5/25/16

APJ Data Center SEVT

Sales & Partner Enablement - APJ

May 23-25, 2016

Hyperflex Design and Wins

Shankar Srikanta
Consulting S ystem Engineer
May-2016
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Cisco HyperFlex Supported Designs

Cisco H yperFlex General Design Guidelines
New installs require pair of 6200 series F Is as part of the PO
Can connect non HX blades/rack servers and storage devices to HX
based UCS Domain
Cannot use existing F I pair for HX cluster nodes
# of HyperFlex Storage nodes per cluster Min 3 Max 8
HX nodes m ust be configured identically in cluster
Cannot mix different node models
Drive configuration m ust m atch on all converged nodes
Only HX240c supports compute only nodes in cluster
Only blade certified is B 200M4
Compute only nodes must be in HX UCS Manager F I Domain
Cannot connect nodes directly from other domains
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5/25/16

Cisco HyperFlex Supported Designs

HX Converged Node Cluster Size
HX UCS Domain

Single HX UCS FI Domain can

support up to 4 HX clusters [of
8 nodes each] for a total of 3 2
HX converged nodes

HX Domain 1

HX Domain 2

HX Domain 3

HX Domain 4

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Cisco HyperFlex Supported Designs

HX Hybrid Node Cluster Size
Hybrid HX UCS F I Domain can
support up to 4 HX clusters [for a
max total] of 48 converged and
compute nodes
1 HX Cluster = 8 HX
converged nodes + 4
compute nodes
Actual sizing based on
application requirements

HX UCS Domain

HX Domain 1

HX Domain 2

HX Domain 3

HX Domain 4

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Cisco HyperFlex Supported Designs

vCenter Connection and Scale
Single VMware vCenter instance
supports (limit w ill increase)
4 HX converged clusters up to 32
nodes
4 HX hybrid clusters up to 48 nodes
Single HX F I Domain can connect to
multiple vCenter servers
Dedicated vCenter for HX not required
Same vCenter can m anage HX
nodes and existing or future non-
HX nodes

VMware
vCenter
B

VMware
vCenter
A

HX UCS Domain
HX D omain 1

HX D omain 2

HX D omain 1

HX D omain 2

HX D omain 3

HX D omain 4

HX D omain 3

HX D omain 4

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Cisco HyperFlex Supported Designs

HX Converged Node Disk Configuration

Each HX Converged nodes are uniform and must have the same number and type
of drives across all nodes i n the c luster
Storage for all c onverged nodes i s fixed, c annot c hange drive c apacity and type
HX240c
Bundle HDD quantity adjustable with 1 1,15 or 23 drives
CTO: min 6 HDD, max 2 3 HDD
HX220c
fixed qty of 6 HDD

SSD c apacity and quantity fixed

HDD c apacity fixed 1 .2TB 1 0K SAS
Greater than 1 .2TB SFF drives not supported yet as they are 4 K sector size not
supported by VMware at this time.

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5/25/16

Cisco HyperFlex Supported Designs

HX Cluster Support of External SAN

HX Converged node supports mounting external storage

arrays via (NFS, iSCSI, FC) Example uses:
Storage array must be on Cisco H CL
VM migration and data transfer
Co-existence with Existing SAN environment
Present RDM from FC SAN to VMs
Use VMware storage vMotion for migrations over
Ethernet
Use for b ackup and other application support
HX D atastore is n ot exportable outside the H X cluster

* Storage is NOT part of the HX storage capacity but

a separate LUN presented to the ESXi nodes

HX UCS Domain

FC
iSCSI/NFS or F C S torage Volume*
HX DATASTORE

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Cisco HyperFlex Supported Designs

Compute Only Node Configuration
Compute only nodes cannot exceed S torage Cluster size
Cluster of 3 HX240c Converged nodes can support up to 3 compute
nodes
Cluster of 4+ HX240c Converged nodes can support up to 4
compute nodes
B200 M4 compute node requirements
New or existing blade m ay be used
Must be installed on the same F I as HX cluster
Must be at the same code level as HX FI
Memory based on workload requirements (no req min)
HX footprint is <1GB of m emory
ESXi boot from Local Disk, S D card, or S AN
ESXi version should be the same as converged node
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5/25/16

Product Specification
Category

Item

Notes

Hardware Configuration

HX220c and HX240c based servers as specified in S pec Sheet

Blade boot from SD card

Blade boot from SAN
M4 blades only

B200 M4 blades as compute-nodes (new or existing)

Hypervisor Compatibility

VMware ESX 5.5** and 6.0 (Highly Recommended and shipped from ESX 5.5U3
the factory)
ESX 6.0U1b
Enterprise Edition or Higher
Note 1: ESX 6.0 shipping from
factory and highly recommended
**Note 2: HX220c has ESX upgrade
complexity from 5.5

Software

HX Data Platform v 1.7

UCSM 2.2(6f) El Cap MR5 patch

Scalability

Converged Nodes per Cluster: Min 3 - Max 8 per cluster

Compute Nodes: Min 1 Max 4
# of Compute Nodes <= # of Converged Nodes

Up t o 4 HX clusters per V C
Up t o 4 HX clusters per F abric
Interconnect

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Resiliency and Monitoring

Self-Healing

Simultaneous Failure Impact

Rebalance Process to Recover F rom F ailure

Node and Disk F ailures

Governed by Two Rules:

1.

