Oracle Sun Storage 2500-M2 Array Mixed Workload Analysis

ESG Lab Review

Oracle’s Sun Storage 2500-M2 Array
Mixed Workload Analysis
Date: October 2012 Authors: Tony Palmer, Senior ESG Lab Analyst, and Vinny Choinski, Senior ESG Lab Analyst

Abstract: This ESG Lab report explores the capabilities of Oracle’s Sun Storage 2500-M2 array deployed with a cost-
effectively optimized, highly available virtual infrastructure that’s built with an end-to-end combination of hardware
and software from Oracle.

The Challenges
ESG asked midmarket (under 1,000 employees) businesses to identify the IT initiatives they believed would be most
important to their organization over the next 12-18 months. As shown in Figure 1, 30% of respondents cited increased
use of server virtualization, and 19% indicated deploying a private cloud infrastructure as their most important
priorities.1
Figure 1. Top Ten Most Important IT Priorities
Which of the following would you consider to be your organization's most important
IT priorities over the next 12-18 months?
(Percent of respondents, N=246, ten responses accepted)

Improve data backup and recovery 37%

Major application deployments or upgrades 31%

Increased use of server virtualization 30%

Manage data growth 26%

Business continuity/disaster recovery programs 26%

Desktop virtualization 25%

Information security initiatives 23%

Use cloud infrastructure services 20%

Deploying a "private cloud" infrastructure 19%

Mobile workforce enablement 18%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40%
Source: Enterprise Strategy Group, 2012.

1
Source: ESG Research Report, 2012 IT Spending Intentions Survey, January 2012.
The goal of ESG Lab reports is to educate IT professionals about data center technology products for companies of all types and sizes. ESG Lab reports are not meant
to replace the evaluation process that should be conducted before making purchasing decisions, but rather to provide insight into these emerging technologies. Our
objective is to go over some of the more valuable feature/functions of products, show how they can be used to solve real customer problems and identify any areas
needing improvement. ESG Lab’s expert third-party perspective is based on our own hands-on testing as well as on interviews with customers who use these
products in production environments. This ESG Lab report was sponsored by Oracle.

© 2012 by The Enterprise Strategy Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

ESG Lab Review: Oracle’s Sun Storage 2500-M2 Array-mixed Workload 2

Despite the broad success of server virtualization, issues and challenges remain for IT. As a result, a low percentage of
the potential workloads that could be virtualized have been migrated to virtual machines, and the consolidation ratios of
virtual machines per physical servers remains relatively low. An ESG research survey explored the challenges associated
with the next wave of server virtualization.2 Given the rapid growth in the number of virtual machines being deployed,
it’s no surprise that scalability, performance, and the overall volume of storage capacity have been identified as key
challenges.

The Solution: Oracle’s Sun Storage 2500-M2 Array
The Oracle Sun Storage 2500-M2 Array is designed to provide midrange storage functionality and performance, with an
affordable cost of entry. This technology brings together the latest Fibre Channel (FC) and SAS2 technologies with
Oracle’s intuitive Sun Storage Common Array Manager software to create a solution that’s equally adept in a direct
attached storage (DAS) or storage area network (SAN) environment for the small or midsize business while integrating
into an existing enterprise storage network. In addition, the 2500-M2’s resilient design is ideal for customers such as
network equipment providers (NEPs) who are looking for a rugged, NEBS Level 3 certified design.
The Oracle integrated IT stack has been developed over a number of years and includes Sun servers and storage
hardware. Because it uses an open architecture, its advantages are available even if customers don’t use the entire
stack. The 2500-M2 takes full advantage of any attached components of the Oracle stack. Organizations choosing the
Oracle stack can expect the confidence of single vendor support without compromising on performance and availability.
Figure 2. The Oracle Sun Storage 2500-M2 Array

* With Oracle Performance Enhancer software
Oracle Sun Storage 2500-M2
The key capabilities of the 2500-M2 Array include:
 Flexibility– Support for direct attachment of up to eight servers via SAS2. Larger server environments can be
accommodated with 8GFC SAN connectivity.
 Resilience–2GB of mirrored, battery backed cache memory that is de-staged to flash if the controllers lose
power and dual-ported SAS2 drive technology on the backend ensure availability of the array.
 Data Protection–Optional software features such as snapshot and volume copy offer enhanced data
management and protection.

