Background:
We want to start a Proof of Concept (PoC) based on better IOPs provided by FreeNas to improve the current user experience on our Front-End Remote Desktop Servers. Our current Front-End servers (30) are based on the following specs:
Knowing this math in relation to what the NETAPP performance graphs is showing we very strongly suspect that the number of delivered IOPs is simply not enough resulting in CPU peaks, Queueing and latency.
We also did some research regarding the behavior of our users and we found out that every single RDS server is generating 200 ~ 800 IOPs with peaks to 1500 triggered by users starting local applications as well as virtualized applications.This means roughly 500x 30 = 15000 IOPs possible at any moment during production time (wishful thinking, this will be much worse in real life, the Netapp aint gonna cut it).
We used Login Consultant's VSI and Microsoft performance counters to acquire this statistics.
We believe to have found the bottleneck in the number of IOPs delivered by the Netapp appliance.
To proof this and offer a very fast and effective solution to this problem we want to build a PoC based on a proper hardware box running FreeNas with a full flash array of 12, 16, 20 or 24 SSDs.
We want to attach this SR to our XenServer farm by using NFS or possible iSCSI.
Buying a Netapp full flash array or iX TrueNas solution is not yet possible within our budget right now.
Planned improvements to achieve goal:
Configuration
All our server hardware is HP (specials: Netapp, Baracuda & Netscaler) so we are a little bound to this brand.
If we had the choice we probably choose a SuperMicro motherboard.
System board:
DL380p Gen8 2* 8C-E2650 V2/32GB/P420i-2GB/25SFF
2x 750watt psu
NIC 2x 10Gib + 4x 1Gib:
- 10Gib 533FLR-T FlexFabric Adapter 2 port on board (LACP 802.11 AD)
- 4x LOM 1Gbit in trunked bond to Cisco CoreSwitch (LACP 802.11 AD)
Memory 64GB:
8x 8GB (1x8GB) Dual Rank x4 PC3-14900R (DDR3-1866)
Raid Controller:
- Onboard HP Smart Array 420i (disabled)
- We will replace this with an LSI 9211 8i card with IT firmware (instead of the IR firmware it shipped with).
Brackets:
We have neough "HP 2.5 HotSwap Tray SAS/SATA Harddisk Caddy brackets"
Solid State Disk Drives:
1x 128GB 850 SSD Pro Serie SSD 2,5" SATA-600 7mm
24x Samsung 845DC Pro 400GB
Questions:
Before starting our PoC we would very much like some input from users that are experienced with full flash arrays.
We did of course our research and based our hardware / configuration profile on those findings.
I especially want to stress the following aspects:
My censere apologies if i posted the thread in the wrong section, this seemed the right place to do so.
We want to start a Proof of Concept (PoC) based on better IOPs provided by FreeNas to improve the current user experience on our Front-End Remote Desktop Servers. Our current Front-End servers (30) are based on the following specs:
- OS: Windows 2008 R2 Datacenter edition
- Middleware: Citrix XenApp 6.5
- Application Virtualization: Microsoft App-V 5 SP2 hotfix 4
Local package cache (globally published) - Local installed software: Microsoft Office 2013, SafeNet, SafeSign & PDF Creator 7.2
- Updates: Most recent Windows and Office updates installed
- CPUs: 4 vCPUs
- RAM: 16GB
- Disk: 1x 200GB (C:\ drive)
- Number of concurrent users per RDS server (15~20)
- Reboot behavior: twice a week
- Servers are based on a template image, not provisioned by PVS or MCS.
I know that this means base copy's and chained VHDs which doesnt help your performance.
On the new SR we plan yo make one main image and distribute this with Microsoft's MDT so every RDS VM got's its own VHD bypassing the "chained VHD" issue and making deduplication possibly more effective.
- Hypervisors: 9x DL360-G8 with 32 vCPUs (8x Quad core Intel Xeon CPU E5-2650 @ 2Ghz) and 196GB ECC memory
- Storage: 3x Netapp
- Acceptation: FAS2050
- Production Back-End servers: FAS2240-2
- Production Front-End servers: FAS2240-2
Knowing this math in relation to what the NETAPP performance graphs is showing we very strongly suspect that the number of delivered IOPs is simply not enough resulting in CPU peaks, Queueing and latency.