2.

Description

The number of available nodes must be

greater t han half of t he original cluster size.

E.g. In a 4 n ode cluster, one node can go offline. A second

offline n ode will shutdown t he cluster because a majority of
nodes is no longer available.

E.g. In a 5 n ode cluster, two n odes f ailures can occur

simultaneously with n o availability impact.

The number of copies of data must be

greater t han or equal t o one in lenient
mode and greater t han or equal t o t wo in
strict mode.

Node
Failure

VMware HA moves and restarts VMs on active nodes

Self-h ealing delay to account for transient conditions s uch as
maintenance mode
Node rebalance command available for on-demand rebalancing on failure

Disk
Failure

Disks rebuild automatically and in p arallel using free space

SSD
Failure

If caching SSD fails, VMs h ave no availability hit. C aching SSD replacement
will rebalance cluster cache. (Slight impact to l atency as aggregate read
cache diminished u ntil SSD replaced and rebalanced)
Housekeeping SSD will i mpact Controller VM without disrupting IO to
running VMs

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5/25/16

Mixing CPU speeds in a cluster

VMware has usually r ecommended identical configuration/CPU specs within

a vCenter cluster

If you have inconsistent configurations and r esources, it complicates cluster

management EVC Config requirement

Keep it simple Dont mix different CPU models
When v4 CPU support is available, we will be able to mix v3 and v4.

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Calculating Usable capacity

Disk Size

1.2

No of Disks ( HX240C)

15

Replication F actor

MetaData(8%)

0.48

Usable Capacity

5.52

No of Nodes

TB

TB

Total Capacity ( Cluster)

22.08

Node Failures to tolerate

TB

Cluster usable with Node f ailure

16.56

TB

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5/25/16

Customer Wins
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13

ALL
Theatres
Made
Plan

90+
Customers
18 new
UCS

100s of
SEs
Trained

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5/25/16

Customer Background

Has multiple remote l ocations of various sizes

Based i n l arge Australian State providing 2 4hour Public Service
Focus on Public Order, Safety and Protection

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Customer Landscape

Various IT Infrastructure vendors i ncluding excellent

Relationship with Cisco and Cisco Partner.
Always being pressured to Increase Productivity & Reduce
OpEx. L ooking to i mprove efficiency and minimise complexity.
Strategy to evolve from traditional Server & SAN deployments.
Little or no IT skills i n majority of l ocations.
Understood efficiency was the key to reduce OpEx and a
much l onger term saving than simply a l ower CapEx cost.
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5/25/16

Customer Opportunity
Had evaluated alternative virtualized i nfrastructure options & finalized
on either a Dell or Cisco solution.
Based on their total i nvestment with Cisco & recommendations
from the Partner i t was c lear that the single Management,
Administration & Support aspects of a Cisco Solution would provide
the greatest TCO & a solid IT i nfrastructure strategy
At this point the HyperFlex announcement was made and the Account
Team took the opportunity to provide advanced notice to the
Customer that an even more effective alternative would be available
based on the exact same i nfrastructure they had decided on but with
an i mproved Packaging of Hyper-Converged Infrastructure i ncluding
SW, Network & Security

2016 Cisco and/or i ts affiliates. All rights reserved. C isco Confidential

Customer Engagement
Our Account & Partner Sales Team really understood the
Customers c hallenges and proposed solutions to address those
challenges as opposed to selling products.
Absolutely c lear advantage over the other bidders approach
Even though we had been verbally awarded the business, i t was i n
the best i nterest of the Customer to understand the HyperFlex
option as an alternative to the agreed solution
The Customer was delighted that their 5 year strategy was based
on the l atest evolution of HyperConverged Infrastructure & i s
totally encompassed i n the overall solution from Cisco and their
preferred Partner
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5/25/16

Business Outcomes

Deal Size

Over $ 500K for HyperFlex alone on a deal that also

included Cisco Prime, Identity Services Engine as
well as Network and Security

Deal Config

Multiple Cisco H X220 Networked Clusters with single

Management and Support across entire HW & SW
Environment

Thanks To

Customer Relationship with Partner

Account Team
DC Team

Cisco internal t esting and street p ricing compare t o competitor solution

2016 Cisco and/or i ts affiliates. All rights reserved. C isco Confidential

Lessons Learned

Team Work

Account and DC Teams l everaged the Partners

Trusted Advisor status to help position the overall
Cisco Infrastructure strategy

Do the Right
Thing

Even though the deal was won, when it

was c lear an i mproved option was
available the Customer was advised and
provided with the c hoice to c hange

Cisco Strategy

The Customers decision was based on

the solution b eing easily the most
convenient and strategic giving them
the desired Increased Productivity and
Reduced OpEx

Cisco internal t esting and street p ricing compare t o competitor solution

2016 Cisco and/or i ts affiliates. All rights reserved. C isco Confidential

10

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Some Key observations

Nutanix is active and pitching in accounts were we have installations of Converged
network stack.
Customers like our message of being able to connect existing storage to FI
Our pricing is very competitive and customer was pleasantly surprised

Existing UCS customers understand the value very quickly

2016 Cisco and/or i ts affiliates. All rights reserved. C isco Confidential

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5/25/16

Thank You
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