HPE Reference Architecture for VMware vSphere Metro Storage Cluster on HPE ConvergedSystem 700 with HPE 3PAR Peer Persistence

Reference Architecture

Reference Architecture

Contents Executive summary ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 3 Introduction ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 3 Solution overview ..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 5

HPE 3PAR Peer Persistence provides high availability ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 6 System setup ......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 7

Solution components ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 8 HPE ConvergedSystem 700 components ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 8

HPE CS700 vMSC using HPE 3PAR Peer Persistence HPE lab configuration .......................................................................................................................................................................... 13 Lab test environments .............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 13 Initial setup steps ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 15 Test environment configuration ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 29

Capacity and sizing ............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 29 Workload description ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 31 Planned switchover testing .................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 34

Summary ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 36 Implementing a proof-of-concept .................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 36

Appendix A: Solution hardware configuration........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 37 Appendix B: Configuration adjustments ......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 38

Customer Intent Document.................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 38 Resources and additional links ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................ 40

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Executive summary HPE 3PAR Peer Persistence software enables HPE ConvergedSystem 700 systems located in different data centers at metropolitan distances to act as peers to each other, presenting continuous storage system access to hosts and servers connected to them. This capability allows you to configure a high-availability solution between two sites or data centers where storage access failover and failback remain completely transparent to the hosts and applications running on those hosts. Compared to traditional cluster failover models where, upon failover, the applications must be restarted, HPE 3PAR Peer Persistence software allows hosts to remain online serving their business applications even when they switch storage access from their original site to the storage array on the disaster recovery (DR) site, resulting in a much improved recovery time.

This Reference Architecture demonstrates a highly-available disaster recovery solution for a virtualized infrastructure.

This solution is applicable to both the HPE ConvergedSystem 700 and HPE Converged Architecture 700, providing a purpose-built system designed for speed and efficiency of design and deployment in the data center. Overall this helps reduce operational costs, minimize downtime and accelerate time to value.

Each system ships with factory-integrated compute, storage, networking, and management components, all preconfigured to address the most demanding workloads. Converged management and automation capabilities are built into the HPE ConvergedSystem 700 and HPE Converged Architecture 700 that allow customers to simplify everyday tasks through single pane of glass management. Compute and storage can be scaled independently so customers can easily adapt to new requirements and enable the solution to grow as business needs change. One-stop support from Hewlett Packard Enterprise provides a single point of accountability with faster problem resolution. The solution works in a similar manner with HPE Converged Architecture 700 as well.

Target audience: The target audience for this white paper is groups or individuals who are considering the use of virtualization technology to consolidate the physical server footprint and require site resiliency between data centers. A working knowledge of virtualization technologies, including, but not limited to, servers, storage, networking, power, solution management and disaster recovery is recommended. In addition, architects and systems administrators who are planning a non-virtualized (physical) deployment may benefit from seeing the design of virtualization, especially on the HPE ConvergedSystem 700.

Document purpose: This document is intended for those seeking guidance in the implementation of a hardware-based replication solution utilizing virtual machines and two separate storage arrays. Integration of HPE 3PAR replication technologies and VMware® are discussed.

This paper provides information about deploying a VMware vSphere® Metro Storage Cluster (vMSC) across two data centers or sites using HPE 3PAR Peer Persistence on HPE ConvergedSystem 700 systems. A vMSC configuration is designed to maintain data availability beyond a single physical or logical site.

This white paper describes a project developed by Hewlett Packard Enterprise in July 2016.

Disclaimer: Products sold prior to the separation of Hewlett-Packard Company into Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company and HP Inc. on November 1, 2015 may have a product name and model number that differ from current models.

Introduction Many organizations rely on virtualization to improve security and compliance requirements, increase data center flexibility, simplify deployment and management, improve operational efficiencies, and achieve lower total cost of ownership goals. To fully embrace and reap these benefits, adopting an integrated end-to-end solution can deliver the agility needed to accommodate the current needs and future growth requirements that mission-critical applications demand. Equally important, an integrated technology stack can enable you to expand, contract, scale up/down/out/in to address infrastructure allocation requirements as workloads change. To meet these needs, HPE has created ConvergedSystem 700 (CS700) and Converged Architecture 700 (CA700). The HPE ConvergedSystem 700 is an integrated product pre-built by HPE and provides businesses with the quickest time to production. The HPE Converged Architecture 700 on the other hand offers a lot more flexibility and can be delivered as a single stack by HPE Certified Channel Partners. The solution is proven, tested, and optimized to help you meet long-term data center needs for a variety of mixed application workloads.

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Advances in technology are lowering barriers to entry, while consumerization is driving change from the outside in. In the new idea economy, success will be determined by your ability to transform IT to meet the new expectations of consumers and business customers and to grow your business in new ways. HPE ConvergedSystem and HPE Converged Architectures can help you achieve this. Hewlett Packard Enterprise can help you build your next-generation data center on a converged system architecture that will improve IT agility and drive speed, efficiency, and simplicity, all while reducing risk. Your business transformation starts with simplifying and automating as much of your server, storage, and networking infrastructure as possible, creating a software-defined environment that frees up resources for new and innovative projects.

Achieve real business benefits with integrated solutions using HPE CS700 and HPE CA700. These allow you to have efficient building blocks for providing hybrid IT, enabling you to adapt quickly to market and customer needs. And, it maximizes the hybrid infrastructure speed, efficiency, and simplicity of your core infrastructure and operations.

HPE Converged Architectures are modular, repeatable and scalable building blocks designed for your workloads. It is infrastructure your way, delivered as one integrated stack by your choice of HPE Authorized Channel Partner. These reference architecture designs are thoroughly tested by HPE engineering to reduce risk, and save you time and resources. Designed for speed and efficiency they provide an ideal infrastructure to run your common workloads and applications. New workloads and business demands are forcing customers to reevaluate the way they purchase and manage infrastructure. Do-it-yourself and integrated systems assembled from components provided by multiple vendors often cause increases in cost, time, and effort as well as create complexity with interoperability challenges. HPE ConvergedSystem 700 and HPE Converged Architecture 700 address these challenges with tightly integrated components that are optimized to support on-demand IT infrastructure, private cloud, and mixed workloads.

Preconfigured to meet a range of business needs, HPE ConvergedSystem 700 and HPE Converged Architecture 700 can be deployed easily and rapidly to support a variety of virtualized application environments. HPE engineering has done the testing so that IT professionals can focus their time on critical activities. Specific technology has been included in the systems that address critical business objectives such as lower costs, increased performance, and high availability. Each system ships with factory-integrated or channel partner-integrated compute, storage, networking, and management components, all preconfigured to address the most demanding workloads. Converged management and automation capabilities are built into the HPE ConvergedSystem 700 that allow customers to simplify everyday tasks through single pane of glass management. Compute and storage can be scaled independently so customers can easily adapt to new requirements and enable the solution to grow as business needs change. One-stop support from the HPE Center of Excellence (CoE) provides a single point of accountability with faster problem resolution.

