HP StorageWorks SAN Virtualization Services Platform (HP SVSP)

Technology Overview and Use Cases

Table of contents
Abstract.............................................................................................................................................. 2 Introduction......................................................................................................................................... 2 Virtualization Overview ........................................................................................................................ 2 What is virtualization?...................................................................................................................... 2 The need for storage virtualization ..................................................................................................... 2 Advantages of storage virtualization .................................................................................................. 3 Necessary features of a storage virtualization solution.......................................................................... 3 Storage virtualization methods........................................................................................................... 4 Virtualization at the host level ........................................................................................................ 4 Virtualization at the storage subsystem level .................................................................................... 4 Network-based virtualization ......................................................................................................... 4 Network-based Virtualization Implementation Methods ......................................................................... 4 Symmetric (In-the-Data-Path) virtualization ........................................................................................ 5 Split path virtualization ................................................................................................................. 5 HP SAN Virtualization Services Platform ................................................................................................. 7 HP SVSP at a glance ........................................................................................................................ 7 Use Cases......................................................................................................................................... 10 Consolidation and Centralized Management .................................................................................... 10 Improving IT economics with storage virtualization ......................................................................... 10 Non-disruptive Data Migration......................................................................................................... 13 Simplifying capacity management and Data mobility...................................................................... 13 Application test, development, and deployment ................................................................................. 15 Streamlining IT processes for greater productivity ........................................................................... 15 Rapid restore of files and applications .............................................................................................. 17 Minimizing downtime by enabling Rapid Restore of volumes and files .............................................. 17 Cost-effective Disaster Recovery (DR) ................................................................................................ 19 Affordable Services for Rapid Recovery of Business Operations after Site or Regional Disasters ........... 19 Complete Data Protection................................................................................................................ 25 Comprehensive Data Management Services for Multi-tiered Data Protection ...................................... 25 Conclusion........................................................................................................................................ 27 For more information.......................................................................................................................... 27

Abstract
The HP StorageWorks SAN virtualization Services Platform or SVSP is a network-based storage virtualization solution that enables enterprises to manage, pool, and share storage resources to improve efficiency, simplify operations, and lower total cost of ownership (TCO). This paper provides a general overview of virtualization technology and explains in more detail the value of storage virtualization in modern IT infrastructures. It then describes the HP SVSP architecture, its benefits, and the various data management services that SVSP provides. Finally, this paper presents a number of common use cases and describes more specifically the benefits of the SVSP in those scenarios.

Introduction
In todays challenging business environment, IT managers are seeking infrastructure solutions that extend the value of current and future IT investments, simplify operations, and increase the overall efficiency. As IT looks for transformation to bring about such a vision, virtualization, and especially server virtualization, has emerged as one of the most significant shifts in IT. Server virtualization adoption is high and it is being used extensively in both mission critical and business critical applications. It provides well recognized benefits like increased server utilization, the ability to easily provision compute resources, and improved application availability. However, it brings a series of storage challenges that could undermine and even nullify the benefits of server virtualization. Virtual environments need virtualized storage to enable and actually accelerate the benefits of server virtualization. Network-based storage virtualization in particular, provides a flexible, scalable implementation that enables firms to optimize capacity utilization and streamline operations for greater productivity. This paper reviews the SVSP, newest network-based virtualization solution by HP, and explores in more details the specific ways in which storage virtualization can help IT to drive better business outcomes.

Virtualization Overview
What is virtualization?
Virtualization is the aggregation of physical resources into a unified structure (pool) and the presentation of those resources as capabilities that can be consumed by applications or other types of clients. The term virtualization has really become an umbrella that encompasses a vast group of encapsulation and management technologies as well as implementation methods. These approaches create pools of sharable resources that enhance utilization and, ultimately, can automatically allocate the resources to match supply to demand.

The need for storage virtualization

Storage virtualization is a key component of a fully virtualized IT environment. The explosive growth in storage capacity and processing power in many enterprise installations, coupled with the need for high availability and 24x7 operations, requires SAN architectures that enable seamless addition and management of storage and performance elements without downtime. Storage must match the agility of virtualized servers, and this is best achieved through virtualization of the storage.

