Relatore: Fausto Vaninetti, Consulting Systems Engineer in Cisco Systems, Inc. L’avvento dello storage all flash, nuove regolamentazioni quali GDPR e la continua pressione verso un datacenter sempre disponibile hanno reso gli analytics per ottimizzare la gestione IT un elemento imprescindibile per molte aziende. I nuovi switch Fibre Channel 32G della serie Cisco MDS 9000, abbinati alle piu’ recenti versioni del Sistema Operativo NX OS, forniscono delle funzionalita’ integrate di analytics e telemetria che possono essere esposte tramite interfaccia a comandi, interfaccia grafica Datacenter Network Manager o strumenti di terze parti. Questo intervento si propone di far luce su questa nuova funzionalita’ unica nel suo genere, esplorandone brevemente i casi d’uso e le modalita’ di implementazione.

1. Fausto Vaninetti
DC Consultant EMEAR
Nov 2018
With Cisco MDS 9000 Series
Analytics for SAN

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• 32G today, 64G in the works
• Advanced Diagnostics and 6 9s’ availability
• Hardware-level Slow Drain mitigation
• Programmability (Python, Ansible, NX-API…)
• FC NVMe
• SAN Analytics and Telemetry Streaming
What is making Fibre
Channel Hot Again?
QoQ market revenue growth in the last 4 quarters

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Is Faster Always Better?
Limited visibility Increased risk

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Tackling GDPR Compliance
Avoid unwanted data access. Integrated data security and analytics.
Meet governance, risk, and compliance requirements.
• Secure purge and “right to be forgotten”
• Data-at-rest encryption, FIPS 140-2
certification
• Onboard and external key management
• TLS 1.2
• Robust security posture with
comprehensive logging and auditing
• Role-based Access Control (RBAC)
• Multitenancy and adaptive QoS for traffic
isolation and performance assurance
• SAN Analytics (headers only)
• Hardware-based data-in-motion
encryption (FC and FCIP), FIPS 140-2
certification
• Device-level key management
• TLS 1.2, SHA-2 password encryption
• Robust security posture with
comprehensive logging and auditing
• Role-based Access Control (RBAC)
• Hard zoning, VSAN multitenancy

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SAN Analytics: Why
Managing the scale, complexity, volume and
pace of change in modern data centers is
intimidating…
How can a storage network administrator
keep flying blind?
Application and infrastructure performance
assurance, fast troubleshooting, governance
and control can not be done with silo-centric
tools, spotty data feeds, guesswork and
home-spun analysis
Time Has Come For A True Enterprise-class SAN Analytics Solution

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Analytics - What’s the Customer Problem?
Need end-to-end visibility to locate
issues and troubleshoot effectively
Putting an appliance or hardware
probe is expensive, intrusive and
not scalable
Hard to predict where the issue
will be, so need something which
is integrated and pervasive
(proactive traffic monitoring and
analysis)
Not an App/Host
issue
Not an
SAN issue
Not a storage
issue
Where is the problem then?
Hard to Fix What You Can’t See, End to End Visibility Wanted

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Cisco MDS 9000 Family
Unmatched Capabilities
MDS 9000 32G Family

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A Whole New Perspective
Cisco SAN Analytics Solutions Offers Storage Administrators
An End to End View Of All SCSI IO Transactions In A Vendor Neutral Way

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• By 2020, 100 percent of
network devices are
expected to have in-built
probes for telemetry
- Integrated
- Scalable
- Open standard formats
Tipping Point
Geological era
The Cambrian
explosion
Species

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• Per Port Metrics • Per Flow Metrics
Before and Now
LUN1
LUN2
LUN3
Initiator
Target
SAN Analytics
Switch
TX RX
FC Interface
FC Frames
Switch or linecard
• Frames received/transmitted
• Sync loss /signal loss / link failure events
• Errored frames received (bad CRC)
• TxWait count
• FC errors/discards/drops
• Exchange Completion Time
• Data Access Latency
• Outstanding IOs, IO Size
• IOPS, read/write ratio
• Throughput

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Appearances Can Be Deceiving

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An Industry First
Cisco is first to market with an enterprise-class SAN Analytics Solution able to
provide end-to-end deep visibility into your Fibre Channel fabric, paving the way
to application performance assurance.

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SAN Analytics Deployment Models FC port with
SAN Analytics

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Metric Visualization Flexibility
On-switch CLI
• Capability to query switch
remotely
• Response in JSON format
• Response output depends on the
SQL-like input query under the
request
• Same as the existing NX-API
model
• Works best to track specific
metrics
• Extremely flexible
Off-switch Pull model
• A.k.a subscriber model
• Remote app subscribes to MDS
for the interested metrics
• MDS streams out the data
regularly to the destination
• Data encoding in industry leading
format for best performance
• Optimized performance for
continuous data (instead of Pull
mode). High CPU load due to
SNMP walk is now history.
Off-switch Push model
• SQL-like CLIs to pull raw data
from 32G FC module
• Output in key-value format
(similar to dictionaries or JSON)
• Unmatched flexibility for
advanced user
• Basic trending & correlation
• Optional standard CLIs
• Output in nice-to-read tabular
format, just like any other NX-
OS show command output
Cisco DCNM
Third Party ITOA

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Cisco SAN Analytics Solution: Use Cases
• Storage performance insight
• Faster troubleshooting
• Infrastructure optimization
• Application deployment recommendation
• Storage provisioning recommendation
• Change management
• Auditability
• Health report
Integrated
Simple Affordable
Scalable
Always on
Open and programmable

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• Use Custom Graphing to
search by LUN ID, Host or
Storage port
• Compare DAL and ECT
• DAL high, storage device
causing slowness; ECT high,
SAN causing slowness
• Based on this graph on the
storage port, is this a slow
SAN or a slow storage
device?
Slow SAN or Slow Storage Device?
For more information please check
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlWq7Oko0mI&t

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• Use Custom Graphing
• Input WWPN or host name
of host
• Select Read or Write IO Size
in Metrics
• See block size over time,
validate host configuration
What Is The Current IO Size For Host?
For more information please check
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlWq7Oko0mI&t

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How Much ISL Bandwidth Used By Tape?
Per VSAN Traffic Monitoring enabled by SAN Analytics
VSAN Header added by the MDS
switch indicating membership
Only allowed VSANs will
traverse the link
TE TE
FF
Enhanced ISL (EISL) Trunk Carries
Tagged Traffic from Multiple VSANs
VSAN Header removed at
egress point
No special support
required by end nodes