Endurance Storage Overview

Endurance Storage – Released March 2015

Endurance storage, as the name suggests, is a highly durable storage class that is paired with the ability to perform automated replication with 3 selectable performance tiers.

  • Mufti-tenant storage. NFS, client selects which hosts connect with user/password. iSCSI storage, any client encryption can be used as this is block storage
  • Predictable storage performance parameters
  • Block and File Storage – iSCSI and NFS
  • Enterprise Grade – High Durability – 99.999%, Snapshots and Replication
  • Volume sizes from 20GB to 12TB,
  • Offered in three tiers
  1. 25 IOPS/GB is designed for workloads with low I/O intensity. These workloads are typically characterized by having a large percentage of data inactive at a given time. Example applications include storing mailboxes or departmental level file shares
  2. 2 IOPS/GB is designed for most general purpose usage. Example applications include hosting small databases backing web applications or virtual machine disk images for a hypervisor
  3. 4 IOPS/GB is designed for higher-intensity workloads. These workloads are typically characterized by having a high percentage of data active at a given time. Example applications include transactional and other performance-sensitive databases

Example of IOPS calculation

250 GB X 0.25 = 62.5 IOPS

250 GB X 2 = 500 IOPS

250 GB x 4 = 1000 IOPS

4 TB X 0.25 = 1000 IOPS

4 TB x 2 = 8000 IOPS

4 TB x 4 = 16000 IOPS

  1. Schedule and manage Snapshots – hourly, daily, and weekly scheduling
    • You cannot create a new volume from an existing snapshot
    • You cannot create a new volume from an existing volume
  2. Replicate your storage to another data center – Volume-to-volume replication, hourly snapshot is replicated to another SoftLayer DC
    •  iSCSI and NFS  can be replicated
  3. 99.999% durability built-in, no need to create independent RAID configurations to protect data
  4. Highly available connectivity – Block Storage with Multipath I/O
  5. File Storage with Routed TCP/IP
  6. Concurrent Access allows multiple devices
  7. Most SoftLayer customers do not understand IOPs so performance tiers used:
  8. Low Intensity is created for workloads with low I/O – Backup and Archive, Web and Email Servers, File Shares
  9. Read Heavy is designed for workloads with 50% or more read – General Purpose Databases, Virtualization Platforms
  10. Write Heavy is designed for workloads with 50% or more write – Performance-sensitive databases
  11. Available on Linux and Windows operating systems (Windows not supported for File Volume). Clients in need of CIFS or SMB are not an ideal fit – refer client to NAS
  12. Can be used for VMware datastores
  13. Available on Virtual and Bare Metal Servers

FAQ about Endurance storage

  • The Volumes sizes and IOPS tiers are not modifiable once you have provisioned the volume.  To expand to a larger or faster volume you will need to provision an additional volume at the size or IOPS you require, duplicate the data to the new volume and then detach to old volume and attach the new.
  • Snapshot space can be increased on the fly but what you increase one volume the snapshot in the other datacentre will also increase.  Increasing the snapshot space will trigger a replication.
  • The Endurance File storage is NFS, thus it is supported for Linux but not for Windows.  With the right NFS client you may be able to utilise it on Windows but without any support.

For further information about Endurance storage visit the following site

http://knowledgelayer.softlayer.com/topic/endurance-storage

Link to Youtube video by Eamonn Killian – Part 1 – Setting Up Endurance Storage

Link to Youtube video by Eamonn Killian – Part 2 – Mounting Endurance Storage Volumes Linux

Link to Youtube video by Eamonn Killian – Part 3 – Mounting Endurance Storage Volumes Windows

Leave a comment