Transcript
Case Study
Mississippi Department of ITS Solving Infrastructure Problems with QLogic Converged Network Adapters Problem A traditional IT infrastructure with separate LAN and SAN networks, as well as under-utilized servers and storage, made it difficult to meet growing customer service level agreements (SLAs).
Solution Use QLogic 8100 Series Converged Network Adapters, which deliver multiprotocol (Ethernet and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE)) and dynamic bandwidth allocation for enterprise applications within a consolidated and virtualized service-oriented environment.
Results QLogic’s 8100 Series Converged Network Adapters consolidated LAN and SAN networks, reducing the number of required adapters by 50 percent. This reduction created additional savings by eliminating 35 percent of excessive cabling and additional switch ports, while simplifying overall management of the entire network. In addition to these savings, current infrastructure investments in Fibre Channel and Ethernet have been leveraged utilizing QLogic’s proven FCoE and NIC stacks. The resulting data center is faster and more responsive to customer needs due to the increased infrastructure speeds, and the addition of priority assignment and traffic management through advanced server virtualization functionality. The new data center has a more scalable, virtualized, infrastructure.
Case Study Customer Profile
VOEs impose a greater demand (than non-virtualized environments) for high throughput on both data and storage networks. “The idea of two singlepurpose traditional networks would mean we’d basically have redundant networks in an environment that already requires an extensive Ethernet network,” said Porter.
The Mississippi Department of Information Technology Services (ITS) provides cost-effective processing of information technology and telecommunication solutions for Mississippi state’s government and interstate agencies. ITS prides itself on optimizing available resources and providing state-of-the art technology that enhances delivery and facilitates effective planning, deployment, and operation of information technologies to its user community.
Porter calculated that his dense servers could easily run 90 virtual machine (VM) instances per physical server. With this configuration, each physical server would need up to six Ethernet connections for redundant data networking, and two Fibre Channel connections for storage networking failover. Managing the physical infrastructure would be monumental, and one of Mr. Porters goal’s for this project was simplification. As a result, he shifted his focus to 10-gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) and the idea of converged networking.
Problem Statement Increasing demands for server resources, along with a shrinking budget, threatened ITS’ ability to deliver reliable compute, network, and storage infrastructure. Consequently, the need to deliver resources in a timely manner, while simultaneously increasing resource utilization and cutting IT costs, became a primary concern.
Ten-gigabit Ethernet provides a perfect medium to converge SAN and LAN technologies. In addition, new features that enhance the 10GbE protocol improve storage application performance. The pervasiveness of Ethernet, the increased bandwidth capabilities from 1GbE to 10GbE, and the feature enhancements to the Ethernet protocol, creates a lossless Ethernet. This type of Ethernet supports storage traffic, and eliminates the need for separate physical network infrastructures for data and storage traffic. Lossless Ethernet was the solution to Mr. Porter’s problem.
Outgrowing their current facility was another issue that Kemper Porter, System Manager for ITS, was facing. Mr. Porter needed to improve operations within his new facility, as well as add the flexibility to provide better solutions to the government agencies he supported. Furthermore, as with most large IT departments, ITS deployed disparate networks, including both traditional LANs and storage networks. Each network had a unique architecture and a single purpose. Simplifying this overall IT infrastructure was also a problem that had to be overcome.
QLogic Solution Mr. Porter’s vision included FCoE, a new standard that converges Ethernet and Fibre Channel over a single 10GbE network. FCoE integrated seamlessly with ITS’ existing Fibre Channel equipment, protecting not only their capital investment, but also investments in storage management software, policies, and administration.
Mr. Porter’s vision was to build a next-generation data center, complete with a virtual operating environment (VOE) composed of virtual servers, to consolidate physical resources and enable a service-oriented environment that could dynamically allocate resources and IT services. To achieve this goal, Mr. Porter needed a data center infrastructure that would be easy to manage, and could allocate services to deliver IT resources when and where they were needed the most.
While FCoE provided the technology to converge the networks, QLogic’s 8100 Series Converged Network Adapters provided the connectivity upon which to build the network. Using the QLogic adapter created a more agile and flexible infrastructure that was easier to manage, configure, and scale compared to redundant Fibre Channel and Ethernet networks.
“QLogic’s experience in Ethernet and Fibre Channel networking gave me the confidence in their driver stack to become an early adopter of the new FCoE technology.”. Kemper Porter, System Manager, Mississippi Department of Information Systems Technology
SN0330901-00 Rev. B 10/11
2
Case Study When deciding on a Converged Network Adapter, Mr. Porter turned to QLogic because they are the only vendor with extensive Fibre Channel and Ethernet expertise, along with a proven, battle-hardened Fibre Channel software stack. Being first to market with a single-chip adapter, and the only vender with significant tier-1 OEM design wins, made Mr. Port’s decision to use QLogic an easy one.
