reduced the read latency by more than half.
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Benefits of
XtremSW Cache in
a SQL Server OLTP
environment
XtremSW Cache is proven to be highly scalable and reliable. It can relieve the I/O
processing pressure from the storage system and boost the disk read operations
driven by the host, even in virtual ESXi-based environments. XtremSW Cache
increases the overall transaction rate of SQL Server and significantly reduces disk
latencies with minimal impact on system resources.
XtremSW Cache in SQL Server OLTP environments provides the following benefits:
Best practices

XtremSW Cache can reduce SQL Server storage response time.

The XtremSW Cache host driver has minimal impact on server and virtual
machine system resources. In testing, the system resources were mostly
consumed by the SQL Server workload. The XtremSW Cache driver overhead
was negligible—0.4 percent CPU usage in this example use case.

With a highly optimized, multitier storage system, XtremSW Cache can offload
read I/O processing from the storage array while reducing disk latencies, thus
enabling higher transactional throughput and enabling the EMC storage array to
consume even more workload.

With less optimized, two-tier storage configurations, XtremSW Cache can
significantly boost SQL Server transactions and lower overall host disk latency.
It can address “hot-spots” in the datacenter and alleviate possible storage
bottlenecks.

We observed a performance boost immediately after the LUNs were added to
the XtremSW Cache pool. Performance reached a steady state in approximately
one hour for all 16 LUNs hosting a 3 TB database file.

XtremSW Cache is a server-based cache. Introducing XtremSW Cache to a
storage environment does not require any changes to the application or storage
system layouts.

Because XtremSW Cache is a caching solution rather than a storage solution,
there is no need to move data. Therefore, you do not risk having inaccessible
data if the server or the PCIe card fails.

XtremSW Cache minimizes CPU overhead in the server by offloading Flash
management operations from the host CPU onto the PCIe card.

Managing and monitoring XtremSW Cache in a vSphere environment is easy.
After configuration, XtremSW Cache requires no user intervention and
continuously adjusts to meet the needs of the application workload.
In a SQL Server OLTP environment running a heavy OLTP workload, the primary
database LUNs can benefit most from XtremSW Cache acceleration. The log LUNs and
tempdb LUNs are write-heavy and should not be used with the XtremSW Cache.
In summary, in a typical SQL Server OLTP environment:

The read-intensive database data file LUNs generally have heavy workload,
subjected to a high-read skew, and are good candidates for XtremSW Cache.

SQL Server OLTP data files experience constant random reads and contribute to
the overall duration of transaction times. Data files also experience regular
bursts of write activity during a checkpoint operation. Using XtremSW Cache to
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cache reads and avoid an I/O workload on the EMC array enables the array to
consume those burst writes faster and avoid any read delays for transactions.
Use case design
and deployment

Log LUNs and tempdb LUNs in OLTP databases are write-intensive and typically
do not benefit from XtremSW Cache.

In SQL Server AlwaysOn environments, the secondary databases do not need to
be accelerated unless a specific performance requirement justifies the use of
XtremSW cache.

Set the page size to 64 KB in the XtremSW Cache to accommodate the large I/O
for the SQL Server database.

If the workload is not expected to increase after deploying XtremSW Cache in
the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure, there is no need for additional system
resources such as memory or CPU.

With a read-to-write ratio of 90:10 in the OLTP database LUNs, for each 1 TB of
database, an XtremSW Cache of 100 GB or more would significantly improve
the OLTP query performance and read operations.
The example use case deployed XtremSW Cache to accelerate OLTP performance in a
multiuser SQL Server 2012 database virtualized with the VMware environment. Two
ESXi servers each hosted one SQL Server virtual machine. One of the SQL Server
virtual machines used a 700 GB SLC XtremSF card. The other server did not have
XtremSW Cache configured.
The environment is based on a multitier storage solution that is controlled and
optimized by EMC Fully Automated Storage Tiering for Virtual Pools (FAST VP).
The solution design includes the following components and features as shown in
Figure 19:
50