Storage virtualization can create logical views of storage that are distinct from their physical components, thereby insulating application access and utilization of storage from infrastructure configuration and management. The term storage virtualization is used to indicate the operation of dividing the available storage space into virtual volumes without regard to the physical layout or topology of the actual storage elements (for example, disk drives, RAID subsystems, and the like). Typically, virtual volumes are presented to Operating Systems as an abstraction of physical disks and are used by these OS as if they were such disk drives. The main difference between a virtual volume and physical volume is that a virtual volume can be created, expanded, deleted, moved, and selectively presented, independent of the underlying storage subsystems. The independence of virtual volumes from physical storage is essential to support the dynamic mobility inherent in virtual machines. It is also essential for maximizing storage utilization (with features like Thin Provisioning), and to enable the migration and replacement of obsolete storage subsystems without causing data access interruptions. In addition, virtualization of storage enables the usage of software applications instead of human administrators to perform volume allocations. Finally, data management is significantly enhanced through storage applications such as Snapshots, Remote Mirroring, and Server-Free Backup. To summarize, the promise of SANs can be fully realized with storage virtualization.

Advantages of storage virtualization

Figure 1: Storage Virtualization benefits

Speedy delivery of new applications and business services Put unused resources and capacity to work Increase focus on business priorities Reduce IT costs and risk

Typical block virtualization benefits (1) Improved asset utilization by 300% Shrink back-up windows by up to 80% Manage up to 3x more storage/administrator

Improve end-user manageability and security

(1)

Business Value of Storage Virtualization: Scaling the storage solution, leveraging the storage investment, Richard Villars & Randy Perry, IDC, Feb. 2009

Necessary features of a storage virtualization solution

Storage virtualization should provide the following functions without affecting inherent performance, availability, scalability, and security of the SAN: Universality: The creation of a unified view of the virtual storage regardless of the physical elements or topology Single Point Management: To enable the construction of the cost-effective SAN Storage subsystem independence: To enable unbiased selection of best of breed systems Heterogeneous SAN support: To enable growth in changing market conditions

 Flexible allocation of storage space to servers: To effectively meet users needs

Storage virtualization methods

Virtualization at the host level One method of virtualization is through storage management software that runs on the server. The software may reside in the operating system, or in a driver, or as a layered software application. Server-based virtualization can be applied to any storage visible to the server, and an advantage of this method is that it enables storage subsystems to work in parallel with multiple servers. A key difficulty with this method is that it assumes a prior partitioning of the entire SAN resources (physical volumes or virtual volumes) to the various servers. Virtualization is only performed on pre-assigned storage, losing a key advantage of SAN as well as the independence of physical volumes from servers. Typically, entire virtual volumes are assigned to specific servers, thus limiting the number of servers that can use the same storage subsystem. Furthermore, a virtual volume created over the storage space of, say, two virtual volumes will not be easily moved to another server, especially if there are other volumes created over the same virtual volume. Virtualization at the host level, typically, also requires augmenting the management function with some parallel mechanism of zoning and virtual volumes relying on LAN connectivity for synchronization between servers, which may affect the reliability of the entire SAN. Finally, virtualization at the host level may reduce the server resources available to applications. Virtualization at the storage subsystem level This method was first implemented in mainframe environments in the 90s and is one of the most common storage virtualization solutions in use today. The virtualization functions are achieved by creating virtual volumes over the storage space of the specific storage subsystem. Storage-based virtualization derives many of its benefits from the performance advantages inherent in modern array controller architectures (including design integration and low latency), the ability to connect easily to switches and/or host adapters, and neutrality in presenting virtualized capabilities to hosts. Most limitations of storage-based virtualization are related to the span of resources it can control typically a single physical storage subsystem. Pooling all SAN storage resources and managing virtual volumes across several storage subsystems usually requires that this method be augmented by other means. With the notable exception of HP StorageWorks XP arrays (which can virtualize heterogeneous storage), most storage-based virtualization tends to work only for homogenous storage environments and can contribute to vendor lock-in. Network-based virtualization Network-based storage virtualization is applied to resources presented by storage subsystems attached to a storage network (typically a SAN)usually to join a number of disk arrays into a single or multiple pools from which virtual (logical) disks are created and presented to hosts. Virtual disks created within the network can be presented to any host connected to the network, and they are securely presented in a host-neutral manner. Also, these virtual pools may themselves be backed by virtualized storage subsystems like the HP StorageWorks Enterprise Virtual Array. Notice that in this example, different virtualization approaches are combined to achieve the desired results (for example, availability, performance, and physical location). Network-based virtualization is one of the most flexible approaches due to its neutrality toward both storage and servers.

