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Vplex Architecture

VPLEX provides storage virtualization and supports various storage arrays, operating systems, and network fabrics. It is deployed as a cluster containing engines, directors, and a management server. VPLEX Local connects arrays within a data center, while VPLEX Metro and Geo connect arrays across multiple data centers separated by latency. VPLEX uses distributed caching and mirroring to provide consistent access to virtual volumes across data centers. It allows data sharing and accessibility between sites. Common use cases include VMware Metro Storage Clusters and cross-site collaboration/data migration.

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Kamal Chowdhury
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170 views5 pages

Vplex Architecture

VPLEX provides storage virtualization and supports various storage arrays, operating systems, and network fabrics. It is deployed as a cluster containing engines, directors, and a management server. VPLEX Local connects arrays within a data center, while VPLEX Metro and Geo connect arrays across multiple data centers separated by latency. VPLEX uses distributed caching and mirroring to provide consistent access to virtual volumes across data centers. It allows data sharing and accessibility between sites. Common use cases include VMware Metro Storage Clusters and cross-site collaboration/data migration.

Uploaded by

Kamal Chowdhury
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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In this article we talk about storage virtualization solution - EMC VPLEX.

VPLEX supports
both EMC storage arrays from other storage vendors, such as HDS, HP, and IBM. VPLEX
supports operating systems including both physical and virtual server environments with
VMware ESX and Microsoft Hyper-V. VPLEX supports network fabrics from Brocade and

Cisco, including legacy McData SANs.


VPLEX Architecture
VPLEX is deployed as a cluster consisting of one, two, or four engines (each containing two
directors), and a management server. A dual-engine or quad-engine cluster also contains a
pair of Fibre Channel switches for communication between directors. Each engine is
protected by a standby power supply (SPS), and each Fibre Channel switch gets its power
through an uninterruptible power supply (UPS). (In a dual-engine or quad-engine cluster,
the management server also gets power from a UPS.) The management server has a public
Ethernet port, which provides cluster management services when connected to the
customer network. This server provides the management interfaces to VPLEX — hosting
the VPLEX web server process that serves the VPLEX GUI and REST-based web services
interface, as well as the command line interface (CLI) service. In the VPLEX Metro and
VPLEX Geo configurations, the VPLEX Management Consoles of each cluster are inter-
connected using a virtual private network (VPN) that allows for remote cluster management
from a local VPLEX Management Console. When the system is deployed with a VPLEX
Witness, the VPN is extended to include the Witness as well.

EMC VPLEX provides three types of configuration:

 VPLEX Local - a VPLEX cluster within a single data center.


 VPLEX Metro - two VPLEX clusters located within or across multiple data centers
separated by up to 5ms of RTT latency. VPLEX Metro systems are often deployed to
span between two data centers that are close together (~100 km), but they can also
be deployed within a single data center for applications requiring a high degree of
local

availability.
 VPLEX Geo - two VPLEX clusters located within or across multiple data centers
separated by up to 50 ms of RTT latency. VPLEX Geo uses an IP-based protocol
over the Ethernet WAN COM link that connects the two VPLEX clusters. This protocol
is built on top of the UDP Data Transfer (UDT) protocol, which runs on top of the
Layer 3 User Datagram Protocol

(UDP).
VPLEX Metro and VPLEX Geo systems optionally include a Witness. The Witness is
implemented as a virtual machine and is deployed in a separate fault domain from two
VPLEX clusters. The Witness is used to improve application availability in the presence of
site failures and inter-cluster communication loss.

The VPLEX operating system is GeoSynchrony (currently version 5.3) designed for highly
available, robust operation in geographically distributed environments.

VPLEX global distributed cache and modes


VPLEX Local and Metro both use the write-through cache mode. When a write request is
received from a host to a virtual volume, the data is written through to the back-end storage
volume(s) that map to the volume. When the array(s) acknowledge this data, an
acknowledgement is then sent back from VPLEX to the host indicating a successful write.

VPLEX Geo uses write-back caching to achieve data durability without requiring
synchronous operation. In this cache mode VPLEX accepts host writes into cache and
places a protection copy in the memory of another local director before acknowledging the
data to the host. The data is then sent asynchronously to the back-end storage arrays.
Cache vaulting logic within VPLEX stores any unwritten cache data onto local SSD storage
in the event of a power failure.
EMC VPLEX distributed cache

The individual memory systems of each VPLEX director are combined to form the VPLEX
distributed cache. Data structures within these memories in combination with distributed
algorithms achieve the coherency and consistency guarantees provided by VPLEX virtual
storage. This guarantee ensures that the I/O behavior observed by hosts accessing VPLEX
storage is consistent with the behavior of a traditional disk. Any director within a cluster is
able to service an I/O request for a virtual volume served by that cluster. Each director
within a cluster is exposed to the same set of physical storage volumes from the back-end
arrays and has the same virtual-to-physical storage mapping metadata for its volumes. The
distributed design extends across VPLEX Metro and Geo systems to provided cache
coherency and consistency for the global system. This ensures that a host accesses
to a distributed volume always receive the most recent consistent data for that
volume.

Distributed virtual volume between data centers


VPLEX provides a distributed virtual volume - one of the most useful things for VMware
Metro Storage Cluster. The virtual volume is based on distributed mirroring that protects the
data of a virtual volume by mirroring it between the two VPLEX clusters:

 VPLEX Metro - based on Distributed RAID 1 volumes with write-through caching


 VPLEX Geo - based on Distributed RAID 1 volumes with write-back caching
Sharing data between sites (data centers)
VPLEX provides that the same data can be accessible to all users at all times — even if
they are at different sites. All changes made in one site shows up right away at the other
site.

Examples of EMC VPLEX use cases


1. VMware Metro Storage Cluster - with VPLEX Metro, you can create a stretched
VMware HA cluster and with vMotion/DRS you can balance the cluster between data
centers. Incase of failure, VMware HA restarts VMs in the second data center.
2. Collaboration - applications in one data center need to access data in the other
data center.
3. Data Migration - moving applications and data across different storage installations —
within the same data center, across a campus, or within a geographical region.

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