Two vSphere ESXi servers, each hosting one SQL Server virtual machine

XtremSW Cache enabled on the primary SQL Server virtual machine
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Figure 19. Architecture design for XtremSW Cache enabled SQL Server virtual environment
Deployment scenarios
Figure 20 shows the XtremSW Cache deployment for this use case. All the database
file LUNs on the primary server are configured as source LUNs for XtremSW Cache
acceleration; tempdb LUNs and log LUNs are excluded. The secondary server does
not have XtremSW Cache configured.
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Figure 20. SQL Server AlwaysOn XtremSW Cache deployment
Configuration of
XtremSW Cache in
the VMware
environment
In this solution, we configured one 278 GB XtremSW Cache. All 16 source data
devices were associated with the cache device, as shown in Figure 20.
Configuration is straightforward using the wizards in the VSI integrated plug-in. If
preferred, you can use the command line from the Windows virtual machine.
We used the following steps to configure the XtremSW Cache for the database LUNs
in the virtual machine:
1.
Use vCenter Server to create a VMFS datastore on the cache device.
2.
Add the XtremSW Cache device in the form of virtual disks to the virtual
machines through the VSI plug-in for XtremSW Cache.
You can add the entire device to one virtual machine or partition it into virtual
disks that can be used for different virtual machines. The XtremSW Cache
virtual disk is shown in the Disk Management wizard of the virtual machine as
an Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) partition.
3.
Add the source devices to the enabled XtremSW Cache device to accelerate
their performance.
Any source device can be stopped temporarily or removed from the caching operation
without affecting other source devices.
Test results
XtremSW Cache boosts system performance
After enabling XtremSW Cache for the first time, the performance boost was visible
immediately.
XtremSW Cache started to take effect as soon as it was enabled with the devices
needing a performance boost added into the cache pool. It took approximately one
hour in this environment to reach the maximum performance boost.
We tested XtremSW Cache for SQL Server in both a two-tier and a three-tier
configurations. Figure 21 shows the read and write IOPS for the primary SQL Server
before and after enabling XtremSW Cache in a two-tier storage system.
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IOPS and latency change after enabling XtremSW Cache
Baseline | XtremSW Cache
Steady state
20,000
8
6
10,000
4
5,000
latency (ms)
10
15,000
IOPS
12
2
0
0
IOPS
latency ( ms)
Figure 21. Performance boost after enabling XtremSW Cache
After the system reached the steady state, the system performance was stable during
the 24-hour testing period.
XtremSW Cache reduces SQL Server response time
XtremSW Cache significantly reduced the SQL Server response time for high response
time transactions in both the two-tier and three-tier configurations.
The XtremSW Cache host driver had a minimal impact on the server and virtual
machine system resources.
The read latency reduced by approximately 50 to 70 percent after we enabled
XtremSW Cache. We observed a similar result with the transaction latency, where
XtremSW Cache also significantly lowered the response time of high latency
transactions.
Without XtremSW Cache, the two-tier configuration can support only 14,000 IOPS.
With XtremSW Cache, it can fully support a 24,000 IOPS load with a 90:10 read-towrite ratio.
XtremSW Cache significantly lowered the I/O activities on the storage array (about
10,000 IOPS) in the three-tier configuration, thus enabling the storage system to
support more server I/O requests.
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Table 6 shows the detailed test results for all the test scenarios in this solution.
Table 6.
Performance data with OLTP load
Three-tier storage
Two-tier storage
Performance
Without
XtremSW
Cache
With
XtremSW
Cache
Without
XtremSW
Cache
With XtremSW
Cache
SQL Server virtual machine CPU
67.45%
67.85%
15.50%*
51.43%
ESXi CPU
77.80%
78.20%
24.63%*
65.57%
Client transactions per second
(TPS)
2,193
2,585
1,225
2,229
SQL Server virtual machine IOPS
23,938
23,916
14,123
23,602
Array front-end IOPS
24,698
14,987
15,475
13,798
Latency (ms) (read/write/transfer)
4/1/4
2/2/2
11/1/10
4/3/4
* CPU usage was lower because the storage bottleneck created in this test limited the client load that
can be pushed to the system.
XtremSW Cache for Exchange Server
Overview
In an Exchange Server environment, the Exchange database LUNs are most likely to
benefit from XtremSW Cache acceleration.
The performance of the database can be improved by using 10 GB of XtremSW Cache
for each 1 TB of Exchange data in the Mailbox server virtual machines in the example
use case described in this section.
Even though the typical Exchange Mailbox workload has about a 60:40 read-to-write
ratio and a large I/O size, the working set of the Exchange databases is very small.
This means that the Mailbox workload performance can be dramatically improved
when a small slice of XtremSF is configured as XtremSW Cache for the Mailbox
database LUNs. The high I/O skew in this use case also makes it a good candidate for
deduplication with limited memory and CPU consumption.
Benefits of
XtremSW Cache in
an Exchange
environment
54
Using XtremSW Cache in an Exchange environment offers many benefits:

XtremSW Cache improves Exchange performance by reducing read latencies
and offloading read operations from the back-end storage.

XtremSW Cache helps to maximize I/O throughput for Exchange workloads
without changing or adding any additional storage resources.

XtremSW Cache reduces bandwidth requirements through deduplication
features, offloading write processing from the Exchange back-end storage.
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Best practices

XtremSW Cache can be integrated with vSphere for virtual machine migration
that has an XtremSW Cache device attached. With proper configuration, the
applications can resume the accelerated state after virtual machine automigration occurred.

XtremSW Cache has little impact on system resources such as CPU and
memory.

The initial warm-up period for XtremSW Cache with Exchange-simulated
workloads varies for each environment. In this solution, the effect of XtremSW
Cache was observed immediately after it was enabled. It reached a steady state
in approximately 30 minutes for all Exchange accelerated database LUNs with
15 TB of data.

Integration with the VSI plug-in for VMware makes XtremSW Cache easy to
manage and monitor in a virtualized environment.

XtremSW Cache is designed to minimize CPU overhead in the server by
offloading Flash management operations from the host CPU onto the XtremSF
PCIe card.

With an Exchange workload, XtremSW Cache can relieve I/O processing
pressure from the storage system and boost the disk read operations driven by
the host.

XtremSW Cache increases the overall Exchange application IOPS and
significantly reduces disk latencies with minimal impact on system resources.

Using XtremSW Cache enables customers to configure Exchange for high
performance and low cost without making trade-offs.

Managing and monitoring XtremSW Cache in a vSphere environment is easy.
After configuration, XtremSW Cache requires no user intervention and
continuously changes to meet the application workload requirements.
In Exchange with a Database Availability Group (DAG) environment (for both active
and passive copies of DAG), the LUNs for the databases can benefit most from
XtremSW Cache acceleration.
More importantly, the working set for Exchange database is relatively small; thus, the
XtremSW Cache size needed for Exchange server acceleration is also small. In this
use case, every 1 TB of Exchange data requires only about 10 GB of XtremSW Cache.
Enabling XtremSW Cache acceleration for both active and passive databases also
improves the performance. If there is a DAG failover, XtremSW Cache is already warm
when the DAG fails over and the whole Exchange environment shows almost no
performance impact. The LUNs for the database log should be excluded because of
their sequential workload.
In summary, in a typical Exchange environment:

In Mailbox virtual machines, typically both active and passive database file
LUNs with a heavy workload are good candidates for XtremSW Cache source
LUNs. XtremSW Cache also helps improve the performance even in a DAG
failover scenario.
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Use case design
and deployment

Typically, log LUNs are excluded from XtremSW Cache.

