Leveraging converged infrastructures to deliver IT-as-a-service (ITaaS) is on nearly every organization’s roadmap. However turning that vision into a reality is a much different proposition. ITaaS can save time, money and resources but improperly implemented it can quickly become more complicated to manage and support resulting in degraded application performance, missed service level agreements (SLAs) and, ultimately, higher costs. The introduction of more granular controls into HP 3PAR’s Priority Optimization software gives organizations the controls they need to dynamically manage a converged infrastructure and start making ITaaS a reality in their environment today.
As I examined in my blog entry last week, to achieve the reality of ITaaS requires that organizations have a means put a priority on performance for each application and/or tenant in their infrastructure. But that is only one part of the challenge. Once prioritized, there must also be software in place that dynamically re-allocates physical resources between applications and/or tenants (Virtual Domains in HP 3PAR environments.)
Only Getting What They Deserve
As applications within each Virtual Domain run, HP 3PAR StoreServ monitors and reports on each application’s IOs per second (IOPS) as well as the aggregate IOPS for all of the applications in a Virtual Domain. During this time the applications and the Virtual Domain on which they reside essentially run unhindered.
The Performance Optimization software only kicks in when either the application and/or Virtual Domain starts to run up against its defined upper limit. If that occurs, the performance of the application and/or Virtual Doman is throttled back so its performance stays at or below its specified upper limit.
The QoS functionality included with Priority Optimization software 3.1.3 release kicks in when higher priority applications and/or Virtual Domains fail to reach their upper limits of performance even as lower priority applications and/or Virtual Domains exceed their minimum target thresholds of performance. In this situation an administrator can instruct HP 3PAR StoreServ system to scale back the resources allocated to lower priority applications and/or Virtual Domains and have them dynamically re-allocated to higher priority applications and/or Virtual Domains so they can run more quickly.
To make these calculations about which resources to re-allocate, HP 3PAR StoreServ continually samples, at a rate of 10 times per second, the IOPS associated with each application and/or Virtual Domain for which performance will be added or subtracted. The HP 3PAR StoreServ system then compares these measurements against each application’s and/or Virtual Domain’s preset polices and throttles back the performance of lower priority applications so they only have enough IOPS to satisfy meet their minimum SLA requirements. At the same time, HP 3PAR StoreServ dynamically increases the amount of resources to which higher priority applications and/or Virtual Domains can access.
Exhibit 2; Source: HP
Exhibit 2 provides an example of how this enhanced QoS feature in Performance Optimization works for applications through the principle is the same for Virtual Domains. In this case, application A (red line) is the higher priority, business-critical app that needs more IOPS and lower IO latency. Lines B (green line) and C (blue line) are lower priority applications that can have their respective resources reduced and re-allocated in such a way that both their minimum SLAs and the higher performance needs of application A are met.
Following each line from left to right illustrates how once the administrator gives permission for HP 3PAR StoreServ to rebalance the workloads of these three (3) applications that the IOPS associated with application A increase to 10,000 even as its latency drops to about five (5) milliseconds (ms). Conversely, the IOPS for both applications B and C are held to 4,000 IOPS with about eight (8) ms response times which meets the minimum target levels for their respective SLAs.
HP 3PAR StoreServ Priority Optimization Makes ITaaS a Reality Today
Priority Optimization’s ability to dynamically adjust application and/or Virtual Domain performance workloads based upon previously assigned priority level has implications well beyond how organizations can manage their infrastructure. It should reshape their thinking as to how soon they can realistically look to implement ITaaS in their environment. Rather than needing to wait months or years to realize the promise of ITaaS, using HP 3PAR StoreServ they can deliver ITaaS today.
Making this release of Priority Optimization particularly compelling is its availability on any new or existing HP 3PAR StoreServ 7000, 7450 or 10000 series platform. While new HP 3PAR StoreServ platforms ship with this functionality by default, existing HP 3PAR StoreServ users can access this functionality by simply upgrading the latest version of the HP 3PAR Operating System (3.1.3 or later). However since the same OS is available across all HP 3PAR StoreServ models, even organizations that are looking at an HP 3PAR StoreServ for the first time can gain access to this technology for as low as $US20,000.
Once in place, organizations can host more applications of varying priority levels on a single HP 3PAR StoreServ system. They may even go one step further and take advantage of its Virtual Domain feature to consolidate and host the workloads of multiple departments or organizations on a single storage solution to eliminate the need to deploy multiple different storage systems.
Simply assigning applications and/or Virtual Domains the appropriate priority level and then enabling Priority Optimization, business- and mission-critical applications as well as different Virtual Domains get the resources they need when they need them. It does this by only taking resources from applications and/or Virtual Domains that, by definition, can operate and meet business requirements using fewer resources than they are currently consuming.
Used in this context, test and development applications or lower priority Virtual Domains may access and use them until such a time that higher priority applications and/or Virtual Domains do need them. Equally important, by hosting test and development applications on an enterprise class HP 3PAR StoreServ storage system, organizations get a much better picture of how these applications may actually perform when they do eventually move into production.
Organizations have visions of ITaaS but have been to slow to embrace it as they are concerned it will negatively impact their business- and mission-critical applications. The enhanced Performance Optimization QoS features found in the HP 3PAR Operating System 3.1.3 release alleviates these concerns. By coupling these feature with its lower pricing for its HP 3PAR StoreServ platforms, HP enables almost any size organization to make ITaaS a reality in their environment today.