Module: Control Layer

Upon completion of this module, you should be able to:

• Describe the control layer and its key functions
• Describe control software and its types
• Describe the software-defined approach for managing IT
resources
• Describe the key resource management techniques

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 1
Cloud Computing Reference Model
Control Layer

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 2
 Lesson: Control Layer Overview
This lesson covers the following topics:
• Control layer and its functions
• Control software and its types
• Key phases for provisioning resources using unified manager

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 3
 Introduction to Control Layer
Control Layer

Includes software tools that are responsible for managing and controlling the
underlying cloud infrastructure and enables provisioning of IT resources for creating
cloud services.

• Control layer can be deployed on top of the virtual layer or on

top of the physical layer
• Receives request from the service and orchestration layers
– Provisions the required resources to fulfill the service request
• Key functions of the control layer are resource configuration,
resource provisioning, and monitoring resources

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 4
Control Software
• Ties together the underlying resources and works in conjunction
with virtualization software to enable
– Resource pooling
– Dynamic allocation of resources for services
– Optimizing utilization of resources
• Provides a complete view of all the resources in the cloud
environment
– Enables to centralize management of IT resources
• Two types of control software:
– Element manager
– Unified manager

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 5
Element Manager
• Infrastructure component vendors may provide the element
managers as built-in or external software
• Required to manage infrastructure components independently

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 6
Key Tasks Performed by Element Manager
• Enables to perform initial component configurations and allows
to modify it
– Installing guest OS, configuring zoning, security settings, VLANs,
RAID, and LUN masking
• Allows to expand resource capacity
– Detects the newly added resources and adds them to an existing
pool
• Enables to identify the problem and performs troubleshooting
• Monitors the infrastructure component for performance,
availability, capacity, and security

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 7
Unified Manager
• Provides a single management interface for configuring and
provisioning resources for applications and services

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 8
Unified Manager (Cont'd)
• Exposes APIs that can be integrated with the orchestration layer
to automate service provisioning
• Enables adding or removing infrastructure resources to an
already provisioned service
• Performs compliance check during resource configuration
• Provides a dashboard showing resource configurations and
utilization
– Allows administrator to perform monitoring, reporting, and root
cause analysis

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 9
Key Phases for Provisioning Resources

Resource Discovery

Key Phases in
Provisioning
Resources Resource Pool
using Unified Management
Manager

Resource Provisioning

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 10
Resource Discovery
• Enables unified manager to learn about resources that are
available for service deployment
– Provides visibility to each resource
– Enables to manage cloud infrastructure resources centrally

Network Components Storage Systems

Compute Systems
• Type of storage system, drive
• Number of blade servers • Switch model
type
• Slot location • Network adapters
• Total capacity, free capacity,
• Blade model • VLAN IDs
used capacity
• CPU speed, memory capacity, • VSAN IDs
• RAID level, storage pools
CPU, and memory pools • Physical-to-virtual network
• Physical-to-virtual storage
• Physical-to-virtual compute mapping
mapping
mapping • QoS
• Zones

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 11
Resource Pool Management – Grading Pools
• Unified manager allows to grade pools Grading Storage Pools
– Categorizes resources and identity
pools based on predefined criteria Grade ‘Gold’: Includes Flash, FC, and
SATA drives, supports automated storage
– Helps creating variety of services, tiering, capacity 3 TB (Flash 1TB, FC 1TB,
SATA 1TB), and RAID level 5
providing choices to consumers
Grade ‘Silver’: Includes Flash, FC, and

• Multiple grade levels (e.g. ‘Gold’, SATA drives, supports automated storage
tiering, capacity 3 TB (Flash 0.5TB, FC 1TB,

‘Silver’, ‘Bronze’) may be defined for SATA 1.5TB), and RAID level 1+0

each type of pool Grade ‘Bronze’: Includes FC drives,

capacity 2TB, RAID level 5, and does not
support automated storage tiering

• Costs/prices of resource pools differ

depending on grade level

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 12
 Resource Provisioning
Resource Provisioning

Involves allocating resources from graded resource pools to the service instances.

