Did you know that Dell Unity had a new software release on April 29, 2022? No? With all the hype of Dell Technologies World 2022, which included a number of new products, software, and company partnership announcements, Dell Unity may have flown under the radar with one of the most important software updates in its history. But fear not, I have you covered. This software release delivers several important storage technologies designed to simplify how users address capacity expansion and recover data faster, expand disaster recovery topologies, increase storage utilization, and cost-effectively upgrade Dell Unity XT systems while lowering capital and operating expenses. The following sections highlight the updates in this release.

Hardware

Unity XT data-in-place conversions

So, you purchased a Unity XT 480/F or 680/F system, but now it’s under-sized and handling more than you planned for. With storage architects and administrators trying to do more with less, it is not uncommon that new requirements come up and a storage system is pushed to its limits. Whether you are maxing out performance and capacity, or are looking for higher limits, a data-in-place (DIP) conversion may be just what is needed.

In OE version 5.2, Hybrid (HFA) or All Flash (AFA) Unity XT 480 and 680 systems can be upgraded to a higher Dell Unity model of the same type. This means that an HFA system can upgrade to a higher model HFA system, and an AFA system can be upgraded to a higher model AFA system. For the Unity XT 480, it can be directly upgraded to a Unity XT 680 or 880 model system. The Unity XT 680 can be upgraded to the Unity XT 880 model system. This upgrade not only increases the performance potential of the Storage Processors, but the higher models also include higher system limits. Data-in-place upgrades reuse the same I/O modules, SFPs, and power supplies from the replaced Storage Processors, and can either be completed online or offline.

During an online upgrade, one Storage Processor (SP) is replaced at a time. All hosts/servers that are configured with high availability can remain online and run I/O to the system. This procedure closely mimics a software non-disruptive upgrade where one SP is upgraded at a time. An offline DIP upgrade needs to occur during complete application downtime. Although the system is offline, this upgrade process does complete faster because both storage processors are replaced at the same time. After completing the upgrade, the model will be seen in Unisphere, Unisphere CLI, and REST API as the new model, as if it came from the factory.

I/O module conversions

Performance is always impacted by the slowest component in an environment, almost like the weakest link in a chain. For some, infrastructure within an environment may be upgraded, leaving the storage system limited due to its current configuration. Do you have your Unity XT 16Gb Fibre Channel front end ports connected to a 32Gb switch? If your answer is Yes, then why not upgrade the storage too? OE version 5.2 supports upgrading 16Gb Fibre Channel modules in existing Unity XT systems to the 32Gb Fibre Channel modules.

What used to be a non-data-in-place conversion can now be achieved through a new service script without impacting the data on the system. During the upgrade procedure, the Fibre Channel I/O modules are upgraded in an NDU manner. One Fibre Channel module is replaced in one storage processor, while any I/O to the system is serviced by the peer SP. After the upgrade is complete and the system is utilizing the new 32 Gb I/O modules and SFPs, the front end ports on the Unity XT system are no longer the weakest link.

For more information about Unity XT data-in-place upgrades or I/O module conversions, see the Dell Unity XT: Introduction to the Platform white paper. 

Hybrid flash system enhancements

Dell Unity hybrid systems continue to be a compelling storage solution for small to mid-size enterprises, supporting general purpose workloads that don’t need the speed and low latency of All Flash or NVMe architectures. The following are software enhancements for hybrid systems in OE version 5.2.

Dynamic pools

Dynamic pools were first introduced in OE version 4.2 for All Flash systems. This pool type drops the traditional pool RAID Group based configuration in favor of advanced RAID techniques and distributed sparing. Dynamic pools allow for better storage utilization than the previous pool type, and more simplified planning. Users no longer need to add multiples of drive sets to achieve a particular capacity. In most cases, a dynamic pool can be expanded with a single drive.

