XtremIO 6.2 – Part 1, New options for Scaling UP and Out

One of the most important requirements from today’s IT platform is ability to adjust the capabilities to dynamic business requirements. In modern enterprise storage subsystems this requirement translates to two basic features:

Dynamic growth in capacity. Allow non-disruptive capacity growth of existing array.
Dynamic growth in performance. Add more compute resources to support updated performance demands of existing system.

Will present here the XtremIO X2 scalability features and how it makes the IT infrastructure growth easier and more efficient.

Use-case 1: Help!!! There is no free space in my DB.

The XtremIO array supports non-disruptive capacity upgrade. The new SSDs could added to existing array without adding another CPU/memory resource. This supports all the potential capacity growth scenarios without any limitations:

Current production volumes growth
Copies of current volumes growth
New copies for existing volumes
New volumes

Use-case 2: Help!!! I need more performance for my DB

XtremIO designed as scalable distributed system optimized for high performance demands and linear scalability.

Scale-UP process:

Each DAE in an X-Brick holds up to 72 SSDs divided into two equal groups of 36 SSDs. These two groups are called a DPGs (Data Protection Groups). A DPG must be fully populated with SSDs before starting to fill the next DPG with SSDs.

For single brick array, the scale-up “granularity” steps looks as below:

An initial X-Brick configuration of 18 SSDs comprises the first DPG.
Scaling-Up with any even amount of disks between 2 and 18 (2 SSDs granularity) to a full configuration of the first DPG, and the X-Brick has a total of 36 SSDs.
Scaling-Up with 18 SSDs as an initial configuration of the second DPG, and the X-Brick has a total of 54 SSDs.
Scaling-Up with any even amount of disks between 2 and 18 (2 SSDs granularity) to populate the second DPG of 36* SSDs, and the X-Brick has a total of 72 SSDs.

Multi-brick scale-up require either:

Leveled growth

When the amount of SSDs is identical between bricks. The Scale-UP granularity and “steps” are similar to these of single brick, but required to be applied consistently across all the xBricks in XtremIO array

Unleveled growth

The initialization of second DPG will require 18 SSDs. In multi-brick systems leveled population of 18 SSDs per xbrick might require more SSDs than required by customer from capacity perspective. To support more granular growth, this step is allowed to be sequential and not concurrent between xBricks.

Scale-OUT process:

Scale-OUT is easy and doesn’t impact the current array performance. As part of the process, new resources physically installed and added to the array. The existing user data and performance workload evenly distributed across existing and the new resources as part of Scale-OUT process. No user-level planning, migration, rebalance or any other additional management tasks are required!!!

Like as “Scale-UP” process, the new resources during “Scale-OUT” could be added in two ways:

Leveled growth.

In this case, the amount of SSDs is identical between existing and the new bricks

Unleveled growth

When the existing xbricks are fully populated with 72 SSDs, leveled growth will require fully populated new xbrick. In order to support more granular growth that fit the customer capacity requirements in this scenario, the new xbrick could be added with minimum of 18 SSDs and with granularity of 6SSDs (18, 24, 30, 36, 54, 60, 66 or leveled 72).

Need more space?? 3.84TB drives are here

Starting version 6.2 XtremIO supports 3.84 TB drives in X2-R new systems. In current version 3.84 TB drives supported in new array only, and not as scale-up or out for existing array. The X2R cluster supports 60 SSDs of 3.84TB per xbrick, which will allow single xbrick raw physical space growing to 230TB raw capacity and 204TB usable capacity (Data Reduction 1:1).

X-Brick Configurations

To accommodate a wide range of capacity requirements we are offering the latest X2 platform in three configurations: X2-S, X2-T, and X2-R with different SSD sizes. Start as small as 7.2TB RAW capacity. In most use cases the X2-R will be the most typical configuration. X2-S will be used for use cases with very high levels of IO density, where dedupe ratios are very large or very large numbers of active snapshots are being used. Work with the sizing tools/XtremIO specialist SEs to identify the optimal option. X2-T is a cost effective entry point into the XtremIO family where deployment and growth expectations are expected to remain under 200TBe.