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In order to meet the challenges of running today’s datacenters, an increasing number of IT organizations are turning to VMware® Infrastructure 3 software. The ability to virtualize the datacenter and deploy applications across a shared pool of server resources allows organizations to break free of the limitations they face with aging, silo-based applications. Virtualization enables consolidation, and running more than one operating system and application instance per server can help to increase utilization, reduce cost and help organizations work within the space, power, and cooling constraints of their datacenters.
The features that VMware offers on the server side can be enhanced by a storage system that recognizes and enables the added intelligence of a virtualized infrastructure. LeftHand Networks® SAN/iQ® technology delivers a clustered, open, iSCSI SAN solution with specific features to complement VMware Infrastructure 3. Customers can enjoy even better ease of use, reduced complexity, and unmatched availability when using the two products together. Examples of how these two products work better together are discussed in this brief, and they include the following:
- VMware makes it easy to create new virtual machines to meet the demands of unexpected workload fluctuations, or to create temporary application instances for development and testing. LeftHand Networks complements VMware with the ability to create new storage volumes from existing ones (volume cloning) virtually instantaneously, and with minimal additional use of storage.
- VMware’s VMotion feature migrates applications from server to server with zero downtime to balance workloads or to allow servers to be taken offline without affecting service levels. LeftHand Networks products do the same in storage, allowing volumes to be moved from one storage cluster to another with zero downtime and without modifying the VMware environment.
- VMware HA assists in disaster recovery by re-starting failed virtual machines on alternate servers automatically. LeftHand Networks’ SAN/iQ architecture allows organizations to distribute their storage networks so that access to the virtual machines’ storage volumes can continue uninterrupted even through the loss of an entire datacenter.
SANs based on LeftHand Networks’ SAN/iQ software are standards based, providing plugand- play compatibility with the IP networks on which they are deployed. LeftHand is a member of VMware’s Technology Alliance Partner Program, and its products are certified and included on VMware’s Hardware Compatibility List. The use of open standards, partnership with VMware, and certified hardware means that compatibility with customer infrastructure is guaranteed.
Unlike traditional Fibre Channel-based SANs, iSCSI SANs use IP networks to deliver disk storage to servers. Every network engineer understands IP networks, and the ability to leverage common technology and skill sets helps to reduce both capital and labor costs. In contrast to expensive Fibre Channel interfaces and switches, iSCSI SANs use commodity Gigabit Ethernet hardware, with disk storage appearing to the operating system as SCSI devices.
Just as VMware Infrastructure 3 software provides a virtualized pool of servers, LeftHand Networks’ SAN/iQ technology provides a scalable, reliable, high-performance, virtual pool of storage to those servers. LeftHand uses patented clustering techniques to create a storage system that distributes incoming requests across servers in the cluster. The intelligence in the cluster itself distributes and replicates storage blocks across the cluster according to customer-defined storage policies, including RAID levels and performance targets.
VMware’s VirtualCenter makes it easy to create and provision new virtual machines based on existing ones, a process referred to as cloning, adding to an IT organization’s flexibility, responsiveness, and efficiency. Organizations can benefit from cloning in a number of ways. For example, they can create a set of temporary Web servers to manage performance and capacity in the face of unexpected workload demands. Administrators can clone an existing, mission-critical application and use the copy to test new patches or configurations without the risk of disrupting a running service. IT organizations can create virtual desktop environments, maintaining a single ‘golden master’ PC image, and cloning a new virtual PC each time a user logs in, reducing the number of different PC configurations to test and maintain. Developers can deploy as many test environments as they need without consuming physical server resources.
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