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INTRODUCTION

This document outlines the solution architecture, configuration steps, functionality and performance characteristics of Storage Made Easy™ Enterprise File Fabric™ software with IBM Cloud Object Storage (COS).

A separate guide provides information on standalone desktop applications S3 Drive and S3 Explorer.

PRODUCTS TESTED

Storage Made Easy software: • Enterprise File Fabric 1705.01

IBM software: • IBM Cloud Object Storage – On Premise (version 3.10.2.72) • IBM Cloud Object Storage – US South (version 3.11.0.89) • IBM Cloud Object Storage – US Region (version 3.11.0.89)

CERTIFICATION

The certification exercise included installing products and executing functional and performance tests with IBM Cloud Object Storage - on premise and public cloud.

The File Fabric product is shipped as a virtual appliance and was provided as an ova image.

SOLUTION GUIDE

IBM COS - STORAGE MADE EASY ENTERPRISE FILE FABRIC

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SOLUTION ARCHITECTURE

HARDWARE

Client Load Generators 2 Ubuntu Linux Servers • Ubuntu Server 16.04 • VM Specification • RAM: 16GB  • CPUs: 8  • HDD: 500GB (SSD) • Test data ranging from 64KB to 10GB

Load Balancer HaProxy on CentOS 7.2 • Standard Configuration • VM Specification

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Enterprise File Fabric Services • 2 - CentOS 7.2 Linux Virtual Machines  • SME standard OVA images for VMware • Specifications

• RAM: 12GB  • CPUs: 8   • HDD: 2x 36GB(SSD)

• OS & Scratch Drive

Enterprise File Fabric Metadata Server • CentOS 7.2 Linux Virtual Machine • MariaDB 5.5 • SME standard OVA image for VMware • Specifications

• RAM: 16GB  • CPUs: 8   • HDD: 2x 36GB(SSD)

• OS & Database Partition

IBM CLOUD OBJECT STORAGE

Fabric was tested against the following COS storage backends:

•IBM Cloud Object Storage – On Premise (version 3.10.2.72) •IBM Cloud Object Storage – US South (version 3.11.0.89) •IBM Cloud Object Storage – US Region (version 3.11.0.89)

ENTERPRISE FILE FABRIC CONFIGURATION

The Enterprise File Fabric platform is a multi-tenant system allowing for thousands of users across multiple organizations. Testing was of a single organization configured exclusively with IBM COS for user data.

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ORGANIZATION ACCOUNT CREATION

Log in as the Enterprise File Fabric Administrator, select from Menu, “Add a User”

Organizations are Users with an “Organization Package” specified

FILE FABRIC CONFIGURATION

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ADDING IBM COS ON PREMISE OR CLOUD OFFERING AS STORAGE PROVIDER

The first time an organization logs into an account, a wizard guides the addition of storage providers approved in the Organization’s Cloud Package. The Enterprise File Fabric supports over 60 backend providers.

IBM COS endpoint, Access & Secret Keys are entered:

FILE FABRIC CONFIGURATION

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File Fabric will then index existing objects and metadata:

Storage is then available for users:

FILE FABRIC CONFIGURATION

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CREATING ACCOUNTS FOR LOAD TESTING

Storage Made Easy Enterprise File Fabric supports LDAP, Active Directory, SAML, and local user accounts. Local accounts can be created through API, however for testing Active Directory was utilized.

Authorization Systems can be added under Organization -> “Auth Systems”.

Active Directory can be configured against a local AD system or remotely via the SME ADproxy.

Once added, users can be imported under Organization -> “Users”.

FILE FABRIC CONFIGURATION

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Importing of users:

Users and Groups/Roles auto-registered or filtered for import based on name or group membership.

FILE FABRIC CONFIGURATION

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PERFORMANCE TEST 1 - 10,000 USER OFFICE ORGANIZATION

This test simulated a large typical SME organization. The organization has 10,000 registered users with typical file size falling between 1MB-4MB and 2-4 opens/saves per hour.

In order to meet stated requirements, the Enterprise File Fabric will need to respond to between 20,000 and 40,000 requests in an hour.

OFFICE RESULTS SET

Tested configuration was able to exceed the requirements of a 10,000 user organization. The configuration as tested was suitable for an organization of over 20,000 users. Peak uploads & download of files in the 1-4MB range exceeded 60,000 operations in one hour.

Based on the result data, the number of concurrent requests on the File Fabric nodes would be in the range of 8-16 requests for a 10,000 user organization. Bandwidth usage for 4MB files peaked around 75MB/s, allowing for use of 1Gb networking between instances, clients and storage. However, 10Gb networking would be preferred for larger organizations or organizations with a larger average file size.

All testing was conducted with encryption both In-Flight and At-Rest. In-Flight encryption was enabled via TLS1.2 using an AES-256 Cipher, and was utilized at all data hops:

• Client to Load Balancer

• Load Balancer to File Fabric

• File Fabric to IBM COS Storage

Encryption did add some latency to testing and increased CPU demands. CPU utilization was below 90% on all download tests and mixed workload testing; however, 100% write tests with 32 concurrency did exceed 90% CPU utilization. Since the Enterprise File Fabric has a scale-out web component, accommodating larger organizations is a simple matter of adding more instances.