HPE ConvergedSystem 700 and HPE Converged Architecture 700 help customers drive business agility with solutions that enable you to adapt to your market and customer needs quickly. They deliver a broad range of benefits, including:

• Fast: HPE ConvergedSystem 700 and HPE Converged Architecture 700 enable you to reduce the time to insight and action through automated deployment, provisioning, and predictive analytics. They allow you to provision infrastructure in a matter of minutes while being able to identify and respond to hot spots more quickly.

• Efficient: HPE ConvergedSystem 700 and HPE Converged Architecture 700 feature automated converged management that radically simplifies everyday tasks to reduce OPEX and improve operational agility. They feature templates that eliminate many manual operations, and device-focused processes enable you to refocus your investment on innovation, not operations, by lowering the TCO of your general purpose infrastructure. They provide true business transformation, via a solution lifecycle management, to increase IT operational efficiency and a reduction in administration time.

• Simple: Easily stand up and manage new services for your business partners. Fewer management tools are required through converged management. Software-defined templates make on-demand IT infrastructure services deployment faster and easier.

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Solution overview Availability solutions can be designed to provide local data center high availability and also include site resiliency. High availability is generally thought of as an automated failover solution within a local data center that removes a single point of failure (SPOF). Disaster recovery solutions have typically been a complicated manual process of restoring the data and workloads to a recovery site. They were often too complex to test and if the actual requirement to failover was directed, the processes may not be well understood and could result in loss of data and extensive recovery times.

Availability solutions may be comprised of several layers of reliability. For example, Microsoft® Exchange Server and SQL Server provide application replication solutions that support manual or automatic failover to remote sites. These can be combined with array-based high availability features and in some scenarios, array-based integrated replication solutions to provide granular and site resilient solutions.

HPE provides ConvergedSystem solutions that are integrated with VMware and Microsoft Windows® Failover Cluster. Table 1 provides a summary comparison of HPE 3PAR availability solutions. This paper will focus on the HPE 3PAR Peer Persistence solution.

Table 1. Availability solutions

VMware vCenter SRM/ HPE 3PAR SRA

HPE 3PAR Peer Persistence HPE 3PAR Cluster Extension (CLX)

Virtualization Support VMware vCenter VMware vSphere Metro Storage Cluster, Hyper-V Windows Failover Cluster

Hyper-V Windows Failover Cluster

Availability High Availability (Active-Failover)

Continuous Availability (Active-Active)

High Availability (Active-Failover)

Replication Synchronous, Async Synchronous Synchronous, Async

Switchover/Failover Manual decision to failover Manual or automated Manual or automated

Granularity Remote Copy Group Remote Copy Group Remote Copy Group

Sites 2 sites 3 sites (Quorum) 3 sites (Quorum)

License Remote Copy, VMware SRM Remote Copy, Peer Persistence Remote Copy, CLX

HPE ConvergedSystem 700 reduces time to deployment. This ConvergedSystem is built on standard and reliable modular infrastructure blocks including blade-based servers and an HPE enterprise storage array – all delivered as a single, proven solution.

The tested solution consisted of similar sized deployments at each site. In normal operations there were four Microsoft SQL Server 2014 servers running a simulated workload at each site. Both sites ran active load with bi-directional HPE 3PAR Remote Copy array-based replication. In a failover, either site is designed to run the entire production workload. In addition 4 VMs were set up to run Microsoft Exchange Server Jetstress to validate switchover capabilities while supporting latency sensitive disk Input/Output (I/O) workload generation. Additional details on the test lab configuration and results are in the following sections.

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The tested solution hardware for a single site is shown in the Figure 1. The CS700 multi-rack solution provides high availability with redundant components. The solution can be grown within the racks or by adding additional compute, network, and storage components.

Figure 1. Front view of an HPE ConvergedSystem 700 multi-rack solution featuring 8 workload servers and an HPE 3PAR StoreServ 7440c storage array

HPE 3PAR Peer Persistence provides high availability HPE 3PAR Peer Persistence is a high availability configuration between two data centers in which the ESXi hosts are set up in a metro cluster configuration with access to storage arrays in both sites. Storage volumes created on one storage array are replicated to the other array using synchronous HPE 3PAR Remote Copy to ensure that the volumes are in sync at all times. Each volume will have a primary source copy and a backup target copy.

HPE 3PAR Peer Persistence utilizes Asymmetric Logical Unit Access (ALUA) capability that allows paths to a SCSI device to be marked as having different characteristics. With ALUA, the same LUN can be exported from both arrays simultaneously, but only the paths to the source (primary) volume will be marked as active. The paths to the target volume will be marked as standby preventing the host from performing any I/O using those paths. In the event of a non-disruptive array volume migration scenario, the standby paths are marked as active, and host traffic to the primary storage array is redirected to the secondary storage array with minimal to no impact to the hosts.

The HPE 3PAR Peer Persistence software supports bi-directional replication, which enables each site to perform as a disaster recovery center for the other. It enables non-disruptive automatic failover or manual switchover of applications from one site to another.

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An example would be the use of VMware vMotion within a VMware vSphere environment. HPE 3PAR Peer Persistence provides the same stretched cluster configuration across data centers that are used with VMware’s vSphere Metro Storage Cluster certification to enable multi-site storage high availability. In Figure 2 below, virtual machines (VMs) are being serviced by an HPE 3PAR StoreServ storage system on site 1 while additional VMs are being serviced by another HPE 3PAR StoreServ storage system at site 2 located within metropolitan distances from one another. vMotion allows customers to move VMs across sites. HPE 3PAR Peer Persistence software enables the movement of VMs across data centers to be completely transparent to the applications those VMs are running.

Figure 2. Logical view of a Uniform vMSC configuration implemented with HPE 3PAR Peer Persistence

HPE 3PAR Peer Persistence achieves automatic transparent failover in the event of a complete array or data center failure with the help of the HPE 3PAR Peer Persistence Quorum Witness software. The HPE 3PAR Peer Persistence Quorum Witness software needs to be installed at a third site and will act as an independent witness should one of the arrays or data centers become unavailable.

System setup HPE ConvergedSystem 700 for VMware Services includes factory integration services, data center integration services, and installation and startup services. When ordering HPE ConvergedSystem 700 for VMware, the system is optimized and pre-integrated with VMware vCenter Server and VMware vSphere with Operations Management (vSOM) Enterprise Plus, creating an ideal virtualization platform for business applications.

