Technology

Solution

Business Continuity

Technology Solution: Enhanced Business Continuity with Live Application Mobility with VMware Metro VMotion

Executive Summary

Challenges
Live Application Mobility for a Business Continuity implementation requires the following: An IP network with a minimum bandwidth of 250 Mbps per migration. Maximum latency between the two VMware vSphere servers cannot exceed 10 milliseconds (ms). The IP subnet on which the v irtual machine resides must be accessible from both the source and destination ESX servers because a virtual machine retains its IP address when it moves to the destination ESX. The data storage location including the boot device used by the virtual machine must be active and accessible by both the source and destination ESX servers at all times. Access from vCenter server and vSphere client to both ESX servers must be available to accomplish the migration.

Todays businesses heavily rely on the digital infrastructure to perform day-to- day activities. The 24X7 availability of the infrastructure is paramount to ensure successful functioning of the business. Brocade, EMC and VMware collaborated to demonstrate a solution that offers the capability to dynamically migrate applications live across data centers separated by a latency of 10 ms RTT (~550 miles) on a 250mbps/migration network without business interruption and enhance the availability of the business applications within the data center. The demonstration of live application mobility relies on the industry proven VMware Metro vMotion, with the EMC VPLEX application mobility solution running on high performance Brocade IP and storage networking solutions.

Solution Architecture

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Technology Solution

- VMware vSphere with Metro vMotion - EMC VPLEX Metro with GeoSynchrony for data mirroring - Brocade VDX for Edge Network Top of Rack (ToR) with VCS Ethernet Fabric - Brocade MLX and/or CES for IP Network Aggregation and Core and L2 data center extension with MPLS/ VPLS - Brocade DCX Directors for Storage extension with FCIP and FastWrite technology - Brocade ADX for Application High Availability with Global Server Load Balancing enabling seamless client access to VMs - Brocade Application Resource Broker for transparent management of client connections across data centers - Brocade Converged N etwork Adaptors and Host Bus Adaptors for ESX Servers for Ethernet and FC connectivity to the IP and storage networks respectively - Brocade Network Advisor for unified end-to-end solution management, including IP and storage networks.

Solution Components

Solution Description
The solution comprises four distinct areas of technology integrations. The solution is architected as; 3.
1. Use of EMC VPLEX Directors to provide Active/Active storage for data availability for vMotion to be successful. The Brocade DCX Director class switch with the extension blades 4. (FX8-24) is used to extend the SAN over FCIP. The vSphere servers with the Brocade 1020 Converged Network Adapters (CNA) are used to provide access to the VMware VMFS data stores. 2. The vSphere migration network or the network on which the Virtual Machine (VM) is migrated is connected to the Wide Area Network (WAN) using the Brocade Virtual Cluster Switching (VCS) technology. The layer 2 extension providing the IP address compatibility for the VMs is enabled by the Brocade Ethernet Fabric provided by the Brocade VDX coupled with the standards-based MPLS/VPLS (Virtual Private LAN Switching) technology of the Brocade MLX switches in the two data centers. The client traffic management, which is paramount to ensure that the end user perceives no disruption in service, is provided by the use of Brocade Application Resource Broker (ARB) in conjunction with Brocade ADX. This ensures the transparent redirection of client connections across data centers.

The demonstrated solution allows seamless mobility for applications between data centers using V Mware vMotion, with continuous access to data provided by EMC V PLEX Metro. The Brocade IP and storage networking infrastructure offers a reliable and high performance end- to-end solution with network adapters, edge, aggregation and core switching, high-performance application delivery, and seamless automation of the application layer.

Solution Use Cases

Disaster Avoidance: The solution allows IT managers to migrate applications in preparation for a natural disaster, such as a hurricane, or a planned outage, such as an electric outage. User performance/load balancing between data centers: The solution enables the relocation of virtual server hotspots to underutilized data centers which in turn increases utilization of compute, network and storage assets. Optimization for power costs: Exploit energy price volatility between data center regions and time-of-use. Zero downtime maintenance: Virtual machines can be relocated to a remote data center during maintenance windows allowing users continuous access to applications in a fully transparent manner. Disaster Recovery: Using VMware HA to mitigate the risk of hardware/datacenter failures

Test Scenarios and Test Results

An application simulating a DVD Store online e -commerce site with a SQL DB backend was used for the testing of the solution. The D VD Store benchmark is a complete e-commerce application that processes the orders of buying DVDs from an online store.
The EMC VPLEX devices virtualized the backend storage arrays, which in our test were an EMC V MAX and DMX-4 at the primary and remote site respectively. The VPLEX, VMAX and DMX are connected to the respective data center SAN fabric made of the DCX backbone directors. The set of tests performed measured the Orders Per Minute (OPM) for the DVD Store application and the total VM migration time with different simulated WAN delay values. The VM was configured to move from the primary data center to the remote data center while clients were accessing the application. Tests were performed with an RTT of 0 ms, 2 ms, 4 ms, 6 ms, 8 ms, and 10 ms with no application downtime. The results are shown in the chart below. The latency of 10 ms approximately translates into 1000 km between the vSphere servers. With the assumption that the data center LAN network has 500 s latency within the data center, it is safe to assume a latency of 9 ms or a distance of 900 kilometers or 562.5 miles between data centers. A single VMware HA cluster was configured with the latency between cluster members set to 10 ms. A successful seamless failover of VMs was performed from one vSphere host to the other. vMotion across 10 ms is currently supported with VMware vSphere 5.0. EMC Corp. should be contacted for the 10 ms support policy of E MC VPLEX Metro. In addition to the tests for application performance and migration time, more tests were performed to highlight the positive effects of the Brocade FastWrite capability available on the DCX backbone directors. Tests results showed that response time and IOPS were improved more than 2.5 times compared to not using FastWrite. Brocade FCIP Fast Write reduces bandwidth by 50% or increases distance (RTT) by 2X.