Nimble Storage on HPE: How InfoSight allows you to see the invisible in your infrastructure
As you may have heard, in early March, Hewlett Packard Enterprise announced its intention to acquire an independent manufacturer of hybrid and flash arrays Nimble. On April 17, this purchase was completed, and now this company is 100% owned by HPE. In countries where Nimble was introduced earlier, Nimble products are already available through the Hewlett Packard Enterprise channel. In our country, this process will take more time, but we can expect that by November the Nimble arrays will occupy their niche between older MSA configurations and 3PAR 8200.
Together with the integration of production and sales channels, HPE faces another challenge, namely, the use of Nimble InfoSight software developments that go beyond storage systems. According to IDC estimates , InfoSight is the industry-leading platform for predictive analysis of the state of IT, the benefits of which other manufacturers are trying to copy. HPE currently has an analogue - StoreFront Remote , however, both IDC and Gartner in their “Magic Quadrant of All-Flash Arrays” for 2016 rated the Nimble product much higher. What are the differences?
InfoSight is changing the way we manage storage infrastructure. It can be quite difficult to determine the source of problems that may arise in the “virtual machine - server - storage system” bundle. In particular, if all these products are supported by different manufacturers (I remind you that in the case of HPE, the service for Windows, VMware, servers and storage is carried out through a single HPE PointNext service ). It would be much easier for the user if a comprehensive analysis of the state of the infrastructure was carried out automatically at all IT levels through which business application transactions pass, and the results were already issued as a turnkey solution. And preferably before the problem arises. Nimble InfoSight software does just that, allowing you to achieve unique results: data availability at the 99.999928% level, in fact, on entry-level systems, and automatic prediction of potential problems (including off-site storage) with preventive measures in 86% of cases. Without the participation of the system administrator and support calls! In general, if you want to spend less time on maintaining your information system, I recommend looking at InfoSight more closely.
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One of the key differences between the NimbleOS operating system is the greater amount of diagnostic data available for analysis. Thus, instead of standard logs and system state metrics, a huge amount of additional information is collected. Developers call the diagnostic code "sensors", and these sensors are built into each module of the operating system. The installed Nimble base has more than 10,000 customers, and tens of thousands of systems are connected to the cloud, which currently has 300 trillion indicators of arrays collected over the years of operation, and millions of events are analyzed every second.
When you have this amount of statistics, they can only be analyzed.
It turns out that more than half of the problems that cause I / O slowdowns in business applications are outside of the array , and other vendors that only deal with storage systems simply cannot adequately understand the service case in most cases. By comparing the array data with other diagnostic information, you can find a real source of problems all the way from the virtual machines to the array disks. Here are some examples:
1. Performance diagnostics is a rather difficult task for a complex IT infrastructure. Analysis of log files and indicators at each level of the system can take a lot of time. Based on the correlation of a set of indicators, InfoSight can determine where a slowdown occurs, on the server, in the data network or in the storage system. Perhaps the problem is in the neighboring virtual machine, it is possible that the configuration of the network equipment is incorrect, you may need to optimize the configuration of the servers.
2. Invisible problems. A certain sequence of indicators forms a signature that allows you to predict how the system will behave in the future. More than 800 signatures are monitored by InfoSight software in real time, and again, it allows you to detect problems outside the array. For example, one of the customers after upgrading the storage system had a tenfold drop in performance associated with the features of the hypervisor. On the basis of this incident, not only a patch was released, but another 600 storage systems were automatically prevented from occurring because the signature was immediately added to the InfoSight cloud.
Perhaps this is too loud a phrase for describing the operation of InfoSight, but nevertheless, advanced statistical algorithms and predictions based on them are a key advantage of the platform. The algorithms used by the platform include autoregressive forecasting models and Monte Carlo simulation, which allow predicting "random" events, as it may seem at first glance.
Data on the current state of the infrastructure make it possible to accurately do sizing and to modernize the information system. From the moment of deployment, InfoSight receives data for further analysis, and the mathematical model becomes even more accurate.
The platform is constantly trained on the installed base, which was created by customers over the years the company Nimble, and it is trained to support systems - now Hewlett Packard Enterprise - was a simpler and more understandable task. The number of 3PAR arrays alone, which are currently working for customers, far exceeds the corresponding Nimble figures. Accordingly, InfoSight's support for 3PAR will create an even more complete picture for statistical analysis of IT infrastructure indicators. Of course, modifications will be required in 3PAR OS, but, on the other hand, far from everything that is built into InfoSight is unique for this platform. Therefore, we are waiting for news from the joint development team of Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Nimble!