Network-based Virtualization Implementation Methods

Today, network-based virtualization is being implemented in two major architectures:
1. Symmetric approach: Separate appliances in-the-data-path of the storage network infrastructure

2. Split path approach: Separate appliances installed out-of-the-data-path of the storage

network infrastructure

Symmetric (In-the-Data-Path) virtualization The general architecture of the symmetric approach (sometimes referred to as In-the-Data-Path) is shown in the following figure. This approach calls for the appliance (a computing platform and associated memory) to be installed between the servers and the storage resources on the SAN, at least in terms of data flow. A key drawback of the symmetric approach to virtualization is that it creates a SAN bottleneck (and thus limits the SAN performance and scalability) and significantly complicates the design of large-scale highly available configurations.

Figure 2: Symmetric Virtualization

The symmetric virtualization concept creates a bottleneck because all data from all applications must pass through a virtualization appliance to be processed, and thus forces the appliance to sustain the throughput of the entire SAN, impacting performance. Some symmetric designs are attempting to circumvent this performance problem by adding a cache facility to the appliance. However, the use of caching within the fabric plays against the high availability and scalability qualities of the SAN. In order to scale, complex mechanisms must be put in place to insure cache coherence. Experience with RAID controllers has shown that this can be both complicated and expensive. Split path virtualization This method uses a combination of appliances and network agents to create and manage virtual volumes while enabling direct data transfer between server and storage subsystems for optimal performance. By having multiple storage subsystems working in parallel with multiple servers, total performance can be increased up to the maximum of the FC fabric bandwidth. In the split path approach metadata handling is done separately from the data path. The appliance serves as a Metadata Center that sees the physical storage and allocates virtual volume mapping.

The agent retrieves the volume configuration from the appliance and presents virtual volumes to the operating system as if they were disk drives. When the operating system sends an I/O to the virtual volume, the Agent intercepts the I/O, translates the volumes logical address to the physical address, and sends the I/Os directly to the storage devices. The HP SVSP is an example of this architecture, where the Data Path Modules (or DPMs) act as agent and the Virtualization Server managers (or VSMs) act as the appliance. This architecture maintains the flexibility of symmetric virtualization without incurring the degradation of performance or the high cost of hardware. The appliance can be a small and inexpensive unit.

Figure 3: Split path virtualization

High Availability (HA) SAN configurations can be implemented through simple redundancy of the appliance. Very high degrees of scalability can be achieved through loosely connected storage domains and similar designs, benefiting from the key advantage of the split path concept, so that there are neither pending I/Os stored in the appliance nor is there a need for clustering, cache coherency algorithms, or other complex mechanisms, which limit the practical expansion of real-life enterprise SANs.

HP SAN Virtualization Services Platform

The HP SVSP provides a cost-effective and change-ready storage virtualization solution that addresses the storage management, utilization, and mobility challenges of virtual environments. It can accelerate the path to the benefits of virtual environments. The SVSP aggregates capacity of multiple SAN attached arrays and creates pools of virtual storage that can be easily provisioned to virtual and physical machines on demand. It also provides a comprehensive set of data services across all managed capacity that enables the SVSP platform to address a significant number of use cases to streamline operations and increase productivity. Some of the use cases that the SVSP can address are reviewed in more detail in the last section of this paper.

HP SVSP at a glance
The HP SVSP is targeted at enterprise and mid-range firms that are experiencing significant storage growth, may be deploying server virtualization, and need to improve productivity. The SVSP helps customers improve efficiency, simplify operations, and lower TCO, by enabling the pooling and sharing of storage resources and providing a range of storage services for those resources. The SVSP also supports heterogeneous arrays to facilitate pooling of storage across HP and non-HP arrays. The SVSPs comprehensive set of data service includes: Centralized management and pooling of storage resources Consolidation of HP and non-HP arrays Centralized volume management High performance, highly scalable split path architecture Comprehensive set of storage data services Non-disruptive data migration copy services (clones and snapshots) Sync (local) and Async (local and remote) mirroring Improved asset utilization and decreased costs with thin provisioning Provision thin volumes and grow to larger ones over time Thin provisioning for any vendors hardware No rip-and-replace approaches are required

Figure 4: HP SVSP Management Interface

Figure 5: HP SVSP Architecture

Figure #5 illustrates a typical SVSP SAN deployment. The storage layer includes arrays from different vendors (HP, EMC, SUN, and IBM) and a Fibre Channel SAN (the storage network itself). The server layer has multiple servers from different vendors running different operating systems: Windows, Linux, HP-UX, and the like. The figure also illustrates the detail of the split path architecture for the SVSP as well as the presence of the typical data services: snapshots, snapclones, data migration, thin provisioning, and remote mirroring. Storage in an SVSP system starts with LUNs from each of the storage arraysthe LUNS are presented to the SVSP system, which will manage them for day-to-day operations. The virtualization work is performed by the DPMs and VSMs in the fabric (at least two of each for redundancy). The DPM is the element in the architecture that does real-time parsing of FC frames by examining packets and making immediate translation decisions. The DPM gets its virtual-to-physical storage mappings from the VSM software that performs data management operations (for example, backup, migration). In this way, the SVSPs innovative design separates data flow (through DPM) from management processes (handled by VSM), so that the processing power needed to handle data path workloads can scale independently from the resources used for management and data movement. All management or control path operations take place between the VSM and DPM without disrupting the data path between servers and storage arrays.

