Hi all, after StorageReview.com write an article on the NetApp AFF200A yesterday, and providing it with the the seal of “Editor’s choice 2017”, I would like to provide you with a small glimpse of the AFF A200A in practice on this site. The measurements in such tests as conducted at StorageReview.com, are of course taking place within certain laboratory conditions. I can tell you in advance already one… in reality, it looks even better than in the laboratory. StorageReview.com tested a NetApp AFF A200A containing 24 x 960 GB SSDs. The same configuration I have installed live in the “box” and can therefore a very good comparison between laboratory and real life.
My config:
- NetApp AFF A200A
- 24 x 960 GB SSD
- 2 x 10GBE for NFS traffic
- 71 virtual machines (80% Windows, 20% Linux)
- Multiple SQL servers (two or three)
The performance: The graphics shown here are all during actual business hours, so not sometime at night when nothing was going on.
As you can see, there is a response time of 0.2 milliseconds at 6580 required IOPS in the graph. The whole thing produced by 71 virtual machines, which work on the NFS datastores. At this point, some people will probably shrug their shoulders… Even though a ‘full backup’ of the virtual machines (utilizing VEEAM 9.5) was running during this time window. Indeed, the peaks seen in the throughput and IOPS are the times in which I have started a backup. Just for “Fun” I started backups in the middle of business hours, to see how the AFF A200 behaves.
As you can see the AFF A200 really didn’t care if VEEAM pulls away a full backup in the middle of the day or not. The response time of the machine remains at 0.2 milliseconds. And even the Veeam backup enjoyed it.
On average, here with 545 MB / s was transferred. The backup was utilizing a virtual VEEAM proxy that has sucked NFS directly from the storage. For now, and the sake of the test, the integrated Storage Snapshot functionality by Veeam isn’t active yet. These are numbers just using NFS and CBT.
Efficiency:
In another post had I already presented you OnTap 9.2 and I still own you ans answer. The response regarding the Aggregate Inline De-Duplication. So here is a little trip in the efficiency of the NetApp AFF A200A. There a still a lot of people who do not believe, you can actually fit 2TB of data into only 1TB of diskspace. Now I have been on the road with NetApp for several years and have a certain “feeling” on how much space savings through de-duplication you can achieve. ONTAP 9.2 on the AFF A200A has amazed me though.
Here of the first node:
DERSCHMITZ-01: :> storage units show efficiency details
Units: Data_Aggr_Node_01
Node: DERSCHMITZ-01-01
Total storage efficiency ratio: 2.79: 1
Total data reduction ratio: 2.79: 1
Aggregate level storage efficiency
(Aggregate deduplication and data compaction): 1.15: 1
Volume deduplication efficiency: 1.84: 1
Compression efficiency: 1.25: 1
Snapshot volume storage efficiency: 4.60: 1
FlexClone volume storage efficiency: -.
Number of disabled volumes: 1 efficiency
And here of the second node:
Units: Data_Aggr_Node_02
Node: DERSCHMITZ-01-02
Total storage efficiency ratio: 2.29: 1
Total data reduction ratio: 2.29: 1
Aggregate level storage efficiency
(Aggregate deduplication and data compaction): 1.07: 1
Volume deduplication efficiency: 1.73: 1
Compression efficiency: 1.17: 1
Snapshot volume storage efficiency: -.
FlexClone volume storage efficiency: -.
2 entries were displayed.
As you can see here, the efficiency on aggregate level should not be underestimated. After all the data migrated from a “normal” storage device to the AFF 200 we have finally landed with an efficiency factor of 3.9:1.
Meaning: My data would have consumed 3.9 TB on a ‘normal’ storage device, now I need only 1 TB. YEAH 🙂 🙂 🙂
I hope this gives you an insight into the performance and efficiency you will receive with the NetApp AFF A200.
Greeting DerSchmitz
P.S: The graphic analysis of the performance data was conducted with NetApp Grafana. The software is available as free OVA template for vSphere here. Who want to learn best of practices still more about that for setting up VEEAM backups with NetApp should read Member Stefan Renner veeam the blog post by #NetAppUnited.
DISCLAIMER: This post represents my personal observations and is not officially by NetApp or other authorized. Subject to misinterpretation or misunderstanding.