• Provisioning commences when consumers select cloud services

from the service catalog
• A service template defined in a service catalog facilitates
consumers to understand service capabilities
– Resources are allocated and configured as per service template to
create an instance of a service

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 13
 Lesson Summary
During this lesson the following topics were covered:
• Control layer and its functions
• Control software and its types
• Key phases for provisioning resources using unified manager

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 14
 Lesson: Software-defined Approach
This lesson covers the following topics:
• Introduction to software-defined approach
• Key functions of software-defined controller
• Benefits of software-defined approach

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 15
Software-defined Approach – A New Model For
Managing Resources
• Abstracts the underlying infrastructure components
• Separates the management functions from the infrastructure
components to the external software that runs on a controller
– Enables controlling IT infrastructures centrally

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 16
Key Functions of Software-defined Controller
• Discovers underlying resources and provides an aggregated
view of resources
– Abstracts the underlying hardware resources (compute, storage,
and network) and pools them
• Enables the rapid provisioning of resources based on pre-
defined policies
• Enables to apply policies uniformly across the infrastructure
components, all from a software interface
• Provides interfaces that enable applications external to the
controller to request resources and access them as services

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 17
Benefits of Software-defined Approach
• Improves business agility
– Minimizes resource provisioning time to get new services up and
running
• Provides cost efficiency
– Enables to effectively use the existing infrastructure and low-cost
commodity hardware to lower CAPEX
• Enables to achieve scale-out architecture
• Provides a central point of access to all management functions
• Allows to create new innovative services using the
underlying resources

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 18
 Lesson Summary
During this lesson the following topics were covered:
• Functions of software-defined controller
• Benefits of software-defined approach

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 19
 Lesson: Resource Management Technique – 1
This lesson covers the following topics:
• Resource management aspect of cloud infrastructure
• Resource allocation model
• Key compute resource management techniques

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 20
Introduction to Resource Management
Resource Management

Process of allocating resources effectively to a service instance from a pool of resources

and monitoring the resources that help in maintaining service levels.

• Key goals of resource management

– Controls utilization of resources
– Prevents service instances from monopolizing resources
• Management server is used to centrally manage the resources
– Enables defining policies
– Configures and monitors the resources
– Provides the ability to pool the resources

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 21
Resource Allocation Models
• Relative resource allocation
– Resource allocation to a service instance is defined proportionally
relative to the resource allocated to other service instances
• Absolute resource allocation
– Resource allocation for a service instance is based on defining a
quantitative bound
• Lower bound guarantees minimum amount of resources
• Upper bound limits a service instance from consuming resources
beyond the defined maximum level

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 22
Key Resource Management Techniques
Compute Storage Network

• Hyper-threading • Virtual storage provisioning • Balancing client workload

• Memory page sharing • Storage pool rebalancing across nodes

• Dynamic memory allocation • Storage space reclamation • Network storm control

• VM load balancing across • Automated storage tiering • Quality of Service (QoS)

hypervisors • Cache tiering • Traffic shaping

• Server flash-cache • Dynamic VM load balancing • Link aggregation

across storage volumes • NIC teaming

• Multipathing

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 23
Hyper-threading
• Makes a processor appear as two logical
processor cores
– Enables an OS to schedule two threads
simultaneously
• Two logical processor cores share the
same physical resources
– While the current thread is stalled,
processor can execute another thread
• Provides improved performance and
utilization

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 24
Memory Page Sharing
VM 1 VM 2 VM 3

• Eliminates redundant copies of 1 2 3 … n 1 2 3 … n 1 2 3 … n

memory pages VM 1 Memory VM 2 Memory VM 3 Memory

• Allows a greater degree of

memory over-commitment
• Hypervisor identifies redundant
pages 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

– VM memory pointer is updated to …

point to shared location

– Redundant memory pages are Shared Memory Page

reclaimed Private Copy

Memory Page

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 25
Dynamic Memory Allocation
• A memory optimization technique that reclaims memory pages
• VMs have agent installed in guest OS that communicates with
hypervisor
• When memory become scarce:
– Agent in a VM demands memory from their guest OS
– Guest OS allocates memory pages to the agent
– Agent reserves the memory and puts it back into memory pool
– Hypervisor then assigns the relinquished memory pages to other
VMs that require memory

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 26
VM Load Balancing Across Hypervisors
• Provides uniform distribution of load across hypervisors
• Key process involved in balancing load of VMs:
– Management server checks the availability of resources on all
hypervisors when a new VM is powered-on
– Management server places the VM on a hypervisor with sufficient
resources and ensures that the load is balanced
– Management server monitors the load across hypervisors
• If there is any imbalance, then the server balances the load by
migrating the VMs from over-utilized to underutilized hypervisors

