EMC XtremIO Implementation

What is EMC XtremIO?

Jason Nash
www.jasonnash.com
@TheJasonNash
What is XtremIO?

 All-flash array from EMC

 Designed from the ground up to

utilize flash memory

 Built on commodity hardware

 Magic happens in software

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Features of XtremIO

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Active/Active Both working full time
and servicing any I/O
Controllers

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 In-Line Always on and working to
use storage efficiently
Deduplication

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 Scale-Out Keep adding “bricks” as
you need more capacity
Architecture or performance

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Drive-Level Less impact than system-
Garbage level

Collection

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Screenshot of XMS

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 XtremIO Specs

 XtremIO is currently available in

two size configurations
 10TB Brick (7.5 usable)
 20TB Brick (15 usable)

 Larger sizes are coming

 40TB and up

 The only sizing consideration is

the total capacity

 Stack bricks to increase capacity

and performance
 Currently up to 4
 Future up to 8 or more Do Not Place Anything
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 Specifications

Feature Specification
Physical 5U (6U for first X-Brick), 750W
High Availability Dual active storage processors
Host access Active/Active
Host Ports 4 x 8Gbps Fibre Channel
4 x 10Gbps iSCSI
Functional IOPS 150K fully random 4K IOPS @ 50% read/50% write
Performance 250K IOPS @ 100% read
100K IOPS @ 100% write
Latency <1ms
Flash type eMLC
Usable Capacity 7.5TB or 15TB plus deduplication

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 Under the Hood

SP A SP B 32
CPU
CORES

256GB 256GB 512

Infiniband RDMA RAM
RAM GB
RAM

2 x FC 8 2 x FC
2 x iSCSI HOST
PORTS
2 x iSCSI
SAS 2.0 SAS 2.0

25
eMLC
SSDs

Each controller has Supports both Fibre Channel and iSCSI

• 16-cores of compute
• 256GB of RAM
• 2 x 8Gb FC
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Cluster Communication

RDMA / Infiniband

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 XtremIO Use Cases

 There is no magic use case for XtremIO

 Just the want for a lot of IOPS

 But often driving projects include

 VDI
 High transaction databases
 Large mixed workloads

 One caution is around expected dedupe ratios

 Databases, for example, don’t often dedupe well
 VDI can dedupe exceptionally well

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 Similar Storage Systems

 There are other offerings available in the market

 Features and functions do vary

 Examples include
 Pure
 IBM RAMSAN
 Cisco Invicta
 Violin

 Not to mention hybrid arrays with both flash and HDs

 Tintri
 Nimble

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What is a Brick?

One X-Brick

Infiniband Switch

Second X-Brick

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 What Makes Up a Brick?

Pair of Battery Backups

Controller
25-Slot Disk Enclosure
Controller

There is an optional hardware XMS (XtremIO Management Server)

But most often it is done in a virtual appliance

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 Summary

 What is XtremIO?

 Features of XtremIO

 XtremIO specifications

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