Set the page size to 64 KB in XtremSW Cache to accommodate the large I/O
size of the Exchange Server.

For each Exchange virtual machine, for every 1 TB of Exchange data, configuring
about a 10 GB XtremSW Cache can significantly improve the Mailbox server
performance.
The example use case deployed XtremSW Cache to accelerate the performance of
Exchange 2010 in a DAG configuration with two database copies virtualized with the
VMware environment.
We installed two 700 GB SLC XtremSF cards on the vSphere ESXi servers hosting six
Exchange Mailbox server virtual machines.
In testing, the system IOPS improved by over 26 percent, and read latencies
decreased by about 50 to 70 percent.
We also tested the environment for deduplication with little additional system
resource consumption. When enabling XtremSW Cache deduplication for Exchange
Server, you can reduce the CPU usage by up to 50 percent in certain workloads, with a
drop of up to 30 percent in the write IOPS to the back-end array.
Figure 22 shows the solution design, which included the following components:
56

A vSphere HA cluster consisting of two vSphere ESXi servers, each hosting
three Exchange Mailbox server virtual machines

Two copies of the DAG database configured on different Mailbox servers

XtremSF installed on both EXSi servers in the HA cluster

Each Exchange Mailbox server virtual machine configured with a 50 GB
XtremSW Cache for their 5 TB databases (including both active and passive
DAG copies).
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Figure 22. Architecture design for XtremSW Cache-enabled Exchange virtual environment
Deployment scenarios
Figure 23 shows the XtremSW Cache deployment for the Exchange use case. We
configured all database LUNs for active and passive copies on the virtual machines
as source LUNs for XtremSW Cache acceleration. The log LUNs were excluded mostly
because of their write and sequential I/O.
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Figure 23. XtremSW Cache deployment for Exchange 2010 on vSphere
In this deployment, for each virtual machine with 5 TB of storage, we deployed 50 GB
of XtremSW Cache. We configured the rest of the XtremSW Cache capacity to support
the vMotion failover.
Configuration of
XtremSW Cache in
the VMware
environment
The configuration of XtremSW Cache for an Exchange Mailbox server in a VMware
environment is similar to the SQL Server configuration previously shown in Figure 20.
In addition, for this use case, we configured deduplication and vMotion migration.
You can configure the XtremSW Cache data deduplication feature for the Exchange
Mailbox server virtual machines. Data deduplication eliminates redundant data by
storing only a single copy of identical chunks of data while, at the same time,
providing access to the data from the cache. Deduplication also helps to reduce
storage and bandwidth requirements and extend the life expectancy of the cache
device.
Configuring the XtremSW Cache device with data deduplication
To enable data deduplication for the XtremSW Cache device, follow these steps:
1.
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Select the Use Data Deduplication checkbox in the Add XtremSW Cache
Device wizard, when adding the XtremSW Cache device to a virtual machine.
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2.
Select the expected data deduplication percentage gain based on your
Exchange workload type, as shown in Figure 24.
Figure 24. Enabling data deduplication on the XtremSW Cache device
You can also enable data deduplication using the XtremSW Cache CLI on the
Windows client machine by running the following command:
vfcmt add -cache_dev harddisk13 –set_page_size 64 –set_max_io_size
64 –enable_ddup –ddup_gain 20
Where:
Is:
harddisk13
A configured operating-system cache device for the virtual machine
ddup_gain 20
The deduplication gain percentage for the system cache device on the
virtual machine
After adding the deduplication-enabled XtremSW Cache device, add the Exchange
database LUNs as source devices to the XtremSW Cache device for performance
acceleration.
To determine the appropriate data deduplication gain for your Exchange workload,
review the XtremSW Cache statistics information in the XtremSW Cache VSI plug-in or
use the CLI on the Windows server. After the cache warm-up, follow these
recommendations:

Calculate the observed deduplication hit ratio and compare it with the
configured ratio.

Calculate the observed deduplication hit ratio by dividing the Write Hits by the
Writes Received. This is the amount of duplicated data in the cache.
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
If the observed ratio is less than 10 percent, turn off deduplication or
reconfigure the deduplication gain to zero percent. To benefit from the
extended life of the cache device, keep deduplication enabled.

If the observed ratio is over 35 percent, raise the deduplication gain to match
the observed deduplication.

If the observed ratio is between 10 and 35 percent, leave the deduplication
gain as it is.
To change the configured ratio, remove the XtremSW Cache device from the Exchange
Mailbox server virtual machine, and add it back again with a new deduplication
percentage value. To do this, use the VSI plug-in or the CLI command (vfcmt add cache_dev), as described previously in this section.
Migrating an Exchange virtual machine with XtremSW Cache device
It is possible to move an Exchange virtual machine that has an XtremSW Cache disk
from one vSphere host to another. Under a typical scenario, without an XtremSW
Cache device, you can use the native vSphere migrate command to move a virtual
machine from one host to another. This is possible because in a typical scenario the
virtual machine’s datastores and RDMs are shared resources.
In the XtremSW Cache environment, however, the XtremSW Cache datastore is
mapped to its local host Flash drive. Consequently, this datastore is accessible only
to that host and the native vSphere migrate command is not supported. Instead, use
the EMC XtremSW Cache VSI plug-in to perform the virtual machine migration with the
XtremSW Cache device attached.
Multiple forms of migration are available. The form of migration that you choose
determines the steps you perform to complete the migration.
Before you begin, ensure that your system meets the following prerequisites:

The target datastore has enough available capacity for the new device.