We also did some research regarding the behavior of our users and we found out that every single RDS server is generating 200 ~ 800 IOPs with peaks to 1500 triggered by users starting local applications as well as virtualized applications.This means roughly 500x 30 = 15000 IOPs possible at any moment during production time (wishful thinking, this will be much worse in real life, the Netapp aint gonna cut it).
We used Login Consultant's VSI and Microsoft performance counters to acquire this statistics.
We believe to have found the bottleneck in the number of IOPs delivered by the Netapp appliance.
To proof this and offer a very fast and effective solution to this problem we want to build a PoC based on a proper hardware box running FreeNas with a full flash array of 12, 16, 20 or 24 SSDs.
We want to attach this SR to our XenServer farm by using NFS or possible iSCSI.
Buying a Netapp full flash array or iX TrueNas solution is not yet possible within our budget right now.
Planned improvements to achieve goal:
Configuration
- FreeNas 9.3 Stable
- iSCSI or NFS storage repository for XenServer 6.5.4
- 1x 128GB disk for OS (I Know 128GB is overkill for the OS only need 2 GB)
- option 1: 1 aggregate of 12, 16, 20 or 24 SSD of 400GB each (Samsung 845DC pro 400GB effective 372GB each)
- option 2: 2 aggregates of 12 SSDs (Samsung 845DC pro 400GB effective 372GB each)
- 2x 10Gib bonded via LCAP IEEE 802.3AD (Performance + failover) for storage traffic (NFS or iSCSI)
- 4x 1GiB bonded via LCAP IEEE 802.3AD (Performance + failover) for management and future use (backup)
All our server hardware is HP (specials: Netapp, Baracuda & Netscaler) so we are a little bound to this brand.
If we had the choice we probably choose a SuperMicro motherboard.
System board:
DL380p Gen8 2* 8C-E2650 V2/32GB/P420i-2GB/25SFF
2x 750watt psu
NIC 2x 10Gib + 4x 1Gib:
- 10Gib 533FLR-T FlexFabric Adapter 2 port on board (LACP 802.11 AD)
- 4x LOM 1Gbit in trunked bond to Cisco CoreSwitch (LACP 802.11 AD)
Memory 64GB:
8x 8GB (1x8GB) Dual Rank x4 PC3-14900R (DDR3-1866)
Raid Controller:
- Onboard HP Smart Array 420i (disabled)
- We will replace this with an LSI 9211 8i card with IT firmware (instead of the IR firmware it shipped with).
Brackets:
We have neough "HP 2.5 HotSwap Tray SAS/SATA Harddisk Caddy brackets"
Solid State Disk Drives:
1x 128GB 850 SSD Pro Serie SSD 2,5" SATA-600 7mm
24x Samsung 845DC Pro 400GB
Questions:
Before starting our PoC we would very much like some input from users that are experienced with full flash arrays.
We did of course our research and based our hardware / configuration profile on those findings.
I especially want to stress the following aspects:
- Is the LSI 9200 8i with IT firmware the right choice?
- Samsung 845 DC Pro 400GBs (Datacenter edition) may or may not be the best choice regarding to enterprise environments but those meet the budget and are optimized for writes and use 3D-NAND which is better then TLC memory chips regarding endurance/life-span.
- Our choice for Z2 meaning not to much performance loses and allowed to lose 2 disks at the same time seems fair to us. Furthermore our RDS servers might be an core component to our infrastructure but are by any means replaceable within short notice and individually not that important/mission critical.
- Last but not least we have the discussion NFS vs iSCSI. Ive read a lot about it and both have their pros and cons.
Performance wise they are not that much of a difference in my opinion, at least if you compare NFSv4 vs. iSCSI. Whereas iSCSI is a bit more complex to configure and maintain, on the other hand I’m not sure if NFSv4 is possible between XenServer 6.5 and FreeNas 9.3.
My censere apologies if i posted the thread in the wrong section, this seemed the right place to do so.
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