The system is pre-integrated in the HPE factory based on extensively tested configuration guidelines. Included implementation services quickly get the system up and running to peak performance, reducing the risk of disruption to the existing environment. The Customer Intent Document (CID) must be populated with unique site prefixes to ensure the systems are built and ready for vMSC data center integration.

Note CID v2.0 or later is required to be completed by the customer during the ordering process to ensure proper factory setup.

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This reference architecture is based on deploying vMSC on two separate HPE ConvergedSystem 700 or HPE Converged Architecture 700 systems. The tested configuration started as two identical HPE ConvergedSystem 700 systems that used the CID site prefixes and unique ranges of MAC/WWN addresses to support a vMSC data center integration. Additional CID details can be found in Appendix B. Also the integration required a routed IP network, Domain Name System (DNS) updates, and ESXi host migrations. Details on the integrations are included in this white paper.

With proper CID v2.0 or later inputs, the multi-site configuration is pre-installed for rapid deployment. In Figure 3 below, the two separate systems are managed as a single vMSC configuration. The ESXi host names include their local primary storage site. Typically, a three letter prefix would be used as a naming convention to uniquely identify sites.

Figure 3. Overview of lab hardware setup for vMSC deployed on two HPE ConvergedSystem 700

Solution components The solution components included two HPE ConvergedSystem 700 systems configured to run similar workloads at each site. The CS700 solution includes hardware and software components. Additional configuration and key features of components required to support VMware vSphere Metro Storage Cluster using HPE 3PAR Peer Persistence are defined in the following sections.

HPE ConvergedSystem 700 components The lab test solution was comprised of two CS700 configurations, each with a single blade enclosure and 8 production server blades, and a single HPE 3PAR storage rack containing 120 x SFF Fast Class (FC) physical disk drives. The system is pre-integrated in the HPE factory based on extensively tested configuration guidelines. Included implementation services quickly get the system up and running to peak performance, reducing the risk of disruption to the existing environment. The Customer Intent Document (CID) must be populated with unique site prefixes and unique ranges of MAC/WWN addresses to ensure the systems are built and ready for VMware vSphere Metro Storage Cluster (vMSC) or

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VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager data center integration. When deploying multiple CS700 systems that will be replication partners, it is imperative that the CID defines each CS700 with unique site prefixes and address ranges. Existing CS700 configurations that are currently deployed can be utilized, however the second system requires the site prefixes and unique ranges of MAC/WWN to insure ease of integration.

For example, when two systems are ordered without CID-defined unique site prefixes, both systems will arrive with identical MAC addresses, WWNs, component names, resource names, system names, etc. The CID allows changing the range of WWN addresses, range of MAC addresses, and adding a “host prefix” to the different names. Figure 4 shows the compute and storage racks and their contents, as well as the names with the host prefix assigned to the components. Refer to Appendix B for related CID information to minimize initial setup of vMSC deployments.

Figure 4. CS700 compute and storage racks with host prefixes for unique names

Configuration overview HPE ConvergedSystem 700 includes the following key components:

• HPE infrastructure

– Optimized HPE BladeSystem converged infrastructure configurations including HPE Virtual Connect 20GbE FlexFabric technology

– HPE 3PAR StoreServ 7000 series storage1 optimized for virtualization

– Two network switch vendor options are available to integrate with your existing network infrastructure

HPE 5900AF switch series networking

Optional Cisco Nexus series networking

• High-performance LAN connections

– Network and power in racks that are scale-up ready

1 HPE 3PAR StoreServ 7440c storage was used for the testing of this reference architecture. HPE ConvergedSystem 700 is also available with HPE 3PAR StoreServ 8000 series

storage.

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• Integrated management

– Intelligent rack and power infrastructure management

– HPE OneView

– HPE Integrated Lights-Out

– HPE BladeSystem Onboard Administrator

• HPE 3PAR Operating System Software Suite

– HPE 3PAR Operating System

– HPE 3PAR Thin Provisioning

– HPE 3PAR Thin Conversion

– HPE 3PAR Thin Persistence

– HPE 3PAR Full Copy

– HPE 3PAR Thin Copy Reclamation

– HPE 3PAR Autonomic Rebalance

– HPE 3PAR System Tuner

– HPE 3PAR Management Console

– HPE 3PAR Host Explorer

• Additional HPE 3PAR software components required to support HPE 3PAR Peer Persistence

– HPE 3PAR Virtual Copy software (optional, required for this solution)

– HPE 3PAR Remote Copy software (optional, required for this solution)

– HPE 3PAR Quorum Witness (optional, required for this solution)

• HPE 3PAR Reporting Software Suite (optional, recommended)

– HPE 3PAR System Reporter (included with Reporting Software Suite)

– HPE 3PARinfo2

– Consulting services (optional)

For the HPE ConvergedSystem 700 for VMware solution additional VMware related software components are included:

• HPE OneView for VMware vCenter

– HPE OneView for VMware vCenter Server module

– HPE OneView for VMware vCenter Storage module

– HPE 3PAR Management Plug-in and Recovery Manager for VMware vSphere Web Service

• HPE 3PAR Application Software Suite for VMware

– HPE 3PAR vSphere APIs for Storage Awareness (VASA) support

– HPE 3PAR VAAI Plug-in

– HPE 3PAR Host Explorer for VMware vSphere

2 HPE 3PARinfo is not installed by default as part of the HPE ConvergedSystem 700. However, it is a free, customer-installable utility and is available for download in the HPE

Software Depot (hpe.com/info/softwaredepot).

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• Partner infrastructure

– VMware vSphere with Operations Management (vSOM)

vSphere 5.5 Update 2 Enterprise Plus

vRealize Operations Manager

Key hardware components • HPE Intelligent Infrastructure for intelligent rack infrastructure management

• HPE Managed Power Distribution Units

• HPE BladeSystem c7000 platinum enclosure

• HPE Virtual Connect FlexFabric technology

• HPE ProLiant BL460c Gen9 server blades with Intel® Xeon® E5-v3 series processors (workload servers)

• HPE ProLiant DL360 Gen9 servers with Intel Xeon E5-v3 series processors (management servers)

• HPE 3PAR StoreServ 7000 storage using a segregated SAN Fabric

• HPE 5900AF-48XG-4QSFP+ network switches

• HPE 5900AF-48G-4XG-2QSFP+ network switches

• HPE SN6000B Fibre Channel switches (HPE 3PAR Remote Copy over FC requires SAN switches)

The solution tested is a CS700 8-node solution, configured and deployed in the lab exactly as if an on-site installation had occurred at a customer site.

VMware vSphere clusters Each HPE ProLiant BL460c Gen9 server blade in the solution is running VMware vSphere 5.5 Update 2, with eight server blades running in two separate vSphere clusters in each of the sites. This provides highly available host servers for virtual machines (VMs), as VMs running on a specific server in the cluster can be manually or automatically migrated via vMotion to a different host server in the cluster if needed. This may be because of deliberate server shutdown to perform updates or maintenance, or an unplanned server shutdown. The vSphere cluster and vMotion form a part of the infrastructure-provided high availability (HA) and redundancy capabilities.