There are no additional DAS Flash-based devices for the host virtual machine.

Only one XtremSW Cache device is configured on the host virtual machine.

The virtual machine you want to migrate is not currently being migrated.
The source host and the target host must be able to communicate with each other, so
ensure the IP and Domain Name System (DNS) have been properly configured.
Performing an automated migration
An automated migration does not require disrupting the virtual machine; however,
the cache will be cleared, thus resulting in a cold cache start. A warning message is
displayed during the migration indicating that a cold cache start will occur after the
migration.
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To perform the migration, complete the following steps:
1.
From the XtremSW Cache window of a virtual machine, click Migrate Virtual
Machine.
2.
Select the target host and target datastore. Only hosts within your datastores
that are available to the host XtremSW Cache device are listed.
3.
Click OK. A warning message is displayed stating that a cold cache start will
take place after the migration, as shown in Figure 25.
Figure 25. Cold cache start post migration warning
4.
Click Yes to start the migration.
Follow the task’s progress in the Task window. Figure 26 shows details of the
virtual machine migration wizard.
Figure 26. EMC XtremSW Cache VSI-plug-in for virtual machine migration wizard
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After a successful migration, a confirmation message appears in the message pane in
the VSI management window.
Recovering Exchange data from a snapshot
If you are using backup software that performs snapshots of Exchange LUNs
accelerated by XtremSW Cache, follow specific procedures when restoring data from
those snapshots to ensure data integrity.
If an Exchange LUN snapshot is taken on the array, and later used to roll back
changes on the source LUN, the server will not be updated with the changes. This
could result in the cache supplying data that may not been updated with the contents
of the snapshot.
To prevent this from occurring, when recovering from the snapshot, perform the
following steps:
Test results
1.
Quiesce the application that is accessing the source volume using
application-specific tools, such as EMC Replication Manager.
2.
Flush the data in the host buffers using an appropriate command, such as
admsnap flush, and unmount the file system.
3.
Invalidate the contents of the source device by using the purge source_dev command.
4.
Perform the snapshot restore operations on the array.
5.
After the restore is complete, remount the file system, as necessary.
XtremSW Cache acceleration test results
We observed consistent reductions in read latencies and increased user IOPS with all
workload types when we enabled XtremSW Cache to accelerate performance for the
database LUNs. Even 300-message workloads that experienced over 20 ms read
latencies without XtremSW Cache became a normal steady workload with reduced
latencies and increased IOPS with XtremSW Cache enabled. This extreme workload
was expected to fail as the storage and Exchange virtual machine resources were
originally designed for 150-message workloads.
Figure 27 provides additional details for each test performed. Highlights of the
observed test results include:
62

A 150-message per user per day workload achieved a 51 percent reduction in
read latencies (by 6.4 ms) and a 14.6 percent increase in user IOPS (by 224
IOPS).

A 250-message per user per day workload achieved a 69.3 percent reduction in
read latencies (by 11.1 ms) and a 12.8 percent increase in user IOPS (by 275
IOPS).

A 300-message per user per day workload achieved a 56.8 percent reduction in
read latencies (by 12.5 ms) and a 12 percent increase in user IOPS (by 346
IOPS).
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Chapter 5: XtremSW Cache Solution for Applications
Figure 27.
Exchange 2010 performance with XtremSW Cache and LoadGen workload
Performance with XtremSW Cache data deduplication
To validate Exchange performance with XtremSW Cache inline data deduplication, we
performed validation on one Exchange virtual machine with 5,000 users. We
performed a series of Microsoft Exchange Load Generator (LoadGen) tests, with each
test lasting eight hours and with multiple workload profiles, to see the effect of data
deduplication. We monitored the XtremSW Cache statistics to determine the
appropriate deduplication ratio for each workload. With the LoadGen workloads we
generated, we observed that a 30 percent deduplication ratio would be more effective
than the default 20 percent. Figure 28 shows the deduplication ratio observed during
testing.
Figure 28.
XtremSW Cache statistics with data deduplication
Note: The LoadGen workload does not represent the actual workload in your specific
production environment. The results observed and recommendations provided here are
based on our lab configuration and results only. Ensure that you configure your environment
based on your particular workload requirements and characteristics.
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Deduplication test results summary
In Figure 29 and Figure 30, the XtremSW Cache data deduplication test results with
multiple workload profiles for the Exchange 2010 Mailbox server show:

Decreased Exchange Server CPU utilization with each workload

Slightly increased write latencies due to XtremSW Cache analysis and
processing of the duplicated data
Figure 29.
Exchange server CPU utilization with XtremSW Cache data deduplication
Figure 30.
Exchange server disk latencies with XtremSW Cache data deduplication
Analysis of the back-end VNX storage array shows that when we enabled
deduplication on the server, the writes to the VNX array were reduced. In Figure 31,
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the write activity was reduced from 90 IOPS to around 65 IOPS for one of the
database LUNs, which is about a 27.7 percent difference.
Figure 31.
Exchange database LUN performance with XtremSW Cache data deduplication
XtremSW Cache for SharePoint
Overview
For the SharePoint environment, content database and crawl database LUNs are most
suitable for XtremSW Cache acceleration.
A typical SharePoint content database workload has a 70:30 read-to-write ratio,
making it an ideal candidate for XtremSW Cache acceleration. With two 600 GB
XtremSW Cache devices configured on two 700 GB XtremSF cards, the database
latency can drop to less than one third during a full crawl.
Benefits of
XtremSW Cache in
a SharePoint
environment
Best practices
This use case demonstrates the following results:

XtremSW Cache offloads the read workload of the SharePoint content database
workload during the crawl process from the storage array to the server.