Reduction of Network Components and Complexities By converging data and storage networks, the QLogic adapters simplified the overall network and consolidated all I/O on to a single adapter. Using QLogic adapters reduced the amount of I/O adapters needed per rack by 50 percent. Reducing the number of server adapters had a similar effect on the required cables and switch ports—which in turn simplified infrastructure management and aided in reducing power consumption and cooling costs; all while improving bandwidth by leveraging 10GbE.
A shared storage environment becomes increasingly important within a virtualized environment, as each VM requires access to storage and data networks. By utilizing a single adapter to transport Ethernet and storage traffic, Porter significantly reduced the number of adapters required. Furthermore, this consolidation effected overall infrastructure by eliminating the need for additional cables and switch ports. Most importantly, in this service-oriented solution, QLogic adapters supported a true hardware offload for FCoE protocol processing, which freed up valuable CPU cycles that were desperately needed in the VOE.
Priority-Based Flow Control for Congestion Management and Quality of Service (QoS) Sharing one Converged Network Adapter among several virtual servers can cause issues with congestion, prioritization, and queuing. By using QLogic adapters, ITS simplified its infrastructure, and leveraged QLogic’s advanced networking services (such as priority-based flow control) to ensure QoS over the virtualized servers, guaranteeing that resources were available to the government agencies they support.
The ability to segment and virtualize a data center, along with providing on-demand provisioning of computing and storage resources from a VOE, requires a Converged Network Adapter with advanced server virtualization functionality. QLogic’s 8100 Series Converged Network Adapters support open industry standards such as priority-based flow control (PFC) and enhanced transmission selection (ETS). These standards enhance the virtualized application’s agility, and help meet the dynamic demands of a service-oriented data center.
Full Hardware Offload for FCoE Protocol Processing While supporting convergence through adapters can be done by either software or hardware offload, it is critical in a VOE that the CPU cycles are preserved so that VMs can scale efficiently. The QLogic adapters use hardware-based FCoE protocol processing to help to conserve resources. Typically, 10GbE NICs that use software to offload the FCoE function create a bottleneck on the server, and adversely affect the normal operation of the server applications.
Being an early adopter of a new technology comes with its own inherent risks—risks that Mr. Porter believes are minimized by standardizing on QLogic adapters. “QLogic’s experience in Ethernet and Fibre Channel networking gave me the confidence in their driver stack to become an early adopter of the new FCoE technology,” said Porter. QLogic’s adapters leverage their existing Fibre Channel driver, which have been deployed in millions of existing data center servers. New entrants to this market may take years to complete driver debug testing, a risk Mr. Porter was not about to take.
“Thanks to QLogic, we’ve optimized the value of our enterprise data center by converging networks, while reducing our capital and operating expenses,” concludes Kemper Porter. “We’re now getting better utilization out of our servers and storage assets, lower operating costs, and built a more efficient infrastructure to better serve our clients, all while protecting existing IT investments.” Conclusion
Business Benefits of the QLogic Solution
QLogic furnishes the key infrastructure components to simplify management of virtual machines and their associated cables, while providing highperformance data and storage applications the I/O bandwidth they require. To ensure that resources are available when required, priority flow control and QoS are advanced features of the QLogic 8100 adapter that maintain service levels within the new service-oriented environment. Finally, the converged network solution is less expensive and higher in performance than a non-converged network solution, saving the department money.
Because QLogic 8100 Series Converged Network Adapters provide solution benefits above competitive products, Mr. Porter selected these adapters for the networking and storage access he required for his department’s nextgeneration data needs. While using QLogic adapters was an evolutionary change to the ITS network, it was one that was seamlessly integrated with existing Fibre Channel infrastructure, and one that could be deployed at a pace that best served their needs.
SN0330901-00 Rev. B 10/11
3
Case Study Kemper Porter and the ITS department were able to realize gains in their consolidation and virtualization efforts, and achieved the IT infrastructure simplification they were looking for, due to a unified fabric supported by QLogic’s Converged Network Adapters.
Corporate Headquarters International Offices
Next, Mr. Porter plans to upgrade the data center to Nahalem processors to further continue his consolidations efforts. This upgrade will allow ITS to increase to 130 VMs per physical server, while cutting software capital costs in half.
QLogic Corporation
26650 Aliso Viejo Parkway
Aliso Viejo, CA 92656
949-389-6000
www.qlogic.com
UK | Ireland | Germany | France | India | Japan | China | Hong Kong | Singapore | Taiwan
© 2010 - 2011 QLogic Corporation. Specifications are subject to change without notice. All rights reserved worldwide. QLogic and the QLogic logo are registered trademarks of QLogic Corporation. All other brand and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. Information supplied by QLogic Corporation is believed to be accurate and reliable. QLogic Corporation assumes no responsibility for any errors in this brochure. QLogic Corporation reserves the right, without notice, to make changes in product design or specifications.
SN0330901-00 Rev. B 10/11
4