Solution management The management servers of the HPE ConvergedSystem 700 for VMware are the core components for providing a centralized management environment. The primary utilities and functions are configured on the management servers to allow the solution rack to be self-contained with regard to management needs. The default configuration of the HPE ConvergedSystem 700 for VMware includes two pre-configured HPE ProLiant DL360 Gen9 servers running VMware 5.5 Update 2 deployed with eight management virtual machines:

• One Solution Management Virtual Machine (smgmt01)

• One HPE OneView VM (OneView)

• One HPE Insight Control Server Provisioning VM (ICsp)

• Two Troubleshooting VMs – one located on the local storage of each HPE ProLiant DL360 Gen9 server (tsvm01, tsvm02)

• Two HPE Virtual Service Routers – one located on the local storage of each HPE ProLiant DL360 Gen9 server (svsr01, svsr02)

• One vRealize Operations Manager VM (vROps)

Additional details on the HPE ConvergedSystem 700 solution can be found at CS700 Architecture Guide.

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Figure 5. CS700 Management Stack

Figure 6 provides a logical view of the test lab infrastructure VMs. Each site has an HPE BladeSystem c7000 enclosure populated with eight server blades. An additional eight server blade bays are available in each of the c7000 enclosures for future growth. Each site is provisioned with two clusters (ESXi 5.5). This design provides highly available host servers for the VMs. The vSphere clusters support vMotion for planned or unplanned migration of VMs to a different host server in the cluster. The vSphere cluster and vMotion form a part of the infrastructure-provided HA and redundancy features.

Figure 6. Lab infrastructure VMs

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Note Four of the eight VMs (smgmt01, ICsp, HPE OneView, vROps) are preinstalled on shared LUNs from the HPE 3PAR array. The remaining four VMs (tsvm01, tsvm02, svsr01, svsr02) are saved on the local storage of the management servers. The four on the shared LUNs are managed by a Common Provisioning Group (CPG) named CPG_Mgt. Additional information on the HPE CS700 solution and infrastructure VMs is available from the HPE ConvergedSystem 700 technical white paper.

HPE CS700 vMSC using HPE 3PAR Peer Persistence HPE lab configuration HPE 3PAR Peer Persistence software enables HPE 3PAR StoreServ systems located in different data centers at metropolitan distances to act as peers to each other, presenting continuous storage system access to hosts connected to them. This capability allows you to configure a high-availability solution between two sites or data centers where storage access failover and failback remains completely transparent to the hosts and applications running on those hosts. Compared to traditional cluster failover models where upon failover, the applications must be restarted, HPE 3PAR Peer Persistence software allows hosts to remain online serving their business applications even when they switch storage access from their original site to the storage array in the remote site, resulting in a much improved recovery time.

Lab test environments The HPE lab testing used arrays in the same room and connected through FC networks. No additional latency was added to the network. Remote copy group modes were tested with synchronous replication modes.

Networks in HPE ConvergedSystem 700 for VMware The following networks have been implemented in HPE ConvergedSystem 700 for VMware:

• Workload servers

– Solution Management Network—Isolates network traffic for management and provides access to management VMs

– Production Network—Isolates network traffic for production VMs and provides a link to your data center

– Data Center Management Network—Enables management access, if desired, to the infrastructure components in the solution

– Compute Migration Network—Allows production VMs to be migrated between vSphere hosts using the vMotion feature

– Solution Compute High Availability Network—Helps ensure the failover of production VMs following a failure in one of the workload servers

• Management servers

– Solution Management Network—Isolates the network traffic required to manage the solution

– Data Center Management Network—Enables desired management access to the infrastructure components in the solution

– Management Migration Network—Allows management VMs to migrate between management servers using the vMotion feature

– Management High Availability Network—Helps ensure the failover of management VMs following a failure in one of the management servers

Note As part of the traffic isolation scheme, HPE uses VLANs based on VMware’s best practices.

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Lab Internet Protocol (IP) networks Figure 7 depicts the lab network design, showing a representation of the customer data center networks, and the deployment of the workload generator VMs onto the CS700 solution. The red (Production) and green (DC Management) networks supported connectivity to the test environment simulating customer workloads running on virtual machines. The Customer Data Center Management (Solution Management) Network is also used to access components such as the HPE 3PAR arrays and the solution management servers. The HPE Virtual Services Router (VSR) maps the solution management addresses to the customer’s data center management addresses. The customer Data Center Management Network and the HPE VSR1000 Virtual Services router can be used to enable bidirectional traffic to and from the management infrastructure. This could include HPE iLOs, HPE Onboard Administrator, maPDUs, HPE Service Processor, HPE 3PAR controllers and HPE OneView.

Figure 7. HPE ConvergedSystem 700 lab test bed network simulating two sites

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Lab Storage Area Network Figure 8 depicts the test lab Storage Area Network (SAN) design, showing a representation of the customer data center and SAN networks. The testing was done with HPE 3PAR Remote Copy over Fibre Channel (RCFC). SAN switches are required for RCFC. A pair of switches per site provide redundancy and load balancing. Remote Copy mode for HPE 3PAR Peer Persistence testing of synchronous replication uses the RCFC links. Additional Remote Copy Links and Remote Copy Group information and test details are included in the sections below.

Figure 8. Lab test bed SAN network

Initial setup steps The following sections describe the modifications to the two CS700 systems required to deploy a disaster tolerant solution. The sections assume that CS700 systems are factory built according to the CID 2.0 or later and that each site is utilizing the solution’s HPE Virtual Services Router (VSR). This section will also discuss Remote Copy Links, Remote Copy Groups, and networks.

The two HPE ConvergedSystem 700 systems have additional configuration steps to complete for the vMSC solution. High-level steps are listed below with additional details in following section.

Note Additional details on implementation are found in the Implementing vSphere Metro Storage Cluster using HPE 3PAR Peer Persistence technical white paper, the HPE 3PAR Windows Server 2016/2012/2008 Implementation Guide and the HPE 3PAR Remote Copy Software User Guide.

A routed network or networks must be configured between the two CS700 systems. Any IP subnet used by the virtual machine must be accessible by all ESXi hosts in all data centers within the Metro Storage Cluster.

