Dell EMC Unity: Best Practices for

Best Performance

Stephen Wright
Performance Engineering
Midrange & Entry Solutions Group
What’s New with Dell EMC Unity
650F

550F  4 new Broadwell based All-Flash models

 New 80 drive 3U enclosure
450F
 4X file power with 256TB file system
 Compression for file
 AppSync integration, snapshots & thin
clones for iCDM
 Dynamic Pools
350F

Optimized for All-Flash Performance & Simplicity

Up to 40% more cores; 2X the memory

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Dell EMC Unity: Best Practices for Best Performance

What is “performance”? What are “Best Practices”?

Background
How has Best Practice guidance changed?

Dell EMC Unity All-Flash Considerations

Hardware
Dell EMC Unity Hybrid Considerations

Features Compression, Snapshots, Replication

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What is “Performance”?

IOPS Small transactions

MB/s Bulk data
The ability
to do the
Latency Individual
requested work transactions
Response time
in the
required period
Window
Job
of time Batch transactions

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What are “Best Practices”?

Configuration Guidance Consideration Checklist

• Advice based on experience
• Recommendations for options ________
• Responsive to your application
• Best behavior for your needs ________

________

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How are Best Practices Evolving

Remove need for detailed tweaking

Dell EMC Unity Simplicity Let the system do the right thing for
Dell EMC Unity drives intelligence into the storage system you

Unified File and Block One set of common guidance

Same recommendations apply

Flash Stress on other components

Changes the game for storage performance

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The Quantum Leap of Flash
Recommended Maximum IOPS per Drive

• NL-SAS • SAS 10K RPM • SAS 15K RPM • Flash

SPEED • Do not use these numbersSPEED

SPEED for sizing SPEED
LIMIT • Contact Dell
LIMITEMC Representative
LIMIT LIMIT

150 250 350 20000

Based on small-block random workloads

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The Flash Effect, and CPU Utilization
• Flash is fast, and Dell EMC Unity can support hundreds of drives
• Driving a lot of Flash can take a lot of CPU power
• We provide Best Practices around CPU utilization
Average CPU
Below 50% 50% to 70% 70% to 90% Above 90%
Utilization

Latency

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The Flash Effect, and CPU Utilization
• Flash is fast, and Dell EMC Unity can support hundreds of drives
• Driving a lot of Flash can take a lot of CPU power
• We provide Best Practices around CPU utilization

IOPS
Response Time

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
Average CPU % Utilization

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The Flash Effect, and CPU Utilization
• Flash is fast, and Dell EMC Unity can support hundreds of drives
• Driving a lot of Flash can take a lot of CPU power
• We provide Best Practices around CPU utilization
Average CPU
Below 50% 50% to 70% 70% to 90% Above 90%
Utilization

Latency

High
Availability

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Approaching Best Practices: AFA or Hybrid?

All-Flash Hybrid Features

Hardware Considerations

• Drives are most likely • HDD performance can • Compression

not a bottleneck be determining factor • Snapshots
• Focus on maximizing • A little Flash can add a • Replication
other hardware lot of capability
resources • Both Block and File

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Best Practices
Hardware Considerations
All-Flash Considerations
• With All-Flash, CPU becomes the driving factor
– CPU power has largest impact on achievable performance
– Memory has largest impact on scalability
Dell EMC Unity Relative CPU Horsepower

U6xx
U5xx 3X
U4xx 2.5X
U3xx 2X
0 0.5 1X
1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5

New All-Flash Models Existing Models

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Balanced Access – Back-end SAS
Bottleneck
• At least use the 2 on-board! shifts to
– Maybe you also want the SAS expansion? (up to 6 buses) front-end
ports
• Largest impact is on bandwidth
On-board Maximum GB/s I/O Module
2 SAS ports per SP
6
Number of active SAS buses

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18
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Balanced Access – Front-end Ports
• For HA, zone 1 initiator to 1
port from SPA, 1 port from SPA SPB
SPB
• For HA + load balancing, zone
to 2 ports per SP
• Cable and use as many front- Switch1 Switch2
end ports as possible
• We recommend at least 4
ports per SP in U3x0 and Host
U4x0
Host
• At least 6 ports per SP in
U5x0 and U6x0
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 Front-end Port Considerations

Speed is Understand Use more

good! port limits ports
Use faster ports Consult Best Better distribution
when available Practices Guide across cores

12 x 1,500 MB/s = 18,000 MB/s

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Hybrid Considerations

All Previous Size for HDD

Recommendations Constraints

Flash Tier
FAST Cache
FAST VP

5% = Flash Acceleration

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Best Practices
Feature Considerations
Features Overview
Host I/O RAID Snapshots Compression Replication
80%
• In Dell EMC Unity, all system
resources are always available
– Architectural philosophy

Add Compression
– CPUs are not reserved for any

Add Replication
Add Snapshots
particular process

RAID-1/0

RAID-6
• Features require resources
– Use additional CPU and may
add drive IOPS
– CPU cycles can shift as
defined workload changes

