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HOW APPLICATION
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by a system admin
regarding network and I/O could affect
application performance.

he decisions made

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APPLICATION PERFORMANCE DEPENDENT ON

NETWORK, I/O
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Brian Kirsch
Application performance is going to be different depending on a system administrators decisions. When it comes to network, I/O, memory and CPU, there
are choices that need to be made depending on what youre looking for. This
is the second part of a two-part series about factors that affect virtualized application performance.
Networking is the bridge that connects our applications to each other and
ultimately to us. It is a necessary piece but where does it fit in the application
profile? We know that networking is critical for our infrastructure; however,
that is not exactly the same as the needs for an application. One of the common
speeds in the data center today is the 1 gigabyte (GB) connection and outside of
over the network backups, it can be hard to find applications that use it all. Part
of this is due to other limiting factors in the hardware such as the hard drives.
The other is that most applications simply are designed to be more efficient in
communications.
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When virtualizing 30 standardized servers that have an existing 1 GB link,

the raw math reflects 30 GB of bandwidth needed. However, if each of those
servers only used 100 megabytes per second, suddenly that 30 GB of bandwidth
drops to 3 GB. While not all applications will have that level of use, it often becomes more likely that your application will run into another constraint before
networking. With networking speeds beyond 10 GB and moving into the 25
GB and 100 GB range, this is one celling that most applications will never see.
With regards to software-defined networking in the application space, the application server itself should have no knowledge of the networking infrastructure below the virtualized physical layer. So the question of using SDN is a
business and infrastructure decision. Will these technologies be the future?
Mostly likely yes but the timing of your adoption will be the key, leading edge
or bleeding edge.
MANAGING IOPS TO REDUCE BOTTLENECKS

I/O is the real wild card of the collection. Storage has experienced some of the
most radical changes in the data center of any of the four. In the traditional
server, storage was typically the bottle neck of the server due to storage being
mechanical in nature. Unlike CPU or memory, storage had moving parts which
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limited its performance. Once you add multiple VMs onto the same storage
system, the bottle necks become even more apparent. However, larger RAID
groups, meta-luns and solid-state disks (SSDs) have continued to increase the
number of (IOPS) you can have access too. Add in the converged infrastructure
where the storage is brought into the same frame as the servers and the amount
of IOPS increases further. But storage is unique among the categories as the
newer technology doesnt simply replace the older ones. SSD has not done away
with spinning media, while the performance is much higher and the capacity
grows the price difference is still too great to be ignored.
HOW TO BUILD YOUR NETWORK AND STORAGE INFRASTRUCTURE

This often leads to a hybrid approach of both spinning media and SSD. With
the price differences in the disk it is no longer a performance question, but a
cost question. Asking an application owner about performance or capacity will
typically yield the same answer: SSD. Seeking the vendor recommendations
should be a bit more realistic but can still be more theoretical than realistic.
Monitoring the application I/O will be the only true measure because it is operating in your environment with your users. Of course monitoring after the
fact doesnt really help you in purchasing now -- except for storage. Storage is
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unique among the four because its normally the easiest to modify and expand.
Adding disk to most storage frames is a nondisruptive event and using multiple
different classes of storage is supported by most storage systems.
The ability to move virtual workloads between different classes of storage
without interruption makes one of the most difficult issues to determine in a
virtual environment one of the easiest to work with. Capacity is fairly cut and
dry and taking advantage of thin provisioning can help your efforts. Using the
vendors guidelines, you can get an idea of a starting point. From there you can
grow your storage depending on the application profiles. Not purchasing everything at once gives you more freedom to see where your pain points will be and
adjust accordingly. Since storage is often a shared environment you also gain
insight into how different applications will react with each other. This can help
you avoid common pitfalls such as VDI boot storms or backups.
Having insight into your applications is the best way to know how to grow
your virtual environment. Virtualization has many features and can have amazing impact to your infrastructure and organization. However, dont forget that
while virtualization may get all of the attention, its the applications and how
we support them with virtualization that is the real key.

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