XtremSW Cache improves the crawl performance by lowering the latencies in
the content database of the SharePoint farm in a virtualized environment.

XtremSW Cache has little impact on system resources such as CPU and
memory.

Integration with the VSI plug-in for VMware vSphere vCenter makes XtremSW
Cache easy to manage and monitor in a virtualized environment.
In a SharePoint environment, the LUNs for the content databases during the crawl
process can benefit most from XtremSW Cache acceleration. Thus the database file
LUNs for the content database should be good candidates for the XtremSW Cache
source LUNs. Exclude the log LUNs and tempdb LUNs from the XtremSW Cache as
they are mostly write-heavy.
In summary, in a typical SharePoint Farm:

The content database file LUNs and crawl database LUNs with a heavy
workload are good candidates for the XtremSW Cache source LUNs.
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Chapter 5: XtremSW Cache Solution for Applications
Use case design
and deployment

Log LUNs and tempdb LUNs in the SharePoint farm are excluded from the
acceleration of XtremSW Cache.

Set the page size to 64 KB and the maximum I/O size to 128 KB in the XtremSW
Cache to accommodate the large I/O size of the content and crawl databases,
especially when NFS is in use.

For each 1 TB of the content database, an XtremSW Cache of 200 GB or more
can significantly improve the OLTP query performance.
The example use case deployed a virtualized SharePoint 2010 farm with 1.8 TB
content databases in one SQL Server 2012 virtual machine in a vSphere 5.1
virtualized environment, configured with two 700 GB XtremSF cards. You can improve
the performance of the SharePoint crawl by:

Deploying 600 GB XtremSW Cache in the SQL Server virtual machine

Configuring all the content database file LUNs and the crawl database file LUNs
to be accelerated by the XtremSW Cache
The latency for these LUNs decreases dramatically and the crawl performance
improves by more than 20 percent.
The configuration of XtremSW Cache for SharePoint in a VMware environment is
similar to the SQL Server configuration. Only the SQL Server virtual machine in the
SharePoint farm needs XtremSW Cache acceleration.
The solution design includes the following components, as shown in Figure 32:
66

XtremSF installed on vSphere ESXi servers hosting the SQL Server virtual
machine for SharePoint Server

XtremSW Cache enabled on the SQL Server virtual machine, only configured for
the content databases and the crawl databases

Storage tiers with FAST VP enabled
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Chapter 5: XtremSW Cache Solution for Applications
Figure 32. Architecture design for XtremSW Cache enabled SharePoint environment
Deployment scenarios
Figure 33 shows the XtremSW Cache deployment for this use case. All the content
database file LUNs are configured as source LUNs for XtremSW Cache acceleration,
but tempdb LUNs and log LUNs are excluded.
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Chapter 5: XtremSW Cache Solution for Applications
Figure 33. XtremSW Cache deployment for SharePoint 2010 on vSphere
Configuration of
XtremSW Cache in
the VMware
environment
In this solution, two cache devices with a usable size of 600 GB out of the 700 GB
XtremSW Cache card are configured for the content database virtual machine. All the
LUNs for the content databases data file and the crawl database data file are
associated with the two cache devices.
During the crawl process, the content database data file is 100 percent random read
and the crawl database data file is around 60 percent read. Set the I/O page size for
the cache device to 64 KB (the default is 8 KB) and the maximum I/O size to 128 KB
(the default is 64 KB).
Test results
The Read Hit rate for the content database during a full crawl is about 70 to 75
percent, and the crawl database is around 40 percent.
The hard disks that store the content databases all have an over 70 percent Read Hit
rate. The Read Hit rate is around 40 percent for the crawl database hard disk.
The latency of the content databases and crawl database dropped dramatically after
we enabled the cache device, as shown in Figure 34. Note that the property database
is not configured as source devices for cache. The latency drop contributed to the
property database improvement because it was in the same disk pool in the storage
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Chapter 5: XtremSW Cache Solution for Applications
array. As the I/Os on the backend for the content and crawl database were offloaded
to the XtremSW Cache, a side effect was an improvement in the latency for the
property database.
Figure 34.
Content database latency dropped after enabling XtremSW Cache
The full crawl duration decreased by 21.2 percent when XtremSW Cache was enabled,
as shown in Figure 35.
Figure 35.
Full crawl performance improved after enabling XtremSW cache
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Chapter 5: XtremSW Cache Solution for Applications
XtremSW Cache for Oracle OLTP database
Overview
In the VSPEX for virtualized Oracle environment, the database LUN for the OLTP
database is most likely to benefit from XtremSW Cache acceleration.
We tested a database with a read-to-write ratio of 70:30. Within an XtremSW Cache of
200 GB to accelerate 1 TB of the database LUN, the transaction rate almost doubled.
Benefits of
XtremSW Cache in
an Oracle
environment
Best practices
Similar to the application environments described previously, the VSPEX for
virtualized Oracle environment will benefit from XtremSW Cache as a server-based
cache. Introducing the XtremSW Cache virtual infrastructure does not require any
changes to the application or storage system layouts. Because XtremSW Cache is a
caching solution rather than a storage solution, there is no need to move data.
Therefore, your data is not at risk of becoming inaccessible if the server or the PCIe
card fails. XtremSW Cache is designed to minimize CPU overhead in the server by
offloading Flash management operations from the host CPU to the PCIe card. In an
virtualized Oracle OLTP environment, XtremSW Cache:

Delivers an 80 percent improvement in transactions per minute (TPM)
compared to the baseline without any changes to applications

Maintains the integrity of and protects the data
In an Oracle Database 11g R2 environment, the database file LUNs can benefit most
from XtremSW Cache acceleration and are good candidates for the XtremSW Cache
source LUNs.
In summary, in a typical Oracle OLTP environment:
Use case design
and deployment

The database file LUNs with a heavy workload are good candidates for the
XtremSW Cache source LUNs.

