The performance study conducted involved the following two scenarios:
- Snap to NFS – sending volume(s) snapshots to the Access Appliance
- Snapshot retrieval – retrieving volumes(s) from the Access Appliance
-
Topology
The network topology of the test environment is shown in Figure 10. There were two FlashArray (//M20 and //M20R2) connected to the network utilizing the 10 GbE or 25 GbE replication bonded (active/passive) ports. The four 10 GbE ports of the Access Appliance were also connected to the network. The bulk of the tests used the FlashArray //M20. The other FlashArray //M20R2 was utilized only to observe how well the Access 3340 Appliance performs when multiple FlashArray are utilized.
Figure 11 - Network Topology
Hardware and Software
Table 2 provides the specifics relating to the hardware and software used in this study. As stated, the FlashArray //M20 was used for the bulk of the testing.
Table 2- Hardware and Software Specifications
|
Resource |
Specification |
Software |
|---|---|---|
|
Everpure FlashArray |
//M20 //M20R2 |
Purity 5.2.1 Share mounted with rsize=1048576, wsize=1048576, nfsvers=3 |
|
Access Appliance |
3340 with one shelf containing 4TB disks |
Access v7.4.2 · Storage Pool (entire disk shelf) · CFS File system type with defaults (8K block size, Simple layout, 10 TB in size) · File system exported as rw, sync · No bonding of network interfaces |
Snap To NFS Tests
The “Snap to NFS” tests involved sending 1 to “n” number of snapshot volumes to the Access Appliance. The source of the data was a MongoDB database. Multiple volume copies of the MongoDB database were created on the FlashArray. These volumes were then added into a protection group where the Access Appliance was specified as the NFS offload target. The size of each volume snapshot of the MongoDB was 40 GB. Via the FlashArray GUI or command-line interface, a create snapshot with “Replicate Now” to 1 target is initiated. Thus, the volume(s) snapshots are first taken, stored locally and then sent to the Access Appliance. Prior to each run, the local snapshots on the FlashArray and the Access Appliance were removed, the caches on the Access Appliance were cleared, and the tests repeated for results consistency. The FlashArray GUI indicates the start time, completed time and total amount of data transferred to the Access Appliance. The data was gathered, and the throughput was calculated using these values.
Snapshot Retrieval Tests
The volume snapshots sent in “Snap to NFS” tests were used for the retrieval tests. Prior to retrieval of the volume(s), the local snapshots on FlashArray were removed as well as the volumes that were used to create the snapshots. Also, the caches on the Access Appliance were cleared prior to each run. Then snapshots from 1 to “n” volumes were retrieved. The start time, end time and the amount of data transferred was captured from the GUI and the throughput was calculated using these values.
Mixed Workload Tests
The mixed workload consisted of sending and retrieving the same number of volume snapshots. The volume snapshots retrieved were different from the volume snapshots being sent. The caches were cleared on the Access Appliance prior to running the test. The test was run multiple times for consistency of the results. As in the other tests, the start and end times and the amount of data transferred or sent were extracted and throughput was calculated.
Monitoring Tools
Several monitoring tools such as sar and vxstat were utilized on the node of the Access Appliance. These tools were used to observe the system utilization of the Access Appliance such as CPU, memory, network and disks and assist in identifying any bottlenecks.