• Bridge/route the IP networks between the two HPE ConvergedSystem 700 systems

– Data Center Management (routed for this solution testing)

– Production (can be used for routing between systems)

– Solution Management (local non-routed)

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• Merge the two SAN fabrics from each HPE ConvergedSystem 700

– ESXi hosts see both HPE 3PAR systems

– Present both the source and target volumes to all hosts within each VMware cluster

• With a VSR implementation, add Domain Name System (DNS) entries in the sdnsdomain.net for ESXi hosts servers

• Configure the VMware network for cross-site vMotion traffic, Fault Tolerance logging, and Management traffic

• Migrate ESXi hosts from site2 vCenter server to site1 vCenter server

• Configure HPE 3PAR Remote Copy for Peer Persistence

• Test planned switchovers

Merge the two SAN fabrics from each HPE ConvergedSystem 700 together ESXi hosts need to access storage from both HPE 3PAR systems. Initial steps include merging the SAN fabrics and additional zoning.

• Verify the switches have unique Domain IDs

• Configure additional zones on both fabrics

– site1 servers to access site2 3PAR

– site2 servers to access site1 3PAR

Define additional hosts on each HPE 3PAR Figure 9 shows that Persona 11 supports ALUA path management and must be used for configurations that have ESXi hosts connected to both the primary array and the secondary array. Host sets are typically used when exported LUNs are presented to multiple hosts as is the case with a VMware vSphere Metro Storage Cluster.

Figure 9. SSMC Create Host set for site2 ESXi hosts on site1-sstor01 array

After setting up Remote Copy Groups, HPE 3PAR Virtual Volumes (VV) will be exported to the hosts or host sets. This will be discussed in the Remote Copy section.

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With a VSR implementation, add DNS host entries in the sdnsdomain.net for ESXi hosts servers The management servers of the HPE CS700 are the core components for providing a centralized management environment. Each HPE CS700 has a Solution Management VM (smgmt01). HPE VSR1000 Virtual Services Router is deployed with HPE ConvergedSystem 700 for VMware. The routers run in a Virtual Machine (svsr01, svsr02) on the local storage of each HPE ProLiant DL360 Gen9 server. The solution management VSRs assign identical IP addresses for the Solution Management Network (172.x.x.x). The routed network needs to assign additional addresses to the ESXi hosts and application VMs. Each site’s DNS management server needs to add host names for the routed network. In the HPE test lab the DC Management Network was routed between the HPE CS700 systems. See Figure 10 below showing DNS hosts added for routing.

Note The VSR1000 in HPE ConvergedSystem 700 for VMware provides NAT between the data center management network and the solution management network. This allows the customer to access management components from the data center IP space. It also allows multiple solution racks to have identical IP address schemes within the rack but use NAT addresses to communicate to enable replication, high availability, and metro cluster via the data center network.

Each HPE CS700 DNS solution management server has been updated with the other sites hosts. The DC Management routed network for the HPE lab is using the 10.101.x.x network.

Figure 10. Solution Management add DNS host names for routing across both sites

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Table 2 shows the applications running on the system management server for each site. Each site has added prefixes to the base host names. For example site1-smgmt01 and site2-smgmt01 are both running DNS services and added routed network host names. Site prefixes have been added to the HPE test lab configuration to provide unique host names between the two HPE CS700 management servers.

Table 2. Management VMs in HPE ConvergedSystem 700 for VMware

VM Name Applications

smgmt01 VMware vCenter, HPE OneView for VMware vCenter, DNS, DHCP, IIS, SMTP, NTP

OneView HPE OneView 1.20

ICsp Insight Control Server Provisioning 7.4

tsvm01 HPE 3PAR CLI, HPE 3PAR MC, vSphere 5.5 .NET client

tsvm02 HPE 3PAR CLI, HPE 3PAR MC, vSphere 5.5 .NET client

svsr01 Virtual Services Router

svsr02 Virtual Services Router

vROps vRealize Operations Manager 6.0

Configure the VMware network for cross-site vMotion traffic, Fault Tolerance logging, and management traffic The HPE CS700 comes with separate VMkernel adapters for vMotion traffic, Fault Tolerance logging, and management traffic services already configured. The physical network for those adapters are localized to the servers at each site. For a MetroCluster those services need to include networking to servers at the other site. The HPE lab testing used the vmkdcmgmt switch for routed traffic between HPE CS700 systems. Figure 11 shows vMotion Traffic, Fault Tolerance Logging, and management traffic enabled on device vmk4/vmkdcmgmt.

Figure 11. VMware vSphere Web Client site1-scs01 ESXi host management networking to modify VMkernel adapter settings

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The VMware vSphere Web Client HPE Management Network Diagram provides a scrollable view of the HPE Management Virtual Connect networks, vswitches, port groups and physical adapters as shown in Figure 12.

Figure 12. VMware vSphere Web Client site1-scs01 ESXi host Network Diagram

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Migrate ESXi hosts to the primary vCenter site Each HPE CS700 was initially set up with the vCenter servers managing their respective clusters. To deploy vMSC, one of the vCenter servers must be selected to manage all of the ESXi hosts and clusters. The HPE lab testing utilized the system management server site1-smgmt01 vCenter. The site2 ESXi hosts and clusters were migrated while in maintenance mode to the site1 vCenter. The site2 system management server and applications still provide additional high availability for the solution after the migration of hosts. Figure 13 shows the site2 hosts to be migrated to the site1 vCenter.

Figure 13. VMware vSphere Web Client site1-scs01 ESXi host Management showing the site2 hosts migrated to site1 vCenter

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After the migration of the site2 vCenter clusters to site1-smgmt01 vCenter, the site2-hosts and clusters are available to complete the vMSC with HPE 3PAR Peer Persistence configuration. Figure 14 shows a single vCenter managing both site1 and site2 hosts.

Figure 14. VMware vSphere Web Client site1-scs01 ESXi host Management showing a single vCenter managing both sites

Configure HPE 3PAR Remote Copy The Remote Copy configurations and operations for HPE 3PAR Peer Persistence deployment use a linked pair of storage systems, which are called a remote-copy pair. In a remote-copy pair, one system is the primary system and one is the backup system. The primary system holds the primary virtual volumes, and the backup system holds the secondary virtual volumes. Secondary virtual volumes contain copies of the primary virtual volumes. The volume that is part of a Primary Remote Copy Group is the source volume, the replicated volume in the secondary Remote Copy Group is called the target volume.

Note The backup system in the remote-copy pair is the target of the primary system, and the primary system is the target of the backup system.

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Configuring replication links HPE 3PAR Remote Copy configuration can be accomplished by first selecting and configuring the ports to be used for Remote Copy functions. Remote Copy over Fibre Channel (RCFC) is recommended for the required synchronous replication of the data between two separate HPE 3PAR StoreServ arrays deployed using an HPE 3PAR Peer Persistence configuration. Once the Fibre Channel port type is selected, change the “Connection Mode” to Remote Copy over Fibre Channel (RCFC) and then proceed with configuring the interface. It is recommended and a best practice to configure two ports (of the same type) on each HPE 3PAR array from the same node pair.