2
Source: ESG Research Report, The Evolution of Server Virtualization, November 2010.


 Enhanced Performance– The processor has an integrated, high-speed RAID on-chip engine that performs
RAID 5 XOR and RAID 6P + Q calculations with no performance penalty, enabling this compute-intensive task
to be handled efficiently and effortlessly. Organizations can also realize up to a 2x performance
improvement with Turbo models and Oracle Performance Enhancer software.
 Reliability–AC/DC power options combined with NEBS Level 3 certification make Oracle’s Sun Storage 2500-
M2 array ideal for network equipment providers (NEPs) and/or rugged environments.
 Ease of Management–Sun Storage Common Array Manager makes the 2500-M2 simple to deploy and
manage with an intuitive user interface.

ESG Lab Tested
The Oracle Sun Storage 2500-M2 storage system was tested by ESG Lab in Oracle's Broomfield, Colorado facility. The
methodology presented in this report was designed to assess the mixed workload performance and manageability of a
2500-M2 in virtual server and consolidated application environments.

Getting Started
The ESG Lab test bed is depicted in Figure 3. Two Sun X4470 servers were attached to an Oracle Sun Storage 2500-M2
array via an 8GFC SAN. The servers were running Oracle VM Server 3.1.1 and hosted Windows Server 2008, Oracle
Enterprise Linux, and Oracle Solaris on eleven virtual machines. The 2500-M2 had 48 300GB 15K RPM SAS drives
installed.

Figure 3. The ESG Lab Test Bed

ESG Lab Testing
ESG Lab began with a look at the OVM Manager administration GUI, which gives a simple, high-level overview of servers,
virtual machines, statuses, and component configurations. As shown in Figure 4, ten Windows and two Linux VMs were
running in the environment. The Linux machines were used to emulate Oracle 11GB database servers, and the Windows
machines were used to simulate e-mail, web, and virtual desktop servers.



Figure 4. Oracle VM Manager

Next, ESG Lab took a look at the Sun Storage Common Array Manager, and reviewed the LUNs created for testing. The
Common Array Manager uses a tree-based presentation model when navigating systems, physical devices, volumes,
snapshots, and virtual disks. The interface is clean and intuitive, providing easy access to all features and functionality, as
shown in Figure 5Figure 5.

Figure 5. Sun Storage Common Array Manager

Virtualizing Business-Critical Applications
Conventional server benchmarks were designed to measure the performance of a single application running on a single
operating system inside a single physical computer. SPEC CPU2000 and CPU2006 are well known examples of this type
of server benchmarking tool. Much like traditional server benchmarks, conventional storage system benchmarks were
designed to measure the performance of a single storage system running a single application workload. The SPC-1
benchmark, developed and managed by the Storage Performance Council, is a great example. 3 SPC-1 was designed to
assess the performance capabilities of a single storage system as it services an online interactive database application.
Traditional benchmarks running a single application workload can’t help IT managers understand what happens when a
mix of applications are deployed together in a virtual server environment. The methodology developed by ESG Lab and

3
http://www.storageperformance.org


presented in this report was designed to stress the storage system more than the servers. A tile-based concept was
used. Each tile is composed of a mixture of four application workloads. Two physical servers, each configured with six
virtual machines, were used to measure performance in two tests, as the number of active tiles was increased from one
to three.