Log LUNs and tempdb LUNs in the OLTP databases are excluded from the
acceleration of XtremSW Cache.

For each 1 TB of database with a read-to-write ratio of 70:30, an XtremSW
Cache of 200 GB or more can significantly improve the performance of the
database.
The example use case deployed a standard TPC-C-like OLTP workload, with a 1.2 TB
database and a 70 to 30 percent read/write mix on Oracle Database 11g R2 on a Red
Hat Enterprise Linux 5 virtual machine virtualized with vSphere 5.1. By deploying 250
GB of usable XtremSW Cache in the Oracle virtual machine from a single 350 GB
XtremSF card, the performance of the workload can be dramatically improved. The
transactions per minute improved 80 percent compared with the same environment
without XtremSW Cache.
The solution design includes the physical components shown in Figure 36:

70
A single vSphere ESXi server hosting one Oracle Database 11g R2 server on a
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 virtual machine
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
A 1.2 TB database on eight VMDK LUNs for the database files and two VMDK
LUNs for the logs

XtremSF installed on the EXSi server with a 250 GB XtremSW Cache configured
for the Oracle virtual machine
We configured only database VMDKs as source LUNs for XtremSW Cache. We
excluded the log LUNs and the tempdb LUNs.
Figure 36. Architecture design for XtremSW Cache enabled Oracle 11g R2 environment
Deployment scenarios
Figure 37 shows the XtremSW Cache deployment for the Oracle use case. We
configured all the database VMDK LUNs on the virtual machines as source LUNs for
XtremSW Cache acceleration. We excluded log LUNs because of their write-intensive
nature. In this deployment, we configured 250 GB of XtremSW Cache for caching 1.2
TB of the OLTP database.
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Chapter 5: XtremSW Cache Solution for Applications
Figure 37. XtremSW Cache deployment for Oracle 11g R2 on vSphere
Configuration of
XtremSW Cache in
a VMware
environment
The configuration of XtremSW Cache for Oracle in a VMware environment is similar to
the configuration of the other application environments described in the previous
sections.
Test results
Figure 38 compares the overall system throughput (in TPM) of the baseline and
XtremSW Cache-enabled environments. The availability of the hot data in the server’s
XtremSW Cache resulted in an 80 percent improvement in transactions per minute.
Figure 38. OLTP TPM improvement
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XtremSW Cache for private cloud
Overview
This use case deployed the XtremSW Cache to accelerate performance of the
following applications in a private cloud environment virtualized with VMware:

Oracle Database 11g R2 OLTP database

SQL Server OLTP database

SQL Server decision support system (DSS) database

SQL Server 2012 cluster
In the Oracle and SQL Server OLTP virtual machines, we configured the XtremSW
Cache based on the principals described in the previous application-specific
sections. The cluster support configured XtremSW Cache for both active and passive
databases. SQL Server DSS uses XtremSF storage in a split configuration for the
tempdb of the DSS database.
With a comprehensive private cloud environment, XtremSW Cache and XtremSF
proved to be flexible and were able to deliver the expected performance improvement
for all the applications in different configurations.
XtremSW Cache is proven to complement FAST VP for performance improvement of
both the SQL Server and Oracle OLTP databases.
The tempdb, supported by XtremSF in the database for the DSS workload, gets a
performance boost from the XtremSF.
Benefits of
XtremSW Cache in
a private cloud
environment
This EMC solution has shown the implementation of multiple critical applications in a
VMware private cloud environment, supported by XtremSF and XtremSW Cache. Each
application had different workload characteristics and placed varying demands on
the underlying storage. XtremSW Cache provided better performance for the
applications that involve heavy read I/O.
The benefits of XtremSW Cache in a private cloud environment include the following:

Performance optimization—accelerating application-specific performance at
the host level using EMC XtremSF cards:

With a three-tier FAST VP configuration, XtremSW Cache offloads the IOPS
of the array significantly. The array can be free for other I/O requests.

With a two-tier FAST VP configuration, XtremSW Cache reduces disk
latencies and response times, enabling a higher transaction throughput.

XtremSW Cache reduces disk latencies and response time, enabling higher
transaction throughput by offloading much of the read I/O traffic from the
storage array.

XtremSW Cache caches the read I/O so the data is not at risk of being
inaccessible if the server or the XtremSW Cache card fails.

Using XtremSF storage in a split-card configuration for the tempdb of the DSS
database boosts the performance of the tempdb.
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Chapter 5: XtremSW Cache Solution for Applications

XtremSW Cache in a virtualized environment is easy to manage and monitor
due to its integration with the VSI plug-in to VMware vSphere vCenter.

XtremSW Cache deduplication helps to reduce the footprint on bandwidth.
In this private cloud environment, XtremSW Cache demonstrated both flexibility and
ease of management in a comprehensive configuration, improving performance while
having little impact on system resource consumption.
Best practices
Use case design
and deployment
In a private cloud environment, multiple applications need to be considered. Follow
the application-specific best practices, particularly for the deployment of XtremSW
Cache in a heterogenic environment:

Allocate XtremSW Cache for the most critical application virtual machine first,
and then consider the rest of the virtual machines.