Remote Copy over Fibre Channel (RCFC) – Storage systems that are connected to each other over a Fibre Channel Storage Area Network (FCSAN) and use Fibre Channel ports to replicate data to each other. Up to four RCFC links are supported per node. A one-to-one relationship between RCFC links and targets is supported. The same RCFC link cannot be used to connect to more than one target.

In Figure 15, Node 0 and Node 1 are members of a node pair. Ports in the same node pair are recommended to be linked. The HPE 3PAR Command Line Interface (CLI) utility and management consoles report in Node:Slot:Port format. Node 0 and Node 1 form a Node Pair. Site 1 RCFC links 0:2:3 refer to Node 0, Slot 2, and Port 3 and are connected to site 2 RCFC link 0:2:3. Two links are established between the sites.

Figure 15. Logical view of HPE lab site 1 and site 2 Remote Copy RCFC links from members of the same node pair

Remote Copy Synchronous mode In Synchronous mode, a host-initiated write is performed on both the primary and the backup StoreServ arrays before the write completion is acknowledged to the host. On the primary StoreServ, data is mirrored across the cache of two nodes. The write request is then sent to the backup StoreServ array via a communication link. The backup StoreServ array also mirrors the data in its cache (again, on two nodes) and then sends an acknowledgement to the primary system. The host write is acknowledged after the remote array’s acknowledgement is received by the primary array.

Note Round-trip latency measures the time for a signal to go from source to destination and back to the source. In synchronous mode replication, the round trip network latency between the two sites is 2.6 milliseconds (ms) or less for HPE 3PAR OS 3.2.1 (MU3) version used for the HPE lab testing in this paper. For the latest supported requirements for HPE 3PAR Peer Persistence, refer to the Single Point of Connectivity Knowledge (SPOCK).

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Figure 16 shows the HPE 3PAR StoreServ Management Console (SSMC), Remote Copy Configuration Create Configuration screen. Select the system from each site to display available Remote Copy ports.

Figure 16. HPE lab configuration HPE 3PAR StoreServ Management Console (SSMC) Create Links

After the links are created the SSMC Remote Copy Configurations screen in Figure 17 shows the current status of the links between the two systems. The links are shown as Node, Slot, Port. Similar information is also available in the legacy HPE 3PAR Management Console and from HPE 3PAR CLI.

Figure 17. HPE lab configuration HPE 3PAR StoreServ Management Console (SSMC) Link status

After successful completion of Remote Copy configuration between the two arrays, the next step is to deploy and configure a Quorum Witness as required for the HPE 3PAR Peer Persistence setup.

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Deploying a Quorum Witness The Quorum Witness (QW) software provides the arbitrator functionality in the Peer Persistence setup. The detailed instructions for deploying Quorum Witness can be found in the HPE 3PAR Remote Copy Software User Guide. Also reference the Implementing vSphere Metro Storage Cluster using HPE 3PAR Peer Persistence technical white paper. Figure 18 provides a logical view of the Quorum Witness communication links.

Figure 18. Quorum Witness update and status messaging

Note The virtual machine that the Quorum Witness is installed on does not require backups. The Quorum Witness can be reinstalled quickly and does not hold state information. Other options include a one-time backup, or clone and restore.

The Quorum Witness is typically set up on a third site where events that may impact site 1 or site 2 cannot impact the Quorum Witness site at the same time. Quorum Witness helps determine the nature of failures as shown in Table 3. The 3PAR Quorum Witness must be on a separate server than a host cluster. The 3PAR Quorum Witness is required for automatic transparent failover.

Review the table below on expected behavior.

Table 3. Quorum Witness (QW) expected behavior

Failure Type Expected Behavior

Link Failure The QW can detect if the two arrays are alive but not communicating because of a link failure. QW would still be receiving updates from both of the arrays.

Array/Site failure The QW can detect when one of the arrays/sites fails. QW would not be receiving updates from one of the arrays that has failed.

Create Remote Copy Group configuration Using the SSMC Remote Copy Create Group edit function, a Remote Copy Group can be created by selecting a source and target system. The user would have to specify the group name and select synchronous mode. The option to create remote Virtual Volumes (VVs) automatically will ensure that the VVs have the same WWN. The target volumes will have the same characteristics as the source volumes. If a target volume was created previously, then it is important to ensure that the volume size on the target matches the source volume size and that both volumes have the same WWN.

It is also important to ensure that the HPE 3PAR Peer Persistence policies for Remote Copy Groups are selected for the path management and auto failover handling. Adding the source volumes to the Remote Copy Groups is the last option in the creation of these Remote Copy Groups.

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Figure 19 shows the input selections for source, target, Peer Persistence, and Volume Pairs.

.

Figure 19. HPE 3PAR SSMC Remote Copy Groups: Create Group screen

The HPE test lab VVs were pre-configured as part of the HPE ConvergedSystem 700 for VMware solution. Both arrays were pre-defined in the CID with unique site prefixes. Site2 was preconfigured with similar source VVs as site1. As part of creating a Remote Copy Group the target VVs will be created with the same names on the target array. The Remote Copy Groups contain consistency group virtual volumes. The VM OS and data volumes are placed in the same Remote Copy Group. The VVs within the same Remote Copy Group contain consistent data after a planned or unplanned failover.

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Remote virtual volumes It is recommended to automatically create the remote virtual volumes as part of Create Group. During testing, it was determined that the initial Remote Copy Group names were not clear on site prefix. Replication was stopped and the Remote Copy Group was deleted. The remote virtual volumes had already been created and had the same WWN as the source. The next time the Create Group edit was input the selection was to create manually the remote virtual volumes. Figure 20 shows the actual inputs for one of the HPE 3PAR CS700 Remote Copy Groups used in testing.

Figure 20. HPE 3PAR SSMC Remote Copy Groups: Create Group screen create remote virtual volumes manually

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If you manually created a volume beforehand, then it is important to ensure that the volume size on the target matches the volume size on the source and that both volumes have the same WWN. The source volumes added in Figure 21 are members of the same Remote Copy Group. The volumes form a consistency group for replication. It is recommended for Peer Persistence to minimize the number of virtual volumes in a Remote Copy Group. During a switchover, the target array takes a recovery point snapshot of the virtual volumes in a Remote Copy Group. Fewer virtual volumes in a Recovery Group minimizes any potential I/O latency during switchover.

Figure 21. HPE 3PAR SSMC Remote Copy Groups: Create Group screen add source volumes

Note If a single virtual machine sits on two datastores and two virtual volumes, it is recommended to include both virtual volumes in the same Remote Copy Group.

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Figure 22 shows the SSMC Remote Copy Configurations status between the two HPE 3PAR CS700 systems. Synchronous replication is enabled for 16 groups, each with two virtual volumes. The links between the two systems are ready.