Workloads
Industry standard benchmarks were used to emulate the I/O activity of four common business application workloads:
 E-mail: The Microsoft Jetstress 2010 utility was used to generate e-mail traffic. Similar to the Microsoft
LoadGen utility used in the VMmark benchmark, Jetstress simulates the activity of typical Microsoft
Exchange users as they send and read e-mails, make appointments, and manage to-do lists. The Jetstress
utility is, however, a more lightweight utility than LoadGen. Using the underlying Jet Engine database,
Jetstress was designed to focus on storage performance.
 Database: The Orion utility from Oracle was used to generate database traffic. Much like Jetstress, Orion is a
lightweight tool that is ideally suited for measuring storage performance. Orion was designed to help
administrators understand the performance capabilities of a storage system, either to uncover performance
issues or to size a new database installation without having to create and run an Oracle database. Orion is
typically used to measure two types of database activity: response-time sensitive online transaction
processing (OLTP) and bandwidth sensitive online analytic processing (OLAP).
 File Server: The industry standard Iometer utility was used to generate file server traffic. The I/O definition
was composed of random reads and writes of various block sizes. The file server Iometer profile used for this
test was originally distributed by Intel, the author of Iometer—Iometer has since become an open source
project.4
 VDI: The industry-standard Iometer utility was used to generate simulated VDI traffic. The I/O
characterization was composed of two distinct workloads: boot/login (100% random, 80% read) and steady
state (100% random, 80% write).
Each of the four workloads was run in parallel, each in its own dedicated virtual machine. Figure 6 shows scaling as VMs
are brought online. Response time stayed low even with 12 VMs running different applications with different I/O
patterns.

4
http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/iometer


Figure 6. Mixed Workload Performance

Mixed Workload Performance

4 VMs 12 VMs
Number of Virtual Machines
OLTP Mail File Server VDI

Detailed Results of ESG Lab testing are presented in Table 1.

Table 1. Mixed Workload Performance Scalability Data

Mixed Workload
Average Host
Virtual Exchange 2010 Virtual
OLTP IOPS File Server IOPS Response Time
Machines Mailboxes Desktops
(ms)
4 4,040 500 675 135 7.59
12 6,075 1,500 2,315 235 12.74
OLTP (Reads)
Virtual Average Host Response
IOPS Throughput (MB/sec)
Machines Time (ms)
1 48,577 1,329 0.10
Response time only rose moderately as the workload was increased. The results are not only acceptable, but actually
significantly below the thresholds at which users begin to experience performance problems. The aggregate workloads
on 12 VMs was determined by the number of IOPS that disks installed in the Sun Storage 2500-M2 array used in these
tests could support. By scaling up the number of disks, or using a turbo model with performance enhancer software,
significantly more users, mailboxes, desktops, and transactions could have easily been supported.
ESG Lab also ran an OLTP workload independently and configured it to take advantage of the 2500-M2's cache by
configuring Orion for 100% 8KB random reads. As can be seen in Table 1, the Oracle 2500-M2 was able to sustain more
than 48,000 IOPS with sub-millisecond response times. Although this is not a real-world workload, it does give some
insight into the efficiency and power of the Oracle 2500-M2 controllers.



Why This Matters
ESG research indicates that storage scalability and performance are significant challenges for the growing number
of organizations embracing server virtualization technology.5 Storage benchmarks have historically focused on one
type of workload (e.g., database or e-mail) and one key performance metric (e.g., IOPS, response time, or
throughput). Server benchmarks have typically tested only one server running a CPU-intensive workload that
doesn’t stress storage. To help IT managers understand how the Oracle Sun Storage 2500-M2 performs in a virtual
server environment, ESG Lab ran a benchmark designed to assess how real-world applications behave when
running on multiple virtualized servers that are sharing a single storage system.
ESG Lab simulated a mid-sized organization with 1,500 Exchange 2010 users, a pair of busy OLTP databases, a file
server supporting hundreds of users, and 235 virtual desktops all running simultaneously on just two physical
servers to demonstrate the performance and scalability of the Sun Storage 2500-M2 array and Oracle VM Server.
The Oracle 2500-M2 demonstrated excellent response time throughout the tests, indicating significant available
headroom to grow as performance requirements increase.

5
Source: ESG Research Report, The Evolution of Server Virtualization, November 2010.


ESG Lab Testing
Finally, ESG Lab looked at the efficiency of the Oracle VM Server by performing a virtual machine migration and clone
while running a heavy mixed workload on the system. First, an online VM migration was executed with a single workload
running on a Windows virtual machine. ESG Lab selected the win2 virtual machine, running on server brm-04, as shown
in Figure 7.

Figure 7. Selecting a Virtual Machine to Migrate

The migration was simple and fast, using the two step wizard, as seen in Figure 8. The migration completed in seven
seconds and the application on the VM continued to run without interruption.