Consider placing virtual machines on a different physical server to optimize the
capacity of XtremSF.

MLC XtremSF (alone or in split-card mode) can be used as a tempdb for data
warehouse or DSS types of databases. To improve query performance, consider
allowing at least 200 GB of tempdb space for every 1 TB of database.
In the example use case, Microsoft SQL Server 2012 (two OLTP and one DSS), Oracle
Database 11g R2 (OLTP), and Microsoft SQL Server failover clustering are all on the
virtualized environment. These applications ran on virtual machines in a VMware
vSphere 5 environment on FAST VP-enabled EMC storage, which continually monitors
and tunes performance by relocating data across tiers based on access patterns and
predefined FAST policies.
We deployed XtremSF on both ESXi servers, one configured in a split-card mode. We
configured XtremSW Cache to support the OLTP databases for caching purposes,
while using the remaining XtremSF capacity for the storage of tempdb in the DSS
database.
Load generation tools drove these applications simultaneously to validate the
infrastructure and function of XtremSW Cache acceleration to the data LUNs of the
OLTP application.
The solution design included the following components, as shown in Figure 39:
74

Two vSphere ESXi servers, one hosting the Oracle Database 11g R2 server and
a SQL Server virtual machine as part of Microsoft Server failover cluster; the
other hosting the other SQL Server of the MSCS, two SQL Servers with OLTP,
and one SQL Server with a DSS workload.

XtremSF configured in split-mode is used as tempdb storage for the SQL Server
virtual machine with the DSS workload.

XtremSW Cache enabled on all other virtual machines.

FAST VP-enabled storage tiers.
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Chapter 5: XtremSW Cache Solution for Applications
Figure 39. Architecture design for XtremSW Cache-enabled private cloud environment with
multiple applications
Deployment scenarios
Table 7 shows the XtremSW Cache deployment for the private cloud use case. The
configuration of the database LUNs follows the same best practices as the
application-specific use cases, such as source LUNs for XtremSW Cache acceleration.
We excluded the log LUNs because they have mostly write and sequential I/O. We
used XtremSF in split mode for the DSS tempdb store to accelerate the DSS workload.
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Chapter 5: XtremSW Cache Solution for Applications
Table 7.
XtremSW Cache deployment in a private cloud environment
XtremSW Cache allocation per
application/virtual machine
ESXi 01
(allocation unit:
GB)
ESXi 02
(allocation unit:
GB)
Configuration details
Oracle OLTP
600
0
2 TB database under 1,800
Swingbench sessions
DSS
0
200
2.5 TB database with DSS
workload
SQL OLTP 01
0
200
1.75 TB with OLTP
workload
SQL OLTP 02
0
200
1.12 TB with OLTP
workload
Total
600
600
Configuration of
XtremSW Cache in
the VMware
environment
The configuration of XtremSW Cache for a private cloud in a VMware environment
needs to follow all the guidelines for each individual application, such as SharePoint,
SQL Server, Exchange, and Oracle.
Test results
Test result for XtremSF in split mode used as the SQL Server tempdb for a DSS
workload
For more information, refer to the EMC XtremSW Cache Installation and
Administration Guide.
In the solution, a 200 GB XtremSW Cache was taken from the 700 GB XtremSF card
and was used for the tempdb database data and log storage to accelerate
performance. The SQL Server tempdb was heavily used as a temporary table store for
sorting, row versioning, and so on. As the tempdb store for a DSS workload, the
XtremSW Cache DAS can:

Lower the peak latency of the tempdb data LUN from tens of milliseconds to
less than 20 ms.

Lower the average tempdb data LUN latency from tens of milliseconds to
one ms.
Test results for XtremSW Cache deduplication
The test result shows:

The Oracle deduplication hit ratio was about 4 percent.

The SQL OLTP deduplication hit ratio was about 3 percent.
The recommended deduplication settings for a structured database such as Oracle or
SQL Server are:

76
If the observed ratio is less than 10 percent, turn off the deduplication or
reconfigure the deduplication gain to zero percent, to benefit from the extended
cache device life.
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
If the observed ratio is over 35 percent, raise the deduplication gain to match
the observed deduplication.

If the observed ratio is between 10 and 35 percent, leave the deduplication
gain as it is.
Figure 40 shows that the deduplication hit ratio of SQL Server is 3 percent.
Figure 40.
Deduplication statistics for SQL Server OLTP
Test results for two-tier storage
Table 8 shows the performance summary for the private cloud environment. For
Oracle, the response time dropped from 35 ms to 3 ms. For SQL Server, the response
time dropped from over 20 ms to 3 ms. All database transaction rates improved, with
the SQL Server OLTP gaining the most—a three times transaction rate using part of
the 700 GB caching space.
The increased CPU usage was largely due to the increased workload. When the
workload is kept the same or is not greatly increased, CPU usage does not increase
much. This is seen in the case of ESXi 01, which hosts Oracle—with only a moderate
increase in the workload, the CPU usage did not greatly increase.
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Table 8.
Component
Performance
Two tiers configured
without XtremSW Cache
Two tiers configured
with XtremSW Cache
SAN storage
Array IOPS
24,000
10,000
Busy%
60%
30%
ESXi 01
Avg. CPU utilization
16%
21%
ESXi 02
Avg. CPU utilization
2%
40%
Oracle OLTP
Swingbench Order Entry
(SOE) TPS
6,653
8,590
Swingbench Avg. Oracle
response (ms)
35
3
SQL01 Latency (ms)
read/write/transfer
22/4/21
3/2/3
SQL02 Latency (ms)
read/write/transfer
21/4/21
2/3/2
SQL01 vCPU utilization
1.20%
69.84%
SQL02 vCPU utilization
1.46%
63.04%
Client TPS (total)
56
162
TPS
2,073
6,054
XtremSW Cache Hit
Rate
SQL01
N/A
69%
SQL02
N/A
82%
XtremSW Cache Read
Rate
SQL01
N/A
93%
SQL02
N/A
89%
SQL Server
78
Performance summary for the private cloud environment
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Chapter 6: References
Chapter 6
References
This chapter presents the following topics:
EMC documentation ............................................................................................... 80
Other documentation ............................................................................................. 81
Links ..................................................................................................................... 81
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Chapter 6: References
EMC documentation
The following documents, available from the EMC Online Support or EMC.com
websites, provide additional and relevant information. If you do not have access to a
document, contact your EMC representative.

