To simplify deploying and managing modern applications, enterprises have been combining the benefits of hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) with the performance and scale of a NoSQL database — and the results have been remarkable. With this combination, IT organizations have experienced more agility, improved reliability, and better application performance. Watch this on-demand webinar where you’ll learn specifically how VMware HCI with DataStax Enterprise (DSE) and Apache Cassandra™ are transforming the enterprise.
View recording: https://youtu.be/FCLGHMIB0L4
Explore all DataStax Webinars: https://www.datastax.com/resources/webinars
Why is vSAN the industry leading HCI software?
First, vSAN is the only storage software natively integrated with the market leading hypervisor, vSphere. vSAN’s unique integration delivers optimal resource utilization for mission critical applications.
Second, vSAN provides industry leading deployment flexibility with the largest HCI ecosystem, with over 14,000 private clouds running on over 500+ ReadyNodes, jointly certified servers, and VxRail, a jointly engineered turnkey appliance. vSAN also has native services two of the largest public cloud providers, Amazon and IBM.
Finally, VMware uniquely provides centralized management of all your HCI deployments from edge to core to cloud from the same tools you use today, vCenter and vRealize. No need to learn new skills.
Importantly, all of these features are available today. Other HCI vendors may talk about future hybrid cloud, but only VMware software can deliver a true hybrid cloud to your data center now.
John
Where we started:
Holistic Infrastructure Management…
Across Private Cloud running on Any Hardware…
With Enterprise-Grade Storage Features…
For Traditional Apps
John
We offer the broadest set of deployment options on the market. For the private cloud, we leverage the strongest ecosystem with all major server vendors offering vSAN ReadyNodes that are ready run to vSAN. There are over 500 options to choose from now with all different form factors, from general purposes servers to storage dense systems to rugged systems for the edge.
For customers that want integrated lifecycle management and/or single source support, integrated systems offer a mid-tier choice between a DIY solution with ReadyNodes and jointly-engineered solution, VxRail.
And for those customers that want the simplicity and assurance of an appliance-based deployment model and to further reduce their operational costs, we jointly engineer Dell EMC VxRail, a turnkey appliance. VMware Cloud Foundation on Dell EMC VxRail offers best-in-class serviceability and lifecycle management capabilities for customers looking to automate the deployment and management of the full VMware Software Defined Datacenter (SDDC) stack.
And then for customers looking to deploy in or extend to the public cloud, we have relationships with major cloud vendors, like Amazon and IBM, and with 100s of our service provider partners, like RackSpace and CenturyLink, who offer solutions built on HCI powered by vSAN.
VMware HCI provides the simplest path from virtualization to hyperconverged infrastructure and the hybrid cloud. VMware enables your modernization journey at your own pace, or lets you step through the 3 key phases in turn:
Phase 1: Start with Core HCI, powered by VMware vSAN. Manage compute and storage as one to enable greater operational agility, while future-proofing your infrastructure.
Phase 2: Evolve to Full-Stack HCI to build a completely automated private cloud
Phase 3: Extend to the Hybrid Cloud with a consistent operating model on-prem and off-prem, and for traditional and modern (cloud-native) applications
What is Core HCI?
Core HCI = vSAN + vSphere
What is Full Stack HCI?
Full Stack HCI = VMware Cloud Foundation, powered by vSAN
What is Hybrid Cloud? Is it HCI?
Hybrid Cloud is a combination of private and public cloud, that is based on the same HCI software stack to deliver consistent operations whether on-prem or off-prem.
Hybrid Cloud = HCI (on-prem) + HCI (off-prem)
What about Edge/Dimension? Is it HCI?
Dimension is Full Stack HCI that is managed as a service, initially targeted at edge use cases. It uses the same software stack that is used in the core datacenter (on-prem) and public-cloud (off-prem)
Dimension = HCI as a Service (HCIaaS)
Before we get started, I’d like to share the latest information on the hyperconverged infrastructure market.
First, let’s review the latest IDC Converged Systems Tracker from June of this year. In the June report, IDC found that VMware is once again the HCI software market leader, and we broke above 40% market share for the first time, recording a best ever 41.1% market share. We also achieved a year over year growth rate of 66%, greater than the market growth rate. Significantly, the next closest competitor dropped below 30% share, and another competitor’s share shrank so much that they are now lumped into the “other category.”