Figure 22. HPE 3PAR SSMC Remote Copy Groups: Create Group screen add source volumes

Verify ESXi hosts are seeing expected number of Active and Standby paths After exporting the VVs from both arrays to the hosts in the cluster, a rescan might be needed for the host to display the paths and storage presented. Figure 23 Storage Devices Paths shows the expected number of “Active” paths and “Standby” paths for the HPE lab testing.

Figure 23. VMware vSphere Web Client site1-scs01 ESXi host storage

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Test environment configuration The major steps for deploying the test environment are summarized in the following sections.

Figure 24 shows how each virtual server was deployed within VMware clusters 1 through 4. Four ESXi servers were used to host VMs in each cluster. During replication switchover testing the Microsoft SQL Server 2014 and Microsoft Exchange Jetstress VMs continue servicing transactions with no impact to users.

Figure 24. VM location and Server grouping within the VMware clusters

Hammer DB which is an open source database load testing and benchmarking tool generated database capacity and workloads on the eight Microsoft SQL Server VMs. Microsoft Exchange Jetstress was used to generate database capacity and workloads on four additional VMs.

Capacity and sizing The HPE Storage Sizer is a tool that helps design storage infrastructure. As shown in Figure 25, the 3PAR calculator is input with a similar sized array as the HPE test lab environment. Input options have been matched to the test environment and provide a sizing estimate for usable capacity and performance.

The User Workload Definition inputs can be modified:

• Number of Physical Disks

• Disk Type

• RAID Choice

• Read/Write %

• Access method (random versus sequential)

• Target response time

• Cache hit %

Modifying the User Workload Definition and Performance Consideration input fields will provide estimates for useable capacity and host IOPS. This tool, similar to application sizing tools, is considered a starting point for the complexities of sizing to achieve a balance of cost, performance, capacity, and availability.

Note It is a best practice to design both sites to provide the performance required for the “worst-case” failover scenario. The recovery site should be designed to support the entire workload of VMs and databases after failover from the protected data center.

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Figure 25. HPE Storage Sizer Tool: Storage Calculator/3PAR configured similar to HPE test lab array

Note The HPE Storage Sizer is a downloadable sizing tool that helps to design a storage infrastructure: HPE Storage Sizer

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Workload description HammerDB, which is an open source database load testing and benchmarking tool, generated database capacity and workloads on the eight Microsoft SQL Server VMs.

Figure 26 shows the HammerDB transaction per minute (TPM) counter and the host site1-SQL01 disk I/O and latency. All SQL VMs ran similar TPC-C workloads that were set to run for weeks. During switchovers the HammerDB workloads would continue and not require restarting. Workloads between servers were often at different stages of the TPC-C and not providing identical throughput.

Figure 26. HammerDB running SQL TPC-C on site1-SQL01

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Figure 27 provides a storage view of the SQL TPC-C workload with synchronous replication between the systems. The 3PAR is servicing around 50K I/O and the majority are reads. The site2-Clus01 volumes do no show read I/O, as they are writing the replicated data from the site1-Clus01 volumes.

Figure 27. HammerDB running SQL TPC-C on Clus01 cluster datastore volumes as reported from HPE 3PAR CLI

Microsoft Exchange Server Jetstress tool is used to verify the performance and stability of the disk storage subsystem. Jetstress testing provides the following benefits prior to deploying storage systems:

• Validates that the physical deployment is capable of meeting specific performance requirements

• Validates that the storage design is capable of meeting specific performance requirements

• Finds weak components prior to deploying in production

• Proves storage and I/O stability

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The four Jetstress workloads are on Clus02 datastore volumes and provide similar I/O patterns during performance runs. The Clus02 datastores in Figure 28 show the site2 virtual volumes with only the replication writes. The site1 virtual volumes have a mixed workload of reads and writes. The total I/O is around 7K.

Figure 28. Jetstress performance workload on Clus02 cluster datastore volumes as reported from HPE 3PAR CLI

Both workload generators were run concurrently during all switchover testing. Figure 29 displays HPE 3PAR exported volumes view of load generators running on VMs.

Figure 29. HPE 3PAR StoreServ Management Console System Reporter Charts: Real Time Exported Volumes Performance

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Planned switchover testing HPE 3PAR Peer Persistence enables HPE 3PAR StoreServ storage systems located at metropolitan distances to act as peers to each other, presenting a nearly continuous storage system to hosts and servers connected to them. This capability allows customers to configure a high-availability solution between two sites or data centers, where switchover and switchback remains transparent to the hosts and applications running on those hosts.

Table 4 lists tested scenarios based on HPE 3PAR StoreServ being certified for VMware Metro Storage Cluster. Host I/O is not impacted during normal switchover or failures.

Table 4. HPE 3PAR Peer Persistence failure handling

Replication Stopped Automatic Failover Host I/O Impact

Array to Array remote copy links failure Yes No No

Single site to QW network failure No No No

Single Site to QW network and Array to Array remote copy link failure

Yes Yes No

Both sites to QW network failure No No No

Both sites to QW network and Array to Array remote copy link failure

Yes No Yes

Note For additional details, review the VMware Knowledge Base article: Implementing vSphere Metro Cluster using HPE 3PAR Peer Persistence.

Planned switchovers were initiated during the workload generations from both the VMware vSphere Web Client and from the HPE 3PAR CLI using the “setrcopygroup switchover” command. The CLI provided opportunity to input switchover for all 16 Remote Copy Groups quicker than waiting for the Web Client interface.

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Jetstress, capturing I/O read latency at one second from the host perfmon, captured a slight read latency spike and I/O drop during switchovers that were run nearly concurrently on all 16 Remote Copy Groups from the CLI. There was no test case that resulted in a host not able to complete the I/O or have a database that was inconsistent. Both SQL and Jetstress databases had no issue with frequent switchovers from one storage to the other storage. Figure 30 shows a typical I/O database read latency spike and I/O drop during concurrent switchover testing of Remote Copy Groups. The I/O immediately returns to similar responses as seen before the switchover. Perfmon collection was at one second.

Figure 30. Switchover test during Jetstress performance workload

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The SSMC provides status and task details for the Remote Copy Group switchovers. The switchover completed in seconds during the testing and both SQL and Jetstress workloads continued without interruption to I/O. Figure 31 shows the detail task during a switchover.

Figure 31. HPE 3PAR SSMC Remote Copy Groups: Activity RCG-site1_Clus02_04

Summary This paper provided implementation details for deploying a vSphere Metro Storage Cluster (vMSC) across two data centers or sites using HPE 3PAR Peer Persistence on HPE ConvergedSystem 700 for VMware. VMware vSphere Metro Storage Cluster is a certified configuration for stretched storage cluster architectures. A vMSC configuration is designed to maintain data availability beyond a single physical or logical site.

