Module: Control Layer

Upon completion of this module, you should be able to:

• Describe the control layer and its key functions
• Describe control software and its types
• Describe the software-defined approach for managing IT
resources
• Describe the key resource management techniques

Module: Control Layer

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 1
Cloud Computing Reference Model
Control Layer

Module: Control Layer

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 2
 Lesson: Control Layer Overview
This lesson covers the following topics:
• Control layer and its functions
• Control software and its types
• Key phases for provisioning resources using unified manager

Module: Control Layer

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 3
 Introduction to Control Layer
Control
Control Layer
Layer

Includes software tools that are responsible for managing and controlling the
underlying cloud infrastructure and enables provisioning of IT resources for creating
cloud services.

• Control layer can be deployed on top of the virtual layer or on

top of the physical layer
• Receives request from the service and orchestration layers
– Provisions the required resources to fulfill the service request
• Key functions of the control layer are resource configuration,
resource provisioning, and monitoring resources

Module: Control Layer

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 4
Control Software
• Ties together the underlying resources and works in
conjunction with virtualization software to enable
– Resource pooling
– Dynamic allocation of resources for services
– Optimizing utilization of resources
• Provides a complete view of all the resources in the cloud
environment
– Enables to centralize management of IT resources
• Two types of control software:
– Element manager
– Unified manager
Module: Control Layer
© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 5
Element Manager
• Infrastructure component vendors may provide the element
managers as built-in or external software
• Required to manage infrastructure components independently

Module: Control Layer

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 6
Key Tasks Performed by Element Manager
• Enables to perform initial component configurations and allows
to modify it
– Installing guest OS, configuring zoning, security settings, VLANs,
RAID, and LUN masking
• Allows to expand resource capacity
– Detects the newly added resources and adds them to an existing
pool
• Enables to identify the problem and performs troubleshooting
• Monitors the infrastructure component for performance,
availability, capacity, and security

Module: Control Layer

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 7
Unified Manager
• Provides a single management interface for configuring and
provisioning resources for applications and services

Module: Control Layer

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 8
Unified Manager (Cont'd)
• Exposes APIs that can be integrated with the orchestration
layer to automate service provisioning
• Enables adding or removing infrastructure resources to an
already provisioned service
• Performs compliance check during resource configuration
• Provides a dashboard showing resource configurations and
utilization
– Allows administrator to perform monitoring, reporting, and root
cause analysis

Module: Control Layer

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 9
Key Phases for Provisioning Resources

Resource Discovery

Key Phases in
Provisioning
Resources Resource Pool
using Unified Management
Manager

Resource Provisioning

Module: Control Layer

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 10
Resource Discovery
