HP LeftHand P4000, LeftHand Networks NSM 2120-G2 Application Notes

HP LeftHand SAN Solutions

Support Document

Application Notes

NSM 2120-G2 Performance

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Copyright Notices

© Copyright 2009Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.

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Contents

NSM 2120-G2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Maximum Performance Metrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Performance Tuning Tips. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Performance Test Environment for Realistic Application Benchmarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Real-World Application Benchmarks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

NSM2120 Performance Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Additional References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

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NSM 2120-G2 Performance

Overview

The LeftHand Networks NSM 2120-G2 is an ideal platform to build robust
storage clusters running the LeftHand Networks SAN/iQ

®

software.
LeftHand’s SAN/iQ software platform delivers enterprise-class SAN
functionality on industry standard hardware. This document provides an
overview of the performance characteristics your applications can rely on with
the LeftHand Networks NSM 2120-G2.

The LeftHand Networks SAN
architecture enables the aggregation
of any number of storage nodes to
create storage clusters. Increasing the
number of storage nodes in a cluster
increases the total number of disks,
processors, controllers, network connections and cache used in the storage
cluster, which allows for performance to scale along with capacity.

In addition, SAN/iQ Network RAID dynamically load balances data across the
storage clusters and eliminates bottlenecks as the cluster grows. This
dramatically increases data availability since data is now striped and
mirrored across multiple storage nodes. The disks, processors, controllers,
network connections and caches in the NSM 2120-G2 were selected to
maximize throughput, IOPS, and scalability.

NSM 2120-G2

The LeftHand Networks NSM 2120-G2 is an enterprise class storage node
built on industry-standard Intel chipsets. The storage node can utilize either
Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) or Serial ATA II (SATA) disk drives. The solution
is available in multiple disk configurations yielding between 1.8 to 12.0
Terabytes (TB) of raw storage capacity. The LeftHand Networks NSM