HPE 3PAR Peer Persistence software enables HPE ConvergedSystem 700 systems located in different data centers at metropolitan distances to act as peers to each other, presenting continuous storage system access to hosts and servers connected to them. This capability allows you to configure a high-availability solution between two sites or data centers where storage access failover and failback remains completely transparent to the hosts and applications running on those hosts. Compared to traditional cluster failover models where, upon failover, the applications must be restarted, HPE 3PAR Peer Persistence software allows hosts to remain online serving their business applications even when they switch storage access from their original site to the storage array on the disaster recovery (DR) site.

This paper provided tested results of the HPE 3PAR Peer Persistence switchover operation. The transparent switchover migrates host I/O from one storage array to the other and reverses the direction of data replication. A manual switchover operation is designed to facilitate service optimization and storage system maintenance activities within a high-availability data storage solution. Testing showed that the hosts maintained workloads of SQL TPC-C I/O and Jetstress without impacting the host I/O.

Implementing a proof-of-concept As a matter of best practice for all deployments, HPE recommends implementing a proof-of-concept using a test environment that matches as closely as possible the planned production environment. In this way, appropriate performance and scalability characterizations can be obtained. For help with a proof-of-concept (POC), contact an HPE Services representative (hpe.com/us/en/services/consulting.html) or your HPE partner.

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Appendix A: Solution hardware configuration The HPE ConvergedSystem 700 product ordering information can be found in the HPE CS700 QuickSpecs in the “How to order” section of that document. Also refer to the HPE ConvergedSystem 700 technical white paper for more information. Table 5 provides the components for a single site that were configured for testing the solution. Each system was identical in the testing and represented site1 and site2.

Note The bill of materials does not include complete support options or other rack and power requirements. If you have questions regarding ordering, please consult with your HPE Reseller or HPE Sales Representative for more details. hpe.com/us/en/services/consulting.html

Table 5. Hardware and software configurations per site

Component Quantity (single site) Description

Workload server 8 per c7000 enclosure HPE ProLiant BL460c Gen9 server blade each with:

• 2 x Intel Xeon E5-2690 v3 (2.66 GHz/12-core) processor

• 256 GB RAM

• HPE Smart Array P244br controller and 1GB FBWC

• 1 x HPE FlexFabric 20Gb 2-port 650FLB FIO adapter

Management server 2 HPE ProLiant DL360 Gen9 server, each with:

• 2 x Intel Xeon E5-2680 v3 (2.50 GHz /12-core) processor

• 256 GB RAM

• HPE Smart Array P440ar controller with 2 GB FBWC

• 8 x SAS hard drives (600 GB/10,000 rpm)

• HPE FlexFabric 10Gb 2-port 556FLR-SFP+ adapter

• HPE 82Q 8Gb Dual Port PCIe Fibre Channel host bus adapter

HPE 3PAR StoreServ storage 7440c 4N HPE 3PAR StoreServ 7440c storage in a 42U HPE i–Series rack

• 120 x 300GB SFF Fast Class (FC) in 12 SFF drive enclosures

HPE 3PAR StoreServ 7440c storage was used for the testing of this reference architecture. HPE ConvergedSystem 700 is also available with HPE StoreServ 8000 series storage

8200 2N

8400 2N or 4N

8440 2N or 4N

8450 2N or 4N

HPE 3PAR StoreServ 8200 storage in a 42U HPE i–Series rack

HPE 3PAR StoreServ 8400 storage in a 42U HPE i–Series rack

HPE 3PAR StoreServ 8440 storage in a 42U HPE i–Series rack

HPE 3PAR StoreServ 8450 storage in a 42U HPE i–Series rack

Network switches (HPE option) 2 HPE 5900AF-48XG-4QSFP+ switches

HPE 5900AF-48G-4XG-2QSFP+ switches (multi-rack only)

SAN switches 2 HPE SN6000B 16Gb 48/24 Fibre Channel switches

Infrastructure 1 HPE BladeSystem c7000 platinum enclosure, each with:

• 2 x HPE Virtual Connect FlexFabric 20/40 F8 modules

• 2 x HPE Onboard Administrator for the HPE BladeSystem c7000 enclosure

• HPE i–Series rack—42U compute rack

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Appendix B: Configuration adjustments Customer Intent Document The system is pre-integrated in the HPE factory based on extensively tested configuration guidelines. Included implementation services quickly get the system up and running to peak performance, reducing the risk of disruption to the existing environment. The Customer Intent Document (CID) must be populated with unique site prefixes and unique ranges of MAC/WWN addresses to ensure the systems are built and ready for vMSC data center integration.

For example, when two systems are ordered without CID-defined unique site prefixes, both systems will arrive with identical MAC addresses, WWNs, component names, resource names, system names, etc. The CID allows changing the range of WWN addresses, range of MAC addresses, and adding a “host prefix” to the different names. Figure 32 shows the Datacenter Integration worksheet from the CID.

Existing CS700 configurations that are currently deployed can be utilized but must have unique site prefixes and MAC/WWN addresses between the replication partners. If a second system is to be added, make sure it has the proper CID entries populated.

Note CID v2.0 or later is required to be completed by the customer during the ordering process to ensure proper factory setup. Smart CID v2.0 supports HPE ConvergedSystem 700. Release notes and training material are available at: https://smartcid.itcs.hpe.com/Training

Figure 32. Datacenter Integration worksheet from CID

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For this solution, ESXi hosts, HPE 3PAR arrays, and SAN switches were pre-defined in the CID with unique site prefixes. See Figure 33 for an example of where to enter the IP addresses in the CID.

Figure 33. Datacenter Integration worksheet from CID showing site prefix and IPs

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© Copyright 2015-2018 Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. The only warranties for Hewlett Packard Enterprise products and services are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty. Hewlett Packard Enterprise shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.

Microsoft and Windows are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Intel and Xeon are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and other countries. VMware and vSphere are registered trademarks or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions.

4AA5-6753ENW, May 2018, Rev. 2

Resources and additional links HPE 3PAR Peer Persistence software hpe.com/us/en/product-catalog/storage/storage-software/pip.hpe-3par-peer-persistence-software.5335710.html

HPE ConvergedSystem 700 hpe.com/info/cs700

HPE Reference Architectures hpe.com/info/ra

HPE Servers hpe.com/servers

HPE Storage hpe.com/storage

HPE Networking hpe.com/networking

HPE Technology Consulting Services hpe.com/us/en/services/consulting.html

HPE ConvergedSystem 700 Training https://h10076.www1.hpe.com/us/en/training/portfolio/convergedsystems.html

HPE and VMware hpe.com/partners/vmware

Workload generators:

HammerDB hammerdb.com/about.html

Microsoft Exchange Jetstress microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=36849

To help us improve our documents, please provide feedback at hpe.com/contact/feedback.