Just like my youngest child watching his older brother do things he can’t, hybrid systems have been left wondering when it will be their turn. With OE version 5.2, the time has come. In OE version 5.2, dynamic pools can be created on any hybrid flash system, not just Unity XT if that is what you are thinking. A dynamic pool can also be a single drive type or include multiple drive types just like their traditional pool counterparts. For each drive type within a dynamic pool, a minimum drive count is required, but expanding an existing tier with a single drive is possible in most situations. Dynamic pools also support FAST VP and FAST Cache on hybrid systems.

For more details see the Dell Unity: Dynamic Pools white paper.

Data reduction

Do you have a hybrid Unity XT system and could use some extra capacity? What if I told you, it’s free? While I can’t send you free drives through a blog, I can let you know that data reduction and advanced deduplication are now supported on hybrid pools within hybrid model Unity XT systems. 

To support Data Reduction, the pool must contain a flash tier whose total usable capacity meets or exceeds 10% of the total pool capacity. Once the system is running OE version 5.2, you can enable data reduction with and without advanced deduplication on existing resources or new resources. The pool type can also either be traditional or dynamic.

For more details see the Dell Unity: Data Reduction white paper.

File enhancements

Replication

Are you feeling limited by the replication topologies that are currently supported? The OE version 5.2 release may just have what you need to support the file replication topology of your dreams, or maybe just what your data protection requirements dictate. In this release, each file resource supports a maximum of four replication sessions, which includes the inbound replication sessions and the outbound replication sessions. What’s different in this release is that one of the four replication sessions can be synchronous, and you can also create a replication session outbound from a synchronous replication destination. The picture below shows a replication topology that is now possible using the OE version 5.2 release. Note: All systems within the topology must be running version OE version 5.2 or later to support these new topologies.

For more details see the Dell Unity: Replication Technologies white paper.

LDAP aliases

Have you ever had an IP address change in your environment, which required you to update each component within the environment that used it? I have, and even though I only use a test lab, it still caused me heartburn. Depending on the environment, the changes required can be a long and tedious process. 

In OE version 5.2, an update to LDAP can save you some time in the future. Now when configuring LDAP server addresses manually on a NAS Server, users can either enter the LDAP server IP or Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN). By entering the FQDN, an IP change on the LDAP server no longer requires changing the LDAP configuration on each NAS server. The NAS server automatically picks up the new IP using DNS. Taking the time to update an existing configuration can save a bunch of time in the future, especially when the change needs to occur late at night or on weekends.

For more details see the Dell Unity: NAS Capabilities white paper.

Conclusion

I’ve outlined just a few of the major features in the Dell Unity OE version 5.2 release. For more information about other features in this release, check out these resources:

• Dell Unity OE 5.2: Technical Primer
• Dell Technologies Info Hub

Author: Ryan Poulin

Quick! The word has just come down. There is a new initiative that requires a massively parallel processing (MPP) database, and you are in charge of implementing it. What are you going to do? Luckily, you know the answer. You also just discovered that the Dell PowerFlex Solutions team has you covered with a solutions guide for VMware Tanzu Greenplum.

What is in the solutions guide and how will it help with an MPP database? This blog provides the answer. We look at what Greenplum is and how to leverage Dell PowerFlex for both the storage and compute resources in Greenplum.

Infrastructure flexibility: PowerFlex

If you have read my other blogs or are familiar with PowerFlex, you know it has powerful transmorphic properties. For example, PowerFlex nodes sometimes function as both storage and compute, like hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI). At other times, PowerFlex functions as a storage-only (SO) node or a compute-only (CO) node. Even more interesting, these node types can be mixed and matched in the same environment to meet the needs of the organization and the workloads that they run.    

This transmorphic property of PowerFlex is helpful in a Greenplum deployment, especially with the configuration described in the solutions guide. Because the deployment is built on open-source PostgreSQL, it is optimized for the needs of an MPP database, like Greenplum. PowerFlex can deliver the compute performance necessary to support massive data IO with its CO nodes. The PowerFlex infrastructure can also support workloads running on CO nodes or nodes that combine compute and storage (hybrid nodes). By leveraging the malleable nature of PowerFlex, no additional silos are needed in the data center, and it may even help remove existing ones.