TESTING PARAMETERS

✦ Cycle between 1, 2,

4, 8, 16 and 32 open

connections

✦ File sizes between

256KB & 64MB 

• 256KB 62 ,000

Reads/Writes - 35 %

of Operations

•1MB 62,000 Reads/

Writes - 35 % of

Operations

4MB 31,000 Reads/

W r i t e s - 1 8 % o f

Operations

•16MB 13,000 Reads/

W r i t e s - 7 % o f

Operations

•64MB 10,000 Reads/

W r i t e s - 5 % o f

Operations

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PERFORMANCE TEST 1 - 10,000

USER OFFICE ORGANIZATION

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PERFORMANCE TEST 1 - 10,000

USER OFFICE ORGANIZATION

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PERFORMANCE TEST 2 - MEDIA COMPANIES

Some organizations have larger datasets than standard office workers. These organizations may have very large video files, healthcare images, or other atypical workloads. These larger files take advantage of Multipart Uploads when used in conjunction with IBM COS.

MPU is an important feature of the S3 API as it allows larger files to avoid being chunked in a proprietary format that could render them unusable to other data accessors. While the Enterprise File Fabric can chunk data if MPU is not enabled, it is preferred use the native functions of IBM COS where available such as:

• Multipart Uploads (MPU) • SecureSlice • Server Side Encryption (SSE-C)

M-Stream™ File Transfer Acceleration, a capability of the Enterprise File Fabric™, platform, splits files into parts that are streamed in parallel from one storage server to another. It can dramatically speed up uploads, downloads and server-to-server copying of objects.

TESTING PARAMETERS

✦ Cycle between 1,

2, 4, 8, 16 and 32

open connections

✦ File sizes over

16MB

✦ S3 Native MPU

Chunking at

100MB increments

for files over

105MB

MEDIA FILES RESULTS SET

During testing of larger media files, the client systems became the bottleneck in sending or receiving data. Each workload driver was able to push close to 250MB/s before the workload generator utilized all CPU time. Further testing with the TLS Encryption disabled showed increased network performance with large files.

All testing was conducted with encryption both In-Flight and At-Rest. In-Flight encryption was enabled via TLS 1.2 using an AES-256 Cipher, and was utilized at all data hops:

• Client to Load Balancer • Load Balancer to File Fabric • Enterprise File Fabric to IBM COS Storage

To bypass the client bottleneck, a transfer of a single 4 GB file was also made from IBM COS cloud (US South) to IBM COS on-premises. With M-Stream™ active 4 threads saturated the 1 GB connection to the Internet - an optimum transfer.

Encryption did add some latency to testing and increased CPU demands. CPU utilization was below 90% on all large media tests with the bottleneck coming from the client nodes and not the storage or File Fabric.

Testing files above 2GB did not show any significant change in bandwidth vs 2GB. As such, larger files will take more time to transfer and will move at the rates indicated for 2GB.

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PERFORMANCE TEST 2 - LARGE

MEDIA COMPANIES

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CONCLUSION

The performance characteristics of the Storage Made Easy Enterprise File Fabric are largely dependent on the backend storage provider. Lackluster performance arising from lack of compatibility with the Amazon S3 API, to inability to fulfill concurrent requests often arise when the backend storage is not a mature offering. IBM Cloud Object Storage excelled when configured as a backend provider for Storage Made Easy Enterprise File Fabric.

During testing all S3 API based features of the Enterprise File Fabric were enabled and tested satisfactorily against On-Premises and Cloud based COS endpoints. Advanced S3 API features such as multipart upload (MPU) provide native storage of files as objects without the need for proprietary chunking. Ranged read requests allow for enhanced performance during file downloads when used with large objects. IBM COS additionally supports offloading of Data-at-Rest encryption from the File Fabric via S3 API SSE-C or SecureSlice enablements on vaults.

Enterprises choose to use IBM Cloud Object Storage because of its enhanced durability, availability and cost per terabyte vs traditional storage. As such, IBM COS is an excellent pairing choice for enterprises with as little as 25 users to over 20,000 users with the Storage Made Easy Enterprise File Fabric. The File Fabric removes all complexity from using object based storage and the associated APIs. Users enjoy simple access to storage on any device in the office or when working remotely. Administrator’s have peace of mind from the enhanced governance

ABOUT

STORAGE MADE EASY® The Storage Made Easy Enterprise File Fabric™ enables IT to regain control of "cloud data sprawl" to unify on-premises and on-cloud files into a single easily managed converged infrastructure with policy-based controls for governance, audit and security.

The File Fabric solution provides a “blanket” enterprises wrap around all their data: on premises, within public and private clouds, as well as on third-party software vendor clouds (SharePoint Online and Salesforce for example).

Customers use the SME File Fabric product to unify corporate data to enable workgroup collaboration with universal controls for security, encryption, audit, and data access. Companies will have access to a greater understanding of where and how sensitive data is stored, transferred, and accessible with particular  focus on how companies are able to police and audit data to ensure enforcement  of  the General Data Protection Regulations  (GDPR) in addition to other regional data legislation.

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