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Decision Tree for Enabling Features
• Understand that enabling a feature may increase CPU utilization
• This chart represents average CPU before implementing feature

Average CPU
Below 50% 50% to 70% 70% to 90% Above 90%
Utilization

Snapshots /
Replication

Compression

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Compression

>25% space
savings from
Compression

Good candidates Low rate of data

for Compression overwrite

Tolerant of
latency
fluctuations

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Snapshots
• Use less aggressive snapshot schedules
• Stagger snapshot schedules
Few Objects Several Objects Many Objects

8 hours

12 hours
12 hours
8 hours
4 hours

12 hours
12 hours
4 hours

12 hours
12 hours
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Asynchronous Replication
• Asynchronous Replication leverages Snapshots
8 hours
– Similar considerations
– Recovery Point Objective = snapshot schedule
– Longer RPOs with lots of replicated objects RPO

• Consider port capabilities

– Multiple links per SP
– Higher speed ports

12 hours
12 hours
RPO

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Synchronous Replication
• Real-time replication over Fibre Channel link
• Latency is key
• Zone so that clients are not on the replication link

Replication Link

Storage Processor

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Best Practices
Conclusions
Dell EMC Unity Best Practices: Summary
Appropriate Enough Flash Plan for
Model Hardware Acceleration Features

Choose the right Have enough…? Start with Flash Consider CPU
model, based on Drives consumption
CPU power Enclosures All-Flash
Ports Snapshot schedules
Data-in-place Flash tier (Hybrid)
upgrades to move to Utilize all ports Replication RPOs
more powerful
model

For All-Flash,
consider new Ux50F
models

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Dell EMC Services Booth #347
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Related Sessions for SC and Dell EMC Unity Series
Session Title Day/Time
Dell EMC Unity & SC Series: Midrange Storage Portfolio Overview Mon @ 12:00 PM + Wed @ 01:30 PM
CloudIQ: Cloud-Based Storage Analytics for Dell EMC Unity and SC Series Mon @ 04:30 PM + Wed @ 08:30 AM
Dell EMC Unity All-Flash: What’s New Tue @ 03:00 PM + Wed @ 01:30 PM
Dell EMC Unity: Architectural Overview Mon @ 01:30 PM + Thu @ 08:30 AM
Dell EMC Unity: Best Practices For Best Performance Wed @ 08:30 AM + Thu @ 10:00 AM
Dell EMC Unity: Performance Analysis Deep Dive Wed @ 03:00 PM + Thu @ 01:00 PM
Dell EMC Unity: Next Generation NAS & File Capabilities Mon @ 03:00 PM + Thu @ 11:30 AM
Dell EMC Unity: Data Protection & Copy Management Options Mon @ 08:30 AM + Wed @ 12:00 PM
Dell EMC Unity: Virtualization & Cloud Integration Mon @ 12:00 PM
Dell EMC Unity: Migration From VNX Tue @ 08:30 AM
Dell EMC Unity: Using Dell EMC UnityVSA In Converged Environments Mon @ 08:30 AM
Dell EMC Unity All Flash: Flash Technology Deep Dive Mon @ 08:30 AM + Thu @ 01:00 PM
SC Series: What's New Mon @ 04:30 PM + Tue @ 03:00 PM
SC Series: Architectural Overview Mon @ 01:30 PM + Tue @ 03:00 PM
SC Series: Performance Best Practices Mon @ 04:30 PM + Thu. @ 01:00 PM
SC Series: Affordable Data Mobility & Business Continuity With Multi-Array Federation Mon @ 08:30 AM + Thu @ 01:00 PM
SC Series: Virtualization & Ecosystem Integrations Wed @ 03:00 PM + Thu @ 08:30 AM

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Hands on Labs for SC and Dell EMC Unity Series
Self-Paced Day/Time

Dell EMC Dell EMC Unity CloudIQ – Event Correlation & Analytics

Dell EMC Dell EMC Unity – Simplified Storage Management & Monday: 8:30AM – 9:00PM
Administration
Tuesday: 7:00AM – 5:30PM
Dell EMC Dell EMC Unity – VMware vSphere Integration
Wednesday: 7:00AM – 5:00PM
Dell EMC Dell EMC Unity – Configuring Snapshots & Replication Thursday: 7:00AM – 2:00PM

SC Series: Introduction to SC Series and Dell Storage Manager

Guided Day/Time

Dell EMC Dell EMC Unity CloudIQ – Event Correlation & Analytics Tuesday: 1:30PM – 2:30PM
(Registration required and limited availability) Thursday: 8:30AM – 9:30AM

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Thank You for Attending

PLEASE TAKE A MOMENT TO

• Visit the Storage & Data Protection Booth
• Tweet: @DellEMCStorage Talk with us in the booth about the:
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A STAR IS BORN Assessment &
• Shoot an in-room 10 second reference video
(where applicable) Storage Efficiency
Guarantee
SITES TO BE SEEN
• Efficiency Guarantee: dellemc.com/4to1guarantee
• CloudIQ: dellemc.com/cloudiq
• All-Flash Storage: dellemc.com/all-flash

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