Lenovo VX Series VMware vSAN Express Storage Architecture and Micron NVMe SSDs Instruction Manual

Lenovo VX Series VMware vSAN Express Storage Architecture and Micron NVMe

SSDs

Product Information

• The Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series, when combined with VMware vSAN Express Storage Architecture (ESA) and Micron NVMe SSDs, offers improved storage performance for modern applications. This solution allows IT leaders to easily scale up, scale out, or expand storage infrastructure independently and efficiently.
• The storage market is experiencing a shift in hardware adoption, with Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) devices becoming the preferred choice over SAS/SATA SSDs and magnetic drives. NVMe devices offer 2-3x greater performance than legacy devices, while their price continues to decline. NVMe technology is projected to become the standard storage device in enterprise environments.
• vSAN 8 introduces Express Storage Architecture (ESA) as a new storage architecture within the platform. This architecture enables customers to leverage NVMe-based flash devices for enhanced performance, scalability, resilience, and simplicity. It introduces innovative changes like a new log-structured file system (vSAN LFS), a write-optimized log-structured object manager, and a new object format to achieve near device-level performance while efficiently storing data and metadata.
• The minimum requirements for vSAN 8 ESA include at least 4 storage devices and a network speed of 25 Gbps. Customers can choose to use ReadyNodes or build their own configurations using certified devices.

Positioning Information
As modern applications demand for more resources, IT Leaders need the ability to quickly scale up, scale out, or expand storage infrastructure independently and efficiently. The storage market is going through a fundamental shift in hardware adoption, with newer hardware innovation emerging for highly optimized Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) deployments. For example, Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) devices are expected to grow to a substantial majority share while the SAS/SATA SSDs and magnetic drives are expected to decline rapidly. NVMe devices offer 2-3x greater performance (based on VMware Internal Analysis, August 2022) than legacy SAS/SATA devices, while their price is steadily declining. NVMe devices are available in a variety of types across a wide of range of performance, capacity points and support a spectrum of workloads to meet various business needs. NVMe technology is projected to become the de-facto standard and the most widespread deployed storage device in the enterprise.

Product Usage Instructions

1. Ensure that you have the Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series system installed.
2. Install VMware vSAN 8 on the system.
3. Acquire Micron NVMe SSDs that are certified for use with vSAN ESA.
4. Connect the NVMe SSDs to the system’s storage devices.
5. Configure the network with a minimum speed of 25 Gbps.
6. Follow the vSAN 8 documentation to enable Express Storage Architecture (ESA).
7. Refer to the vSAN 8 documentation for specific instructions on configuring and managing storage using ESA.

By following these steps, you will be able to improve storage performance using Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series, VMware vSAN ESA, and Micron NVMe SSDs.

Storage Architectures in vSAN 8

While spinning disks and SAS/SATA flash drives are still very common in enterprise data centers and will be in the foreseeable future, customers are upgrading to NVMe-based flash devices. With this adoption, VMware has introduced a new storage architecture within the vSAN 8 platform called Express Storage Architecture (ESA).

Improve Storage Performance with ThinkAgile VX Series using VMware vSAN ESA and Micron NVMe SSDs vSAN ESA provides customers with the flexibility to leverage all NVMe based flash devices for new levels of performance, scalability, resilience, and simplicity. The traditional architecture in vSAN 8, now called Original Storage Architecture (OSA) is still available as an option designed for traditional hardware devices and allows customers to configure a two-tier approach to managing their storage with enhanced efficiency.

Express Storage Architecture (ESA)
vSAN Express Storage Architecture (ESA) is an industry first, single-tier HCI storage solution designed to use compatible next-generation NVMe-based flash devices optimally to reach a wide range of price and performance targets. A major pivot from VMware is the transition from disk groups to storage pools, which eliminates the need to configure a dedicated cache pool as one would in traditional disk groups. The benefit of this transition is the ability to use these previously dedicated cache devices as capacity creating a more resilient vSAN datastore and the scope of a drive failure is now limited to a single device failure rather than the entire disk group. The new architecture showcases some innovative ways of processing and storing data. vSAN 8 with ESA introduces structural changes like a new patented log-structured file system (vSAN LFS), a new writeoptimized log-structured object manager, and a new object format. All these changes enable vSAN ESA achieve near device-level performance levels while storing data and metadata in an extremely efficient way.
Table 1. Minimum Requirements for vSAN 8 Express Storage Architecture (ESA) vs Original Storage Architecture (OSA)