The SVSP allows for the creation of storage pools according to business needs and required Quality of Service. (For example, in figure 5, the storage pool marked green can be used to store data with high availability requirements.) From those storage pools, the platform can create virtual disks which are assigned to the different servers. The SVSP allows better utilization of the storage by assigning free storage from the storage pools. Additionally, users can choose to thin provision volumes for greater asset utilization. Storage pool expansion becomes routine and simple. Finally, the SVSP also delivers a unified set of data services that provides the necessary tools to address a series of important use casesexplained in the next sectionthat drive significant value by helping customers improve efficiency, simplify operations, and increase productivity. The remainder of this paper will review these use cases.

Figure 6: What are customers asking for?

Problems provisioning heterogeneous HA SANs Problems testing new applications Not enough time to backup or the need for rapid recovery Migrating data between heterogeneous storage Struggling to create a DR Plan

Heterogeneous storage arrays with multiple device managers

SVSP Volume Manager

Snapshot/Copy EMC Timefinder/ SnapView HDS ShadowImage IBM FlashCopy

SVSP Business Copy

Clones and Snapshots Non-Disruptive Data Migration with SVSP Volume Manager

Remote Mirroring EMC SRDF/ MirrorView HDS TrueCopy IBM PPRC

SVSP Continuous Access

Use Cases
Consolidation and Centralized Management
Improving IT economics with storage virtualization Many customers today have storage arrays from different vendors or at least different generations of arrays from the same vendor. Except in very rare instances, the customer is forced to recall the capabilities of each type of storage and use a different set of management tools or licenses from each vendor, including data services options, in order to manage each array separately. As the number of servers (virtual and physical) and storage devices grows, hundreds or thousands of volumes must be individually monitored and managed by storage administratorsa daunting task to say the least. Complexity, cost, and capacity utilization rates are all negatively impacted in these traditional deployments, particularly when server virtualization is introduced.

Figure 7: De-centralized multi-vendor deployments

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Customer Problem
Management complexity of multiple Poor storage capacity utilization Application downtime due to

Solution
Aggregate capacity through

Customer Impact Business impact

Flexibility, Adaptive Infrastructure

tools and multiple islands of storage

network-based virtualization with the SVSP, to form centrally managed pools of virtual storage unused space, maximize application uptime by expanding capacity on a just-in-time basis,

enabling faster responses to changing business conditions

out-of-space conditions new storage architecture

Dynamically provision storage, reclaim

Maximizes application availability

Time consuming provisioning of High cost of a single tier storage Lack of ability to respond faster to

for revenue-producing activity

Operational impact
Prevents server downtime due to

Centrally manage multiple arrays and

storage change requests

multiple data services with a consistent set of tools data among the tiers to optimize storage costs

out-of-space conditions

Reduces the time needed to respond

Incremental complexities of server

Create storage tiers and easily migrate

to support additional servers, applications, and users administrator can manage

virtualization requirements

Increases the amount of storage each Reduces administrative errors by

Improve capacity utilization with thin

provisioning for all capacity under management irrespective of the array type

using one management console for all storage devices striping across RAID arrays

Better performance due to volume

Financial Impact
Reduces storage costs

Reclaims unused storage Greater storage utilization Lower TCO, CAPEX, and OPEX

Consolidation and management of multiple arrays from various vendors is made easy using the SVSP. It allows the storage administrator to aggregate capacity through virtualization into centrally managed pools. The SVSP facilitates management of heterogeneous arrays, which can be used to create storage pools and create front-end (host visible) volumes. The HP SVSP also deploys role based management, which makes day-to-day administrative jobs easier. Storage consolidation and centralized storage management with the HP SVSP Aggregates all available capacity into centrally managed pools Improves performance by striping LUNs across RAID arrays Allocates appropriately-sized LUNs to each server Provides thin provisioning to increase storage utilization Maintains unused capacity in pool for future requirements Dynamically and granularly allocates additional capacity to any server on a just-in-time basis Strong multi-vendor support