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 27
Server Flash-cache Technology
• Uses intelligent caching software and a flash card on the
compute system
– Cache software places the most frequently referenced data on the
flash card
• Dramatically improves the application performance
– Provides performance acceleration for read-intensive workloads
– Avoids network latencies associated with I/O access to the storage
system
• Requires “warm-up” time before significant performance
improvement is realized

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 28
 Lesson Summary
During this lesson the following topics were covered:
• Resource allocation models
• Hyper-threading
• Memory page sharing
• Dynamic memory allocation
• VM load balancing across hypervisors
• Server flash-cache

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 29
 Lesson: Resource Management Technique – 2
This lesson covers the following topics:
• Virtual storage provisioning
• Storage pool rebalancing
• Thin LUN storage space reclamation
• Automated storage tiering
• Cache tiering
• Dynamic VM load balancing across storage volumes

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 30
 Virtual Storage Provisioning
Virtual Storage Provisioning

It enables to present a LUN to an application with more

capacity than is physically allocated to it on the storage
system.

• Physical storage is allocated to the

application on-demand
– Provides more efficient utilization of
storage and reduces storage cost
– Simplified storage management
• Two types of LUNs can be created:
– Thin LUN
– Thick LUN

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 31
Storage Pool Rebalancing
• Provides the ability to rebalance allocated extents on physical
disk drives over the pool when new drives are added
• Restripes data across all disk drives in the shared storage pool
– Helps in achieving higher overall pool performance
• Enables spreading out the data equally on all the drives within
the pool
– Ensures that the used capacity of each drive is uniform across the
pool

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 32
Storage Space Reclamation
• Identifies unused space in thin LUNs and re-assigns it to the
storage pool
– Provides cost savings
• Options to reclaim the unused space on a thin LUN
– Zero extent reclamation
• De-allocate storage extents that contain all zeroes in a thin LUN
• De-allocated extents are added back to the pool
– API-based reclamation
• API communicate the location of all the identified unused space on the
LUN to the storage system to reclaim all unused space to the pool

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 33
 Automated Storage Tiering
Automated Storage Tiering

A technique of establishing a hierarchy of different storage types for different

categories of data that enables storing the right data automatically to the right tier, to
meet the service level requirements.

• Each tier has different levels of protection, performance, and

cost
• Data is moved between tiers based on defined tiering policies
– Tiering policy is usually based on parameters such as file type,
frequency of access, and so on
• Data movement occurs between tiers
– Within a storage array (Intra-array)
– Between storage arrays (Inter-array)
© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 34
Cache Tiering
• Enables creation of a large capacity
secondary cache using SSDs DRAM Cache Tier 0

• Enables tiering between DRAM cache

and SSDs (secondary cache)
• Most reads are served directly from SSD Tier 1

high performance tiered cache

Cache Tier
• Key benefits:
– Enhances performance during peak Storage System

workload
– Non-disruptive and transparent to
applications
© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 35
Dynamic VM Load Balancing Across Storage
Volumes
• Enables intelligent placement of VMs during creation, based on
the I/O load and available storage capacity on the volume
– Improves the performance
• Management server performs ongoing load balancing within a
cluster of volumes
– Cluster volume is a collection or pool of volumes that are
aggregated as a single volume
• Enables efficient and rapid placement of new VMs

• User-configurable space utilization or I/O latency thresholds are

defined to ensure space efficiency

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 36
 Lesson Summary
During this lesson the following topics were covered:
• Virtual storage provisioning
• Storage pool rebalancing
• Storage space reclamation
• Automated storage tiering
• Cache tiering
• Dynamic VM load balancing across storage volumes

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 37
 Lesson: Resource Management Technique – 3
This lesson covers the following topics:
• Balancing client workload across nodes
• Network storm control
• Quality of Service
• Traffic shaping
• Link aggregation, NIC teaming, and multipathing

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 38
Introduction to Network Traffic Management
• Network traffic flow is controlled and managed to optimize the
performance and availability of cloud services
• Key network traffic management techniques are:
– Balancing client workload across nodes
– Network storm control
– Quality of Service (QoS)
– Traffic shaping
– Link aggregation
– NIC teaming
– Multipathing

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 39
Balancing Client Workload across Nodes
• Splits client workload across multiple nodes
– Usually performed by a purpose-built device called load balancer
• Load balancer is placed between node cluster and Internet
– Load balancer decides where to forward each request
Ethernet Switch

Server 1
Private IP A.A.A.A
Load Balancer

Server 2 Internet
Private IP B.B.B.B

webapp.sample.com
public IP Z.Z.Z.Z

Ethernet Switch
Server 3
Private IP C.C.C.C

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 40
 Network Storm Control
Storm Control

A networking technique that prevents regular network traffic on a LAN or VLAN from
being disrupted by a network storm. A network storm occurs due to flooding of frames
on a LAN or VLAN, creating excessive traffic and resulting in degraded network
performance.