Benefits of vSAN 8 ESA

The benefits of vSAN 8 Express Storage Architecture (ESA) include the following:

• Higher performance targets without trade-offs
  Customers gain substantial performance improvements due to the new vSAN 8 ESA data path that leverages different tiers of storage devices to deliver a wide range of price/performance targets. Improved erasure coding further reduces performance overhead and enables customers to achieve RAID 5/6 at the performance of RAID 1. Intelligent I/O traffic management for vSAN network traffic during times of network contention to avoid congestion resulting in higher rate of I/O processing for enhanced efficiency.

• Space and resource efficiency with simplified storage provisioning
  The all-new policy-based compression method that occurs higher in the storage stack minimizes CPU costs and network payload. Enabled by default, customers can use a simple storage policy to toggle on a per-VM basis instead of a cluster-based service allowing for up to a 4x improvement in compression on each 4KB block, when compared with the Original Storage Architecture.

• Scalable, high-performance native snapshots
  vSAN ESA enables intelligent native snapshotting of point-in-time states of data in a fast and efficient way resulting in minimal impact on the VM’s performance, with consolidation times dramatically reduced.

• Security
  Cluster-based encryption has been included with vSAN ESA. The encryption occurs at the top of the stack eliminating the need to encrypt and decrypt as data traverses the stack. This new functionality improves resource utilization when securing data.

ThinkAgile VX with vSAN ESA
Customers can take advantage of Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Integrated Systems with VMware vSAN 8 ESA to run resource-intensive workloads including mission- critical applications, database workloads such as OLTP in retail, finance, and airline industries. ThinkAgile VX with VMware vSAN 8 ESA plays a particularly interesting role in space constrained deployments. IT admins can take advantage of vSAN ESA’s single tier of storage to fit more capacity into smaller footprints such as in Remote Office / Branch Offices (ROBO) and still support a variety of workloads.

Micron SSDs Securely Accelerate ESA

NVMe SSDs greatly improve storage performance in VMware vSAN ESA deployments, which are optimized for NVMe SSDs. NVMe SSDs are the de-facto standard for modern low-latency HCI environments like VMware vSAN ESA, providing an optimal balance of storage performance, capacity, and low power to meet a broad variety of deployment requirements. Micron NVMe SSDs deliver significant performance increases over SAS/SATA drives and with low latency – both imperatives to help improve workloads like transaction processing, real-time analytics, resource planning, virtualization, broad database deployments, video on demand and other similar performance and latency-sensitive workloads that can run on vSAN ESA. Micron SSDs also offer a robust complement of proven security features built over generations, helping to address emerging security concerns in virtualized environments. With low latency, wide ranging capacity options, and enhanced security features, Micron SSDs fit a wide variety of VMware vSAN ESA environments for the Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Integrated Systems – helping to reduce complexity while improving storage performance.
For more information about Micron 7450 SSDs, see the following Lenovo Press product guides:

• ThinkSystem 7450 MAX Mixed Use NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSDs
• ThinkSystem 7450 PRO Read Intensive NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSDs

How Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Can Help

Lenovo’s ThinkAgile VX Integrated System is an engineered solution with factory-integrated VMware virtualization software and pre-configured based on the most reliable on the market, Lenovo ThinkSystem servers. ThinkAgile VX provides virtualized compute and storage capabilities to run for a variety of workloads and applications powered by industry-leading VMware software such as VMware vSAN, VMware vSphere and VMware Cloud Foundation. ThinkAgile VX is integrated with VMware vSphere Lifecycle Management (vLCM) for a single unified platform for firmware and software updates. In addition, it comes with ThinkAgile Advantage support, providing a single source of L1/L2 support for both hardware and software, which enables faster recovery. Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series powers a wide range of HCI use cases with its flexibility to scale up or out and broad hardware options ranging from Edge and Remote Office/Branch Office (ROBO), VDI (Virtual Desktop Interface), email and collaboration, to business-critical and large databases like SAP HANA. Additionally, customers can also leverage Lenovo’s TruScale Hybrid Cloud with VMware managed solution with a single, integrated billing, pay-as-you-grow model, which helps achieve significant total cost of ownership savings with specialized expertise to allow customers to accelerate their cloud transformation.