Materials:
1. Nimble Storage Is Now Part Of HPE. Any Questions? (Calvin Zito blog, HPE Storage)
2. Nimble Storage InfoSight: In a League of Own (David Wong blog, Nimble Storage, HPE)
3. HPE StoreFront Remote: The Storage Analytics Decision-Maker for Your Data Center (Vina Pakala blog, HPE Storage)
4. HPE completes acquisition of Nimble Storage (press release, in English)
Together with the integration of production and sales channels, HPE faces another challenge, namely, the use of Nimble InfoSight software developments that go beyond storage systems. According to IDC estimates , InfoSight is the industry-leading platform for predictive analysis of the state of IT, the benefits of which other manufacturers are trying to copy. HPE currently has an analogue - StoreFront Remote , however, both IDC and Gartner in their “Magic Quadrant of All-Flash Arrays” for 2016 rated the Nimble product much higher. What are the differences?
InfoSight is changing the way we manage storage infrastructure. It can be quite difficult to determine the source of problems that may arise in the “virtual machine - server - storage system” bundle. In particular, if all these products are supported by different manufacturers (I remind you that in the case of HPE, the service for Windows, VMware, servers and storage is carried out through a single HPE PointNext service ). It would be much easier for the user if a comprehensive analysis of the state of the infrastructure was carried out automatically at all IT levels through which business application transactions pass, and the results were already issued as a turnkey solution. And preferably before the problem arises. Nimble InfoSight software does just that, allowing you to achieve unique results: data availability at the 99.999928% level, in fact, on entry-level systems, and automatic prediction of potential problems (including off-site storage) with preventive measures in 86% of cases. Without the participation of the system administrator and support calls! In general, if you want to spend less time on maintaining your information system, I recommend looking at InfoSight more closely.
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How is this done?
One of the key differences between the NimbleOS operating system is the greater amount of diagnostic data available for analysis. Thus, instead of standard logs and system state metrics, a huge amount of additional information is collected. Developers call the diagnostic code "sensors", and these sensors are built into each module of the operating system. The installed Nimble base has more than 10,000 customers, and tens of thousands of systems are connected to the cloud, which currently has 300 trillion indicators of arrays collected over the years of operation, and millions of events are analyzed every second.
When you have this amount of statistics, they can only be analyzed.
It turns out that more than half of the problems that cause I / O slowdowns in business applications are outside of the array , and other vendors that only deal with storage systems simply cannot adequately understand the service case in most cases. By comparing the array data with other diagnostic information, you can find a real source of problems all the way from the virtual machines to the array disks. Here are some examples:
1. Performance diagnostics is a rather difficult task for a complex IT infrastructure. Analysis of log files and indicators at each level of the system can take a lot of time. Based on the correlation of a set of indicators, InfoSight can determine where a slowdown occurs, on the server, in the data network or in the storage system. Perhaps the problem is in the neighboring virtual machine, it is possible that the configuration of the network equipment is incorrect, you may need to optimize the configuration of the servers.
2. Invisible problems. A certain sequence of indicators forms a signature that allows you to predict how the system will behave in the future. More than 800 signatures are monitored by InfoSight software in real time, and again, it allows you to detect problems outside the array. For example, one of the customers after upgrading the storage system had a tenfold drop in performance associated with the features of the hypervisor. On the basis of this incident, not only a patch was released, but another 600 storage systems were automatically prevented from occurring because the signature was immediately added to the InfoSight cloud.
Artificial Intelligence
Perhaps this is too loud a phrase for describing the operation of InfoSight, but nevertheless, advanced statistical algorithms and predictions based on them are a key advantage of the platform. The algorithms used by the platform include autoregressive forecasting models and Monte Carlo simulation, which allow predicting "random" events, as it may seem at first glance.
Data on the current state of the infrastructure make it possible to accurately do sizing and to modernize the information system. From the moment of deployment, InfoSight receives data for further analysis, and the mathematical model becomes even more accurate.
The platform is constantly trained on the installed base, which was created by customers over the years the company Nimble, and it is trained to support systems - now Hewlett Packard Enterprise - was a simpler and more understandable task. The number of 3PAR arrays alone, which are currently working for customers, far exceeds the corresponding Nimble figures. Accordingly, InfoSight's support for 3PAR will create an even more complete picture for statistical analysis of IT infrastructure indicators. Of course, modifications will be required in 3PAR OS, but, on the other hand, far from everything that is built into InfoSight is unique for this platform. Therefore, we are waiting for news from the joint development team of Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Nimble!
Materials:
1. Nimble Storage Is Now Part Of HPE. Any Questions? (Calvin Zito blog, HPE Storage)
2. Nimble Storage InfoSight: In a League of Own (David Wong blog, Nimble Storage, HPE)
3. HPE StoreFront Remote: The Storage Analytics Decision-Maker for Your Data Center (Vina Pakala blog, HPE Storage)
4. HPE completes acquisition of Nimble Storage (press release, in English)
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/329202/
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