• Switch monitors incoming frames to switch ports over specific

time interval
• Switch counts frames of specific type over the interval
• Switch compares the count with pre-configured threshold
– Switch port blocks traffic when threshold is reached and filters out
subsequent frames until the interval ends

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 41
 Quality of Service (QoS)
Quality of Service

Capability of a network to prioritize business critical and latency-sensitive network

traffic and to provide better service to such traffic over less critical traffic. QoS enables
applications to obtain consistent service levels in terms of network bandwidth, latency
variations, and delay.
Approach Description

Integrated Services • Application signals the network to inform network components

about required QoS
• Application can transmit data through network only after receiving
confirmation from the network

Differentiated Services • Priority specification to network packets are inserted by applications

or by switches or routers
• Network uses priority specification to classify traffic and then
manage network bandwidth based on the traffic class

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 42
Traffic Shaping
• Limits the traffic rate at a network interface such as a node port
or a router port
• If traffic rate exceeds the pre-configured limit, traffic shaping
queues excess packets for later transmission
– Ensures required service level for business-critical applications
– Controls traffic rate per client/tenant to avoid network congestion

Traffic Traffic
Traffic Traffic
RateRate RateRate
Rate Limit
Rate Limit

Time Time
Time Time

Without Traffic Shaping

Without Traffic Shaping
WithWith
Traffic Shaping
Traffic Shaping

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 43
Link Aggregation, NIC Teaming, and
Multipathing
• Link aggregation
– Combines links between two switches and between a switch and a
node
– Enables distribution of network traffic across links in the
aggregation
• NIC Teaming
– Distributes network traffic across NICs
– Provides network traffic failover in the event of a NIC/link failure
• Multipathing
– Provides load balancing and path failover
– Improves I/O performance and data path utilization

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 44
 Lesson Summary
During this lesson the following topics were covered:
• Balancing client workload across nodes
• Network storm control
• Quality of Service
• Traffic shaping
• Link aggregation, NIC teaming, and multipathing

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 45
 Concepts in Practice
• EMC Unisphere
• EMC Unified Infrastructure Manager (UIM)
• EMC ViPR and ViPR SRM
• EMC FAST VP
• EMC XtremSF
• EMC PowerPath/VE

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 46
EMC Unisphere and EMC UIM
Unisphere UIM
• Provides unified management for file- • Unified management solution for Vblock
based, block-based, and object-based and VSPEX systems
storage
• Enables configuring and provisioning
• Enables to monitor health, alerts, and resources for services
performance of large numbers of VNX
storage systems • Provides a dashboard showing
infrastructure configurations and
• Enables to create storage pool and to utilization
configure tiering
• Performs compliance check during
• Enables administrators to drill down and resource configurations
troubleshoot the issues
• Rapidly performs root cause analysis

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 47
EMC ViPR and EMC FAST VP
ViPR/ViPR SRM FAST VP
• EMC ViPR • Performs storage tiering at sub-LUN level
- A software-defined storage solution
• Data movement between tiers are based
- Separates the management functions from on user-defined policies
the storage
- Centralizes storage management centrally • Optimizes performance and cost
through software
• Increases storage efficiency
• EMC ViPR SRM
• Supported on both VMAX and VNX
- Enables management of physical
infrastructure under ViPR control and helps
storage arrays
associate relationships between physical and
software-defined resources

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 49
EMC XtremSF and PowerPath/VE

XtremSF PowerPath/VE
• A server-flash cache solution • Provides multipathing solution for
VMware ESX/ESXi and Microsoft
• A PCIe flash card deployed in the Hyper-V
compute system, which improves
performance • Provides advanced multipathing with
path failover and load balancing
• XtremSW Cache accelerates reads across FC, iSCSI, or FCoE I/O paths
and protects data using write-
through cache

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 50
 Module Summary
Key points covered in this module:
• Control layer and its key functions
• Element manager and unified manager
• Software-defined approach for managing IT resources
• Key resource management techniques

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Module: Control Layer 51