{"id":3106,"date":"2015-10-02T11:00:02","date_gmt":"2015-10-02T01:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/?p=3106"},"modified":"2015-10-02T09:28:40","modified_gmt":"2015-10-01T23:28:40","slug":"emc-thinking-about-buying-xtremio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/emc-thinking-about-buying-xtremio\/","title":{"rendered":"EMC &#8211; Thinking about buying XtremIO?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been doing some design work for a few customers and thought I&#8217;d put together a brief post on some considerations when deploying XtremIO. I don&#8217;t want to go into the pros and cons of the product, nor am I really interested in discussing better \/ worse alternatives. Let&#8217;s just assume you&#8217;ve made the decision to go down that track. So what do you need to know before it lobs up in your data centre? As always, I recommend checking\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/support.emc.com\" target=\"_blank\">EMC&#8217;s support site<\/a>\u00a0as they have some excellent site planning and installation documentation. There&#8217;s also a pretty good introductory <a href=\"https:\/\/www.emc.com\/collateral\/white-papers\/h11752-intro-to-XtremIO-array-wp.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">whitepaper here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Hardware Overview<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>X-Brick<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The core hardware in the XtremIO solution is the X-Brick. I&#8217;ve included a glamour shot below from EMC&#8217;s website for reference. Each X-Brick is comprised of:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>One 2U DAE, containing 25 eMLC SSDs (400GB, 800GB or 1600GB SSD options);<\/li>\n<li>Two redundant power supply units (PSUs);<\/li>\n<li>Two redundant SAS interconnect modules;<\/li>\n<li>Two BBUs (per cluster); and<\/li>\n<li>Two 1RU Storage Controllers (redundant storage processors).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/xbrick.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-3108\" src=\"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/xbrick.jpg\" alt=\"xbrick\" width=\"720\" height=\"297\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/xbrick.jpg 720w, https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/xbrick-300x124.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 720px) 100vw, 720px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A one X-Brick configuration has the controllers directly connected via InfiniBand, whilst other configurations require 2 IB switches. X-Brick clusters can be deployed in combinations of 1, 2, 4, 6 or 8 X-Bricks.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>Release 4.0<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The latest release (4.0) has been generally available since 30 June 2015, and now supports:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;Generation 3&#8221;\u00a0hardware (the 40TB X-Bricks);<\/li>\n<li>Larger clusters (up to 8 20TB X-Bricks in a cluster); and<\/li>\n<li>Native RecoverPoint integration.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>You can read Chad&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/virtualgeek.typepad.com\/virtual_geek\/2015\/05\/emc-world-day-1-xtremio-40-the-best-afa-gets-better.html\" target=\"_blank\">take on things here<\/a>, as well as the XtremIO team&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/xtremio.com\/xtremio-4-0-the-beauty-within-the-beast\" target=\"_blank\">announcement here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>Virtual XMS<\/em><\/p>\n<p>You can optionally deploy the XMS (XtremIO Management Server) on a VM rather than physically. There are a few things you need to be mindful of if you go down this route.<\/p>\n<p>The virtual XMS VM should have\u00a0the following configuration:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>8GB vRAM;<\/li>\n<li>2 vCPUs; and<\/li>\n<li>1 vNIC.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The virtual XMS VM should have a single 900GB disk (thin provisioned). Note that 200GB of disk capacity is pre-allocated following the cluster initialization. This should be provisioned on a RAID-protected storage. Note that shared storage used should not originate from an XtremIO cluster.<\/p>\n<p>The virtual XMS should be located in the same LAN as the XtremIO cluster.<\/p>\n<p>The deployed virtual XMS Shares memory resource allocation is set to High. As such, the virtual XMS is given high priority on memory allocation when required. If you&#8217;re using a non-standard shares memory allocation, this should be adjusted post-deployment.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>In The Data Centre<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>Rack Requirements<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The following table shows the required rack space depending on the number of X-Bricks in the cluster.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/XtremIO_Rack_Table.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-3110\" src=\"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/XtremIO_Rack_Table.png\" alt=\"XtremIO_Rack_Table\" width=\"800\" height=\"293\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/XtremIO_Rack_Table.png 1134w, https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/XtremIO_Rack_Table-300x110.png 300w, https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/XtremIO_Rack_Table-1024x376.png 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>Power and Cabling<\/em><\/p>\n<p>From a cabling perspective, your friendly EMC installation person will take care of that. There&#8217;s very good guidance on the EMC support site, depending on your access level. Keep in mind that you&#8217;ll want your PDUs in the rack to come via diverse circuits to ensure a level of resiliency.<\/p>\n<p>In terms of power consumption, the table below provides guidance on maximum power usage depending on the number of X-Bricks you deploy.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/XtremIO_Power_Table.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-3112\" src=\"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/XtremIO_Power_Table.png\" alt=\"XtremIO_Power_Table\" width=\"800\" height=\"347\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/XtremIO_Power_Table.png 1137w, https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/XtremIO_Power_Table-300x130.png 300w, https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/XtremIO_Power_Table-1024x444.png 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>Connectivity<\/em><\/p>\n<p>From a connectivity perspective, you&#8217;ll need to account for both FC and IP resources. Each controller has two FC\u00a0front-end ports and two iSCSI ports that you can present for block storage access. You&#8217;ll also need an IP address for each controller (so\u00a0two per X-Brick), along with at least one for the XMS. For monitoring, the latest version of the platform supports EMC&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.emc.com\/collateral\/software\/data-sheet\/h1948-secure-remote-supp-gateway-ds.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Secure Remote Services (ESRS)<\/a>, so you can incorporate it into your existing solution if required.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Should you decide to go down the XtremIO track, there a few things to look out for, primarily around planning your data centre space. It&#8217;s a nice change that you don&#8217;t have to get too bogged down in details about the actual configuration of the storage itself. But ensuring that you&#8217;ve planned for suitable space, power and management will make things even easier.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Introduction I&#8217;ve been doing some design work for a few customers and thought I&#8217;d put together a brief post on some considerations when deploying XtremIO. I don&#8217;t want to go into the pros and cons of the product, nor am I really interested in discussing better \/ worse alternatives. Let&#8217;s just assume you&#8217;ve made the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60,5,826],"tags":[736,21,827,697],"class_list":["post-3106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-emc-storage","category-storage","category-xtremio","tag-afa","tag-emc","tag-planning","tag-xtremio"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3106"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3115,"href":"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3106\/revisions\/3115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.penguinpunk.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}