Figure 8. OVM Manager-Migration of a Running Desktop



Once the migration was complete, the virtual machine win2 could be seen running on server brm-05, as shown in Figure
9.

Figure 9. The Virtual Machine After Migration

Next, a clone was created of a 40GB gold image Windows 2008 Server virtual machine. The clone completed in just
under four minutes. With these baseline tests completed, ESG Lab started up a mixed workload using the Iometer utility
running on 12 virtual machines, as seen in Figure 10. Iometer was generating between 7,600 and 7,800 IOPS for the
duration of the test.

Figure 10. Running a Heavy Mixed Workload

At this point, ESG Lab again migrated a virtual machine between physical servers and cloned a virtual machine, also
between physical servers. As seen in Figure 11, the migration took seven seconds, exactly the same amount of time as



when the Oracle 2500-M2 was almost idle. The migration took 47 seconds, or just 20% longer under heavy load than
when the Oracle 2500-M2 was not busy.

Figure 11. Clone and Migration Completed

Why This Matters
ESG research indicates that broadening coverage of server virtualization is a top concern of organizations,
large and small—30% of the IT managers surveyed ranked increasing use of server virtualization as their
most important IT priority for 2012-13.
Predictable performance scalability is a critical concern when multiple servers that are running diverse
applications share a storage system. A burst of I/O activity in one application can lead to poor response
times for others, and lost productivity. A virtualized private cloud environment potentially presents one
of the most diverse and challenging mixes of application types and I/O access patterns to a storage array.
In growing environments, the ability to quickly provision data services for users is essential. As IT is being
asked to do more with less, flexible, easy-to-use tools enable efficient provisioning with minimal effort.
Oracle Sun Storage 2500-M2 arrays offer performance to provide predictable scalability with extremely
low response times in a mixed workload environment for small to medium-sized organizations. ESG Lab
also found the 2500-M2 able to support essential administrator tasks such as virtual machine migration
and provisioning new servers using the Oracle VM Manager quickly and efficiently even when the system
was under heavy load.



The Bigger Truth
Server virtualization is being deployed by a growing number of organizations to lower costs, improve resource
utilization, provide non-disruptive upgrades, and increase availability. Each benefit is fundamentally enabled by de-
coupling servers, applications, and data from specific physical assets. Storage virtualization takes those very same
benefits and extends them from servers to the underlying storage domain—bringing IT organizations one step closer to
the ideal of a completely virtualized IT infrastructure.
Although the benefits of a completely virtualized infrastructure are obvious to most IT managers, performance and
manageability are real concerns. Server, storage, and application administrators are looking for answers to a number of
questions:
 Can we meet performance service level agreements for a mix of business-critical applications?
 Does the storage system have the horsepower to serve our mix of real-world applications?
 Can the storage system scale to accommodate future growth and consolidation?
 Can storage and system management be simplified with tools that we are familiar with?
The 2500-M2 brings together the latest Fibre Channel (FC) and SAS2 technologies with Oracle’s intuitive Sun Storage
Common Array Manager software to create a robust solution that’s equally adept in a new DAS or SAN environment or
for integrating into an existing storage network for the small or midsize business.
ESG Lab confirmed that the Oracle Sun Storage 2500-M2 scales performance smoothly for a mix of applications running
in a consolidated virtual server environment. A single 2500-M2 simultaneously supported 1,500 Exchange 2010 users, a
pair of busy OLTP databases, a file server supporting hundreds of users, and 235 virtual desktops all running
simultaneously on just two physical servers—all while delivering predictably fast response times and executing critical
administrative actions such as server migrations and deployments, without skipping a beat .
ESG Lab has confirmed that the complementary components in the Oracle stack (virtualization, severs, and storage) are
able to integrate smoothly and enable midsized organizations to deploy private cloud environments quickly and
confidently, delivering IT services on demand. ESG Lab is pleased to report that the Oracle Sun Storage 2500-M2 array
delivers scalable, balanced, and predictable performance that is well-suited for a mix of real-world business applications.

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Oracle Sun Storage 2500-M2 Array Mixed Workload Analysis

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