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Figure 8: Consolidation and Centralized Storage management with the HP SVSP

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Non-disruptive Data Migration

Simplifying capacity management and Data mobility Traditional SANs would typically have various types of backend storage arrays holding very valuable data for the customers business. However, data would need to be moved at times due to many potential reasons: hardware refreshes, ILM strategies, tiered storage strategies, and many more. An optimal storage infrastructure would require a flexible method to efficiently move data between different arrays without any disruption to critical business applications. For many customers today all data migrations are a costly process that must take place during an outage or scheduled downtime, increasing the operational challenges and costs for IT.
Customer Problem
Refresh IT infrastructure to keep pace

Solution
HP SVSP on-line Data migration

Customer Impact Business impact

Enables non-disruptive infrastructure

with strategic goals

Place data on storage device

according to its current value, as part of an ILM strategy and data from older, slower, or more expensive storage to newer, faster, or less expensive devices devices by proactively reassigning applications to different storage devices to achieve better performance and balance workloads copy before the migration process begins

Non-disruptively migrate applications

capabilities enable any-to-any (heterogeneous) data migration while production applications remain online. It also protects data by leaving the original data intact for further use.

upgrades that support strategic goals and objectives of revenue generating applications

Maximizes the uptime and performance

Operational Impact
Avoids the costs and disruption of

Prevent overburdening of storage

lost access to applications and data Migrates data to any devices at any location while production applications remain online Enhances data protection by using HP SVSP snapshot to create instant, read/write snapshot copies of migrating volumes

Protect migrating data by creating a

Centralizes and simplifies data migration

across all servers and storage devices Management (ILM) process, to maximize storage utilization

Implements Information Lifecycle

Financial Impact
Maximizes availability of

revenue-producing applications during infrastructure upgrades storage devices

Accelerates the introduction of new Reduces costs by purchasing high-end

storage only for data that has high value. Move data when its value changes to avoid unnecessary expenses

The HP SVSP has a non-disruptive Data Migration capability which allows data to be migrated efficiently from one array to another, allowing applications to be online and fully available during the migration without server impact. This SVSP data service enables seamless movement of data among the storage tiers, making it easy to migrate data to cost-appropriate, performance-appropriate, and availability-appropriate storage pools that make sense to the business and optimize storage costs. The SVSPs data migration feature also ensures that the original LUNs remain intact for fail-safe roll back purposes. Using the import in place feature, existing storage can be quickly moved into the pools and presented through SVSP. These virtual disks can be used anytime and all the advanced features can be applied on them as a normal virtual disk.

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Information Lifecycle Management (ILM) ILM is a process of treating your data according to its value. As part of this concept, data is placed on the appropriate storage device to match the performance, capacity, and availability requirements of that data. As business needs and data value change over time, an online volume migration tool is mandatory for ILM strategies. Moreover, data migration may be required from time to time. Refresh older storage to improve performance and lower costs Seamlessly transitioning production applications from older, slower, and more expensive-to-maintain storage to newer devices can result in significantly better performance at a lower cost. A migration data services is also essential to efficiently carry this type of IT operations

Figure 9: Data migration

Non-disruptive, any-to-any data migration with HP SVSP data migration Any-to-any data movement, from any device, to any device, to any location Migrates data while production applications remain online. No change or activity is required by the host Integrates with HP SVSP Snapshot to create instant snapshots of migrating volumes for enhanced data production Original volume remains intact for backup purposes SAN-wide, centralized management of all migration activities Supports all major operating systems and storage devices

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Application test, development, and deployment

Streamlining IT processes for greater productivity Two problems exist in todays environment regarding this particular use case. The first is that in order to deploy a new application or update an existing application, it is necessary to validate that the application at least performs as well as expected if not better. The second is that some development may be required to prepare the application for the environment that exists for your business. In either case it is a non-trivial task to test, develop, and deploy a new application without disrupting operations.
Customer Problem
Accelerate the development, testing,

Solution
Use HP SVSP Business Copy solutions

Customer Impact Business impact

Enhances revenue opportunities and

and delivery software to improve business operations, maintain competitiveness, and generate new sources of revenue

to improve productivity and minimize the cost of post-deployment support

maintains competitive advantages by rolling out new features faster by improving software quality

Allow real-time testing to use copies

Enhances overall business efficiency

of current production data but without disrupting normal operations bugs and errors prior to deployment

Operational Impact
Prevents system disruptions

Identify and eliminate more software

Creates copies and allows testing to occur without disrupting normal operations Enables more thorough testing to eliminate software bugs and errors prior to deployment