EMC VNX Virtual Provisioning—Applied Technology

EMC VNX Series Unified Storage Systems—Specification Sheet

EMC VNX Family—Data Sheet

EMC Mission Critical Infrastructure for Microsoft SQL Server 2012—White Paper

EMC Storage Optimization and High Availability for Microsoft SQL Server 2008
R2 - EMC VNX5700, EMC FAST Suite, VMware vSphere 5—White Paper

EMC Mission Critical Infrastructure for Microsoft SQL Server 2012 - EMC
Symmetrix VMAX 10K, EMC FAST VP, SQL Server AlwaysOn Availability Groups,
VMware vSphere—White Paper

Accelerating Microsoft Exchange 2010 Performance with EMC XtremSW Cache EMC VNX Storage and VMware vSphere—White Paper

EMC VFCache Accelerates Oracle - EMC VFCache, EMC Symmetrix VMAX and
VMAX 10K, Oracle Database 11g—White Paper

EMC VFCache Accelerates Virtualized Oracle - EMC VFCache, EMC Symmetrix
VMAX and VMAX 10K, VMware vSphere, Oracle Database 11g—White Paper

EMC VFCache Accelerates Oracle - EMC VFCache, EMC VNX, EMC FAST Suite,
Oracle Database 11g—White Paper

EMC VFCache Accelerates Microsoft SQL Server - EMC VFCache, EMC VNX,
Microsoft SQL Server 2008—White Paper

EMC VFCache Accelerates Virtualized Oracle - EMC VFCache, EMC Symmetrix
VMAX, EMC FAST Suite, VMware vSphere, Oracle Database 11g—White Paper
For additional information, visit the following spaces on EMC.com:

XtremSW Cache

VNX Series
At the time of publication, the following related documents were available:
80

XtremSW Cache Installation and Administration Guide v1.5

XtremSW Cache Installation Guide for VMware 1.5

XtremSW Cache Troubleshooting Guide 1.5

XtremSW Cache Troubleshooting Guide for VMware v1.5

XtremSW Cache VMware VSI Plug-in Guide 1.5

Introduction to EMC VFCache

EMC VFCache—Data Sheet
EMC VSPEX with EMC XtremSF and EMC XtremSW Cache
Design Guide
Chapter 6: References

VFCache Installation and Administration Guide for Windows and Linux

VFCache Release Notes for Windows and Linux

VFCache Installation Guide for VMware

VFCache Release Notes for VMware

VFCache VMware Plug-in—Administration Guide

Considerations for Choosing SLC versus MLC Flash

EMC Storage Integrator for Windows Version 2.0—Product Guide

Microsoft Exchange 2010 on VMware—Best Practices Guide

VSI for VMware vSphere: Storage Viewer Version Product Guide 5.4
Other documentation
For additional Microsoft information, refer to the following articles:

SQL Server Best Practices

Tuning options for SQL Server when running in high performance workloads

Optimizing tempdb Performance

Microsoft Multipath I/O (MPIO) Users Guide for Windows Server 2012
For additional Oracle information, refer to the following documents:

Oracle Database Installation Guide11g Release 2 (11.2) for Linux

Oracle Database Release Notes for Linux
Links
For additional product information, visit the following websites:

VMware

Microsoft TechNet Library

MSDN Library

Oracle Database 11gR2 Documentation Library 11g Release 2 (11.2)

Oracle Support website (for the latest OPatch and latest PSU)
Note
The links provided in this guide were working correctly at the time of publication.
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Appendix A: Ordering Information
Appendix A
Ordering Information
This appendix presents the following topic:
XtremSF and XtremSW Cache ordering information ................................................ 84
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Appendix A: Ordering Information
XtremSF and XtremSW Cache ordering information
Use the following model numbers for placing an order on Channel Express:


84
XtremSW Cache:

VFC-Software ( XtremSW Cache software)

VFC-MEZZ-SW (XtremSW Cache software for Cisco UCS blades)
XtremSF:

PCIEHHM-550V
(550 GB, eMLC)

PCIEHHM-700M ( 700GB, eMLC, will be available from July, 2013)

PCIEHHM-1400M ( 1.4TB, eMLC,will be available from July, 2013)

PCIEHHM-2200V
(2.2 TB, eMLC)

PCIEHHS-3XXM2
(300 GB, SLC)

PCIEHHS-7XXM
(700 GB, SLC)

UCSB-F-LSI-400S
(400 GB, SLC, ordered from Cisco)
EMC VSPEX with EMC XtremSF and EMC XtremSW Cache
Design Guide