Why Lenovo
Lenovo is a US$70 billion global revenue Fortune Global 500 company serving customers in 180 markets around the world. Focused on a bold vision to deliver smarter technology for all, Lenovo is developing worldchanging technologies that power (through devices and infrastructure) and empower (through solutions, services, and software) millions of customers every day. Lenovo offers simplified and extensible systems management tools so you can manage your infrastructure on your own terms. Consistently ranked #1 in reliability and customer satisfaction, the Lenovo enterprise server, storage, and networking portfolio provides the hardware for businesses that never stand still.

For More Information
To learn more about the Lenovo ThinkAgile VX and other Lenovo solutions with VMware, go to https://www.lenovo.com/vmware or contact your Lenovo Sales Representative or Business Partner.

Related product families
Product families related to this document are the following:

• ThinkAgile VX Series for VMware vSAN
• VMware vSphere

Notices

Lenovo may not offer the products, services, or features discussed in this document in all countries. Consult your local Lenovo representative for information on the products and services currently available in your area. Any reference to a Lenovo product, program, or service is not intended to state or imply that only that Lenovo product, program, or service may be used. Any functionally equivalent product, program, or service that does not infringe any Lenovo intellectual property right may be used instead. However, it is the user’s responsibility to evaluate and verify the operation of any other product, program, or service. Lenovo may have patents or pending patent applications covering subject matter described in this document. The furnishing of this document does not give you any license to these patents. You can send license inquiries, in writing, to:

Lenovo (United States), Inc.
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Attention: Lenovo Director of Licensing

LENOVO PROVIDES THIS PUBLICATION ”AS IS” WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF NON-INFRINGEMENT, MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Some jurisdictions do not allow disclaimer of express or implied warranties in certain transactions, therefore, this statement may not apply to you. This information could include technical inaccuracies or typographical errors. Changes are periodically made to the information herein; these changes will be incorporated in new editions of the publication. Lenovo may make improvements and/or changes in the product(s) and/or the program(s) described in this publication at any time without notice.

The products described in this document are not intended for use in implantation or other life support applications where malfunction may result in injury or death to persons. The information contained in this document does not affect or change Lenovo product specifications or warranties. Nothing in this document shall operate as an express or implied license or indemnity under the intellectual property rights of Lenovo or third parties. All information contained in this document was obtained in specific environments and is presented as an illustration. The result obtained in other operating environments may vary. Lenovo may use or distribute any of the information you supply in any way it believes appropriate without incurring any obligation to you.

Any references in this publication to non-Lenovo Web sites are provided for convenience only and do not in any manner serve as an endorsement of those Web sites. The materials at those Web sites are not part of the materials for this Lenovo product, and use of those Web sites is at your own risk. Any performance data contained herein was determined in a controlled environment. Therefore, the result obtained in other operating environments may vary significantly. Some measurements may have been made on development-level systems and there is no guarantee that these measurements will be the same on generally available systems. Furthermore, some measurements may have been estimated through extrapolation. Actual results may vary. Users of this document should verify the applicable data for their specific environment.
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This document, LP1670, was created or updated on November 22, 2022.
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Improve Storage Performance with ThinkAgile VX Series using VMware vSAN ESA and Micron NVMe SSDs.

References

• ThinkSystem 7450 PRO Read Intensive NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSDs Product Guide > Lenovo Press
• ThinkSystem 7450 MAX Mixed Use NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSDs Product Guide > Lenovo Press
• Improve Storage Performance with Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series using VMware vSAN Express Storage Architecture (ESA) and Micron NVMe SSDs > Lenovo Press
• ThinkAgile VX Series for VMware vSAN > Lenovo Press
• VMware vSphere > Lenovo Press
• Improve Storage Performance with Lenovo ThinkAgile VX Series using VMware vSAN Express Storage Architecture (ESA) and Micron NVMe SSDs > Lenovo Press
• Copyright and Trademark Information | Lenovo US | Lenovo US
• Lenovo and VMware Multi-Cloud, Edge & Virtualization | Lenovo US

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