Shortens system integration projects Reduces the time needed to build or

modify applications

Financial Impact
Reduces costs by eliminating

post-deployment software bugs Lowers support costs Less system downtime

Allows existing equipment to be

re-purposed for development and test activities

A lengthy test cycle extends new application development, which increases the development costs, leading to delayed revenue and loss of competitive market position. Lack of time and resources to thoroughly test more data permutations also affects the quality of any product. The SVSP allows faster deployment of new solutions. With the SVSP Business Copy services, IT personnel can instantaneously present a snapshot to a virtual or physical server, to start testing on copies of production data without disrupting production systems. Furthermore, the capabilities support the creation of snapshots that will enable you to keep copies of every stage in a multi-stage testing process. If something goes wrong in any stage, you can easily roll back to the previous stage without the need for repeating all stages. As a result, productivity will be improved by maximizing development time. A flexible, Adaptive Infrastructure enables faster responses to changing business conditions.

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Accelerating application time-to-market Streamlining the application testing process can significantly accelerate the delivery of all types of applications. Figure 10, depicts application time to market. With HP SVSP, the copy and staging process is reduced to minutes for each test run, resulting in faster testing and faster time-to-market.

Figure 10: Application time-to-market

Before

After

Application testing with HP SVSP Business Copy Creates instant read/write copies of production data without taking applications offline Allows any-to-any data movement between production and test environments Allows multiple tests on multiple copies to occur in parallel Changes to test data do not affect production data In time, will support all major operating systems and storage devices

Figure 11: Application testing with HP SVSP Business Copy

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Rapid restore of files and applications

Minimizing downtime by enabling Rapid Restore of volumes and files As previously described, heterogeneous arrays (and different revisions and types of same-vendor arrays) have different capabilities and resources for the restoring of files and applications. In many instances when acquiring a new array it is necessary for the user to write scripts to allow this particular feature (if supported). Traditional restore in a SAN environment In the event of data loss, restoring data requires locating the tape(s), which may be stored away from the site and then restoring the desired file or volume. In some cases this process has to be repeated in order to restore the right file or volume. This process can take hours or even days and the integrity of the data on tape media can be unreliable.

Figure 12: Traditional restore in a SAN

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Customer Problem
Rapidly recover data in

Solution Use HP SVSP Business Copy feature to create frequent, instant, read/write disk-based, low capacity snapshots of production data. When necessary, recover from Point-in-Time (PIT) snapshot.
Recover a missing or corrupted file

Customer Impact Business impact

Maximizes uptime, availability, and Improves business continuity by

minutes rather than hours (reduce RTO to minutes) disaster (reduce RPO to minutes) capacity growth (capacities are growing at 50% + per year) servers and storage

performance of key business applications enabling rapid resumption of operations after unexpected events

Minimize data loss in case of

Solution must support exponential

Solution must support multi-vendor

by mounting a recovery server to a view on a PIT and copy missing/corrupted file back rolling-back a snapshot

Operational Impact
Reduces Recovery Point Objective

Recover a complete volume by

(RPO) and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) to minutes

Reduces disaster recovery efforts Centralizes/simplifies recovery of

data for all servers and storage

Enhances recovery services Improves employees productivity and

satisfaction

Financial Impact
Maximizes availability of revenue

and satisfactions after disaster

Reduces cost of storage for snapshots

by using low-capacity redirect-onwrite technology

The SVSP Business Copy feature minimizes downtime by enabling rapid restore of volumes and files. Without the SVSP, data recovery can take hours and data loss is possible. Instead the SVSP provides Snapshot and Snapclone features, which can be used to create rapid recovery facilities. Copies of production data can be captured using snapshot or snapclone and can be restored easily. Rapid restore with SVSP business copy Create frequent, instant, low capacity snapshots on any storage array In case of a failure, mount any prior snapshot and examine its content To recover a file, simply copy the file from the snapshot to the production volume To recover the entire volume, mount the production server to snapshot This entire process can be completed within minutes

Figure 13: Rapid Restore with SVSP Business Copy

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Cost-effective Disaster Recovery (DR)