In the last earnings call, we announced vSAN now counts over 20,000 customers, another significant milestone for our rapidly expanding business.
Finally, earlier this year, vSAN was recognized as a Gartner Peer Insights Customer’s Choice for hyperconverged infrastructure. Our product received over one hundred positive reviews from users, which enabled us to achieve this designation. Also, DataStax, a cloud-native application provider, named VMware as their partner of the year, noting that our solution is the ideal infrastructure for container based applications.
Main point:
Many of these next-gen applications manage resilience using built in replication within the application. So in this case, how does vSAN align the design of these applications and support them in a production environment?
Details:
In vSAN 6.7, we introduced a new feature “Host Affinity” for these new next-gen applications. This feature pins the data to the same host that the VM is running on, while setting storage policy FTT=0 that eliminates storage level redundancy. This greatly reduces storage capacity overhead and I/O write overhead for these applications, while maintains availability via application level replication. Note that, for vSAN 6.7, this feature is only available through RPQ (and some features HA/DRS are not available).
Now how does Datastax Cassandra node fit into this?
That’s how we tested in VMware lab in last 1.5 years with DSE guidance, and most recently the validation work we did to support Datastax Enterprise production on vSAN. This will be the most fun part and Kathryn will take you through this in next 25m. Now let's welcome Kathryn from Datastax to the stage.
DSE is the always-on industry-leading data management platform, which is powered by best-distribution of Apache Cassandra.
Other details
----------------------------------
Overview:
Ensures data resides on the same host VM runs
For next-gen apps that provide built-in app resiliency
Cassandra
Hadoop
Splunk
VMs run with FTT=0 for space efficiency
For details, please request information through VMware Product Management
----------------------------------
Details:
Supported by a “Request for Product Qualification” (RPQ) – please contact vSAN product management for customers interested in this functionality.
This feature is not limited to those specific applications listed, but rather, is applicable to most modern applications using a shared-nothing approach. The RPQ process requires the customer to detail what specific applications that they are interested in using the feature with.
Features not supported with Host Affinity in the release of vSAN 6.7
vSPhere HA
vSphere DRS
vSAN RAID-1 or RAID-5/6
vSAN data rebuild abilities after fault domain loss
Rebalancing of a vSAN datastore
vSAN Deduplication and Compression
vSAN Encryption
Features partially supported with Host Affinity in the release of vSAN 6.7
Maintenance mode for hosts. VMs with Host affinity policy must be powered off or suspended prior to EMM operation, and will be inaccessible.
VMs are pinned to a specific host to maintain availability of the VM’s data that is being served up locally. The placement of data cannot follow the placement of the VM if the VM were to be moved to another host, and thus, is not supported.‘
This feature only supports a level of failure to tolerate (FTT) of 0.
Other storage policies that are compatible with the host local policy include:
Stripe Width
Object Space Reservation,
Flash Read Cache Reservation (hybrid)
IOPS limits
The considerations around this feature, as it stands in vSAN 6.7, will be detailed in a vSAN 6.7 Host Affinity Tech Note on StorageHub.
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VCPP - Service Provider Specific Cloud
Our Customers told us they wanted the best of both worlds.. and so we’ve spent the last year working through our differences and the story we’re going to show you is of two companies that are stronger together.
We do this by having a tunable consistency model that replicates data within a datacenter and between datacenters.
AND AH.. THAT”S where the rub is! vSAN is doing this ALSO! For a LOT of the same reasons!
This is the most important concept here. Nodes are always communicating with each other and with the client regarding cluster health and cluster load. The Clients will connect to a node containing the requested data and balance multiple requests for that data across the nodes which hold a copy. So to achieve the low latency guarantees the driver has to know the exact location of the data.
There’s another key piece here as well. There are I/O intensive operations that are designed to stay within a single node. When a write comes in it is written to memory. Memory fills up and it’s flushed to disk. Every now and then we need to compact those tables that are written to disk. So we read them into memory. Sort them and clean them up, and then writ ethem back to disk. This communication is designed to happen without leaving that node and drastically increases network traffic
So Cassandra needs to control it’s replicas and their placement. And if vSAN is doing this also. We are storing a lot of copies of the data and sacrificing performance.
