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BP1024 Scaling and Best Practices for Virtual Workload Environments with the FS7500 28
Table 3 Planned workload components
Application
# of
VM’s
Planned
IOPS per
VM
Iometer I/O
profile
Typical VM resource
allocation
Windows Servers (for
running Active Directory,
Domain Controllers etc.)
1 30 8K 70/30 read/
write; 100%
random I/O
50 GB OS, 4 vCPU and 4
GB RAM; 200 GB data
volume
Mail servers like Microsoft
Exchange Server
1 500 for mail
database
data, 200
for Log data
32k; 50/50
read/write; 100%
Random I/O for
Database data,
8K, 100% write
sequential I/O
for Log data
50 GB OS, 4 vCPU and 8
GB RAM;
1240 GB for Database
data as 4 x 310 GB
volumes;
120 GB for Log data as 4 x
30 GB volumes
OLTP DB servers like SQL
Server
4
1200 for
Database
data, 300
for Log data
8K; 100%
Random I/O,
70% Reads, 30%
writes for
Database data,
8K, 100% write,
sequential I/O
for Log data
50 GB OS, 4 vCPU and 8
GB RAM; 500 GB
Database data as 4 x 125
GB volumes; 50 GB for
one log volume
Microsoft SharePoint
Servers
1 1000 8K 70/30
read/write; 100%
random I/O
50 GB OS, 4 vCPU and 4
GB RAM, 300 GB data
volume
Web servers like Microsoft
IIS
8 100 100% read
random I/O,
block size (50%
servers 8K and
50% servers 32K)
50 GB OS, 2 vCPU and 4
GB RAM, 300 GB data
volume
Middleware servers like
J2EE App servers
4
30
8K 70/30 read/
write; 100%
random I/O
50 GB OS, 4 vCPU and 8
GB RAM, 300 GB volume
Web 2.0/Social Media
applications like Olio
1
100
100% read
random I/O,
block size 8K
50 GB OS, 2 vCPU and 4
GB RAM, 300 GB data
volume
The actual vCPU and memory allocation for the tests were half of the planned vCPU and memory
allocations due to limited hardware resources on the test servers. This did not impact the tests since
Iometer is not CPU or memory intensive.
4.1.3 Workload criteria
For all application I/O workloads, I/O response time criteria for the random I/O operations were set at
less than 20 ms as measured from Iometer. The I/O latency tolerance with random I/O applications
such as OLTP databases, email servers, and web servers is typically under 20ms. Also, TCP
retransmission criteria on the storage iSCSI network were set as less than 0.5%.
The same TCP criteria were used to test vMotion, Storage vMotion, cloning, and booting operations.