The architecture used in the solutions guide consists of 12 CO nodes and 10 SO nodes. The CO nodes have VMware ESXi installed on them, with Greenplum instances deployed on top. There are 10 segments and one director deployed for the Greenplum environment. The 12th CO node is used for redundancy.

The storage tier uses the 10 SO nodes to deliver 12 volumes backed by SSDs. This configuration creates a high speed, highly redundant storage system that is needed for Greenplum. Also, two protection domains are used to provide both primary and mirror storage for the Greenplum instances. Greenplum mirrors the volumes between those protection domains, adding an additional level of protection to the environment, as shown in the following figure:

By using this fluid and composable architecture, the components can be scaled independently of one another, allowing for storage to be increased either independently or together with compute. Administrators can use this configuration to optimize usage and deliver appropriate resources as needed without creating silos in the environment.  

Testing and validation with Greenplum: we have you covered

The solutions guide not only describes how to build a Greenplum environment, it also addresses testing, which many administrators want to perform before they finish a build. The guide covers performing basic validations with FIO and gpcheckperf. In the simplest terms, these tools ensure that IO, memory, and network performance are acceptable. The FIO tests that were run for the guide showed that the HBA was fully saturated, maximizing both read and write operations. The gpcheckperf testing showed a performance of 14,283.62 MB/sec for write workloads.

Wouldn’t you feel better if a Greenplum environment was tested with a real-world dataset? That is, taking it beyond just the minimum, maximum, and average numbers? The great news is that the architecture was tested that way! Our Dell Digital team has developed an internal test suite running static benchmarked data. This test suite is used at Dell Technologies across new Greenplum environments as the gold standard for new deployments.

In this test design, all the datasets and queries are static. This scenario allows for a consistent measurement of the environment from one run to the next. It also provides a baseline of an environment that can be used over time to see how its performance has changed -- for example, if the environment sped up or slowed down following a software update.

Massive performance with real data

So how did the architecture fare? It did very well! When 182 parallel complex queries were run simultaneously to stress the system, it took just under 12 minutes for the test to run. In that time, the environment had a read bandwidth of 40 GB/s and a write bandwidth of 10 GB/s. These results are using actual production-based queries from the Dell Digital team workload. These results are close to saturating the network bandwidth for the environment, which indicates that there are no storage bottlenecks.

The design covered in this solution guide goes beyond simply verifying that the environment can handle the workload; it also shows how the configuration can maintain performance during ongoing operations.

Maintaining performance with snapshots

One of the key areas that we tested was the impact of snapshots on performance. Snapshots are a frequent operation in data centers and are used to create test copies of data as well as a source for backups. For this reason, consider the impact of snapshots on MPP databases when looking at an environment, not just how fast the database performs when it is first deployed.

In our testing, we used the native snapshot capabilities of PowerFlex to measure the impact that snapshots have on performance. Using PowerFlex snapshots provides significant flexibility in data protection and cloning operations that are commonly performed in data centers.

We found that when the first storage-consistent snapshot of the database volumes was taken, the test took 45 seconds longer to complete than initial tests. This result was because it was the first snapshot of the volumes. Follow-on snapshots during testing resulted in minimal impact to the environment. This minimal impact is significant for MPP databases in which performance is important. (Of course, performance can vary with each deployment.)  

We hope that these findings help administrators who are building a Greenplum environment feel more at ease. You not only have a solution guide to refer to as you architect the environment, you can be confident that it was built on best-in-class infrastructure and validated using common testing tools and real-world queries.

The bottom line

Now that you know the assignment is coming to build an MPP database using VMware Tanzu Greenplum -- are you up to the challenge?

If you are, be sure to read the solution guide. If you need additional guidance on building your Greenplum environment on PowerFlex, be sure to reach out to your Dell representative.  

Resources

• Dell PowerFlex
• VMware Tanzu Greenplum

Authors:

• Tony Foster – Dell Technologies, Twitter: @wonder_nerd
  LinkedIn
• Sue Mosovich – VMware