Explain DSE Rack and VSAN Cluster alignment
So lets look at what happens to a piece of data during a failure
First remember that we actually have 3 copies of that data
So if you lose one.. And Cassandra is configured to read and write at Qurorum .. You’re fine if you lose that fist DSE node!
You’re also fine if you lose the whole host
And you’re still okay losing that full Rack.
Key Message/Talk track:
Datastax and VMware have jointly validated vSAN for DataStax Enterprise (DSE) production environment.
With this joint solutions, vSAN and DSE delivers predictable performance, high availability and simplified management for Next-gen Cassandra workload.
Now as a customer we encourage you to start evaluating and deploying your Cassandra on vSAN. Don’t forget to sumit RQp request to our PM team via your account representative.
Details:
VMware and DataStax started the partnership about 1.5 year ago. We teamed up to design a solution aiming to combine the management benefits of HCI with the performance benefits of a shared-nothing storage subsystem.
Our teams have worked closely in a weekly basis on the joint validation. After numerous extensive tests/validation at VMware’s lab with guidance from Datastax, we jointly developed the vSAN solution brief and RA for DSE development environment in 2017, and most recently we validated vSAN for DataStax Enterprise (DSE) production environment.
The solution leverages the host-affinity feature to place data on the same host that the VM runs and thus reduces additional storage overhead & improve performance due to less write (one copy) at vSAN layer
This solution brings to customers the following benefits:
Customers can deploy DSE clusters on vSAN for their modern cloud applications with ease and confidence in production environments.
Running and managing DSE applications on VMware vSAN provides predictable performance and high availability.
All storage management moves into a single software stack, thus taking advantage of the security, performance, scalability, operational simplicity, and cost-effectiveness of vSAN.
It is simple for customers to expand using a scale-up or scale-out approach without incurring any downtime.
Notes from dryrun -
Main point:
Many of these next-gen applications manage resilience using built in replication within the application. So in this case, how does vSAN align the design of these applications and support them in a production environment?
Details:
In vSAN 6.7, we introduced a new feature “Host Affinity” for these new next-gen applications. This feature pins the data to the same host that the VM is running on, while setting storage policy FTT=0 that eliminates storage level redundancy. This greatly reduces storage capacity overhead and I/O write overhead for these applications, while maintains availability via application level replication. Note that, for vSAN 6.7, this feature is only available through RPQ (and some features HA/DRS are not available).
Now how does Datastax Cassandra node fit into this?
That’s how we tested in VMware lab in last 1.5 years with DSE guidance, and most recently the validation work we did to support Datastax Enterprise production on vSAN. This will be the most fun part and Kathryn will take you through this in next 25m. Now let's welcome Kathryn from Datastax to the stage.
DSE is the always-on industry-leading data management platform, which is powered by best-distribution of Apache Cassandra.
Other details
----------------------------------
Overview:
Ensures data resides on the same host VM runs
For next-gen apps that provide built-in app resiliency
Cassandra
Hadoop
Splunk
VMs run with FTT=0 for space efficiency
For details, please request information through VMware Product Management
----------------------------------
Details:
Supported by a “Request for Product Qualification” (RPQ) – please contact vSAN product management for customers interested in this functionality.
This feature is not limited to those specific applications listed, but rather, is applicable to most modern applications using a shared-nothing approach. The RPQ process requires the customer to detail what specific applications that they are interested in using the feature with.
Features not supported with Host Affinity in the release of vSAN 6.7
vSPhere HA
vSphere DRS
vSAN RAID-1 or RAID-5/6
vSAN data rebuild abilities after fault domain loss
Rebalancing of a vSAN datastore
vSAN Deduplication and Compression
vSAN Encryption
Features partially supported with Host Affinity in the release of vSAN 6.7
Maintenance mode for hosts. VMs with Host affinity policy must be powered off or suspended prior to EMM operation, and will be inaccessible.
VMs are pinned to a specific host to maintain availability of the VM’s data that is being served up locally. The placement of data cannot follow the placement of the VM if the VM were to be moved to another host, and thus, is not supported.‘
This feature only supports a level of failure to tolerate (FTT) of 0.
Other storage policies that are compatible with the host local policy include:
Stripe Width
Object Space Reservation,
Flash Read Cache Reservation (hybrid)
IOPS limits
The considerations around this feature, as it stands in vSAN 6.7, will be detailed in a vSAN 6.7 Host Affinity Tech Note on StorageHub.
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