Affordable Services for Rapid Recovery of Business Operations after Site or Regional Disasters What is the problem? In the U.S., the September 11, 2001, events have made disaster recovery a major concern for businesses of all sizes. Large business can sometimes afford the consultants and testing required to build a complete data recovery plan, but small and medium size businesses are often challenged by the finances and the choices available. Even though the business risk involves loss of data and applications (with the consequent negative business impact), not all business are able to deploy an adequate DR solution. The complexity of DR is due to the variety of strategies involved, as well as the complex change management activities associated with mission-critical applications. Costly communication links inhibit wide-area mirroring applications and projects, and tape or vaulting solutions are often unreliable and will not meet recovery time objectives. Traditional Data Mirroring Solutions Server-based solutions burden the production servers with the task of mirroring their data to a similar server at another site. In addition to degrading each servers performance and requiring multiple licenses, multiple data streams must be managed (one per server). Storage Array-based solutions are proprietary approaches that only mirror data between storage devices from the same vendor and model. These solutions tend to be more expensive and vendor lock-in prevents the use of storage devices that offer better price/performance ratios. Particularly when server virtualization has been introduced, firms would like more freedom on the hardware selection to better optimize costs at the remote site

Figure 14: Traditional Data Mirroring solutions

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Clustered Solutions A common Microsoft Cluster Server configuration involves a SAN environment where both servers (see figure #15) access a single image on a storage subsystem. From a DR perspective, the standard configuration is lacking in several regards, including: No protection against the failure of the storage subsystem No protection against the failure of the site No failover/failback capability between sites

Figure 15: Traditional MSCS configuration

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Customer Problem
Instantaneous data recovery in case

Solution
Use the Synchronous mirroring

Customer Impact Business impact

Rapidly resumes operations after any

of disaster

Lower costs and increase flexibility

by mirroring data from any device, to any device, at any location mirrored volumes at any location by creating instant, read/write snapshots mirroring processes across multiple devices recovery site

Enable zero-downtime backup of

Centralize the management of data

capabilities in the SVSP Volume Manager to protect your data when you need 100% data protection. Centrally manage data mirroring activities across the enterprise and create instant read/write snapshots of mirrored volumes. Synchronous mirroring can be achieved between sites for mid-range distances. remote copy services of production data to ensure high availability. Restore entire applications in minutes with HP SVSP Business Copy. Use snapshot enhanced instant roll-back for improved data integrity

type of system failure or other disruption across multiple geographical regions

Improves sharing of critical information Maximizes the uptime and

performance or revenue-generating applications.

Operational Impact
Protects against operational downtime

Use HP SVSP Continuous Access

Data consistency at the disaster

Allows rapid failover and access to copies of data in secondary locations Allows systems at any location to be taken down for maintenance while applications remain online

Enhances data protection by using

HP SVSP Snapshot and Snapclone to create instant, read/write snapshots of mirrored volumes for use in zero-downtime backup and online restores mirroring of data for all servers and storage devices points in time, according to users definition and fail-back

Centralizes and simplifies the

Guaranteed data integrity at certain

Easy disaster recovery site testing Enhances and simplifies the mirroring

of data for all servers and storage devices

Protects against regional disasters

Financial Impact
Maximizes uptime of

revenue-producing applications inexpensive storage devices in secondary locations

Allows data to be mirrored to

Reduces recovery costs Performance optimization reduces

the need for expensive, high-bandwidth communication links

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HP SVSP for Disaster Recovery The synchronous mirroring features in the SVSP Volume Manager or the remote Async Mirroring capabilities in the SVSP Continuous Access option can facilitate instantaneous service resumption after storage, site, or regional disaster. The HP SVSP Business Copy feature, which will keep the system online and fully available during backup without impact, allows restoring the entire application in minutes. Together these SVSP data services help firms improve productivity through maximum uptime. Centralized management of recovery operations reduces administrative tasks and minimizes errors while lowering management costs.

Figure 16: Data Mirroring with HP SVSP

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SAN-based HP SVSP SolutionCampus deployments When two sites share a SAN, HP SVSP Volume Manager can be used to synchronously mirror data between the sites. In this configuration, there is one VSM and (at least) one DPM at each site, such that both sites are part of the same SVSP domain and have an identical view of the virtualized storage. Application servers run at both sites (in either clustered or primary/backup configurations), and each site has its own storage subsystem. With SVSP handling the synchronous mirroring across the two storage systems, the two sites do not need to have identical types or brands of storage. This solution provides business continuity after server, storage, or site failures, and it is usable up to mid-range distances. A common application is a cross-campus deployment within a metropolitan region. (Please consult the HP SAN design guide at www.hp.com/go/SANDesignGuide for detailed information about supported distance limits.)

Figure 17: Clustered application server configuration for dual site domain HP SVSP Solution

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Low Cost Long Distance DR Solution - Snapshot-enhanced, any-to-any Data Mirroring In this scenario (see figure 18), servers are present across two different sites or domains which can be further apart than those in the SAN-based solution above. Like the SAN-based solution, each site has its own application servers and storage, but in this case each site is also a complete SVSP domain (that is each site has its own pair of VSMs and DPMs). The asynchronous mirroring capabilities of SVSP are used to replicate data across the domains in a bandwidth-efficient way, across existing IP connections. This solution provides disaster recovery after server, storage, or site failures across large geographic areas.

Figure 18: HP SVSP Continuous Access Asynchronous Mirroring Between Domains

Data is asynchronously mirrored between the sites, using existing IP infrastructure. (Note the contrast to alternative solutions which often require dedicated and costly high-bandwidth links.) This solution provides: An affordable, vendor-independent solution that enables rapid recovery from both planned and unplanned downtime Mirroring from any device to any device, to any location Integrates with HP SVSP Business Copy feature to create instant, R/W snapshots of mirrored volumes Local and remote mirroring (LAN, MAN, and WAN) Optimized for high performance over limited bandwidth connections SAN-wide, centralized management of all mirroring processes Supports all major operating systems and storage devices Facilitates data integrity at the disaster recovery site Unique procedure for test disaster recovery site with easy and quick fail-back to the original site

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Complete Data Protection

Comprehensive Data Management Services for Multi-tiered Data Protection What is the problem? Data loss can occur for multiple reasons that range from logical failures (for example, viruses, operator error) to hardware failures (for example, disk failure) to outright disasters (for example, fire, flood, terrorism). A complete storage solution must be able to address all forms, and provide: Rapid data recovery in case of disaster Zero data loss Fast Recovery (without re-copy of the entire volume) Non-disruptive failover in case of a single component failure Protection against rolling disaster Protection against regional disaster Lastly, regulatory requirements sometimes impose unique data protection requirements of their own. Traditional solutions Traditional solutions address some or many of the possible failure scenarios that businesses must contend with, but they often fail to address all in a comprehensive and integrated way. HP SVSPComplete Data Protection
Customer Problem
Regulatory Requirements Propagation of Failures Departmental Failure Site Failure

Solution
Remote Backup Remote Snapshots Local MirrorSync SAN-wide Synchronous mirroring

Customer Impact Business impact

Rapidly resume operations after any

type of system failure or other disruption

Zero data loss Improved sharing of critical

can be achieved between sites for metropolitan distances Asynchronous Mirrors

information across multiple geographic regions

Regional Disaster

HP SVSP Continuous Access

Maximizes the uptime and

Hardware Failures Logical Failures (virus, file delete)

Snapshot-based, Disk/Tape Backup SnapshotsRapid Recovery

performance or revenue-generating applications.

Operational impact
Reduces disaster recovery efforts Enhances and simplifies the mirroring

of data for all servers and storage devices

Protects against regional disasters

Financial impact
Maximizes availability of

revenue-producing applications during disasters inexpensive storage devices in secondary location

Allows data to be mirrored to

Reduces recovery costs

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HP SVSP Provides Comprehensive Data Services for Business Continuity

Centralized Management Application Testing NonDisruptive Migration Zero Window Backup Rapid Recovery Cost Effective DR Complete Data Protection

Applications must function 24x7 Add storage/ servers on the fly No unscheduled outages No scheduled outages Data recovery must be immediate Remote disaster recovery

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Conclusion
HP SVSP is a comprehensive infrastructure solution that helps IT managers extend the value of current and future IT investments, simplify operations, and increase the overall efficiency of IT. The SVSP aggregates capacity of heterogeneous arrays and creates pools of virtual storage that can be easily provisioned to virtual and physical servers. The solution suite also provides a comprehensive set of virtualization enabled data services that include: volume management, copy services (snapshot and snapclones), non-disruptive data migration, sync/async mirroring, and thin provisioning. These data services improve storage utilization while simplifying storage management. Furthermore, they also enable advanced replication and management services, giving users virtually limitless opportunities to utilize up-to-date copies of production data for activities such as online migration, consolidation, rapid application recovery, zero window backup, and disaster recovery. This is a powerful tool kit from which solutions are built to solve the most challenging data management problems that IT managers face today. As a result, the SVSP represents a solid infrastructure solution that gives enterprises the ability to improve productivity, simplify operations, and achieve lower total cost of ownership for their SAN environments.

For more information

For more information on HP StorageWorks SAN Virtualization Services Platform (HP SVSP), please visit http://www.hp.com/go/svsp

Technology for better business outcomes

Copyright 2009 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for HP products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein. 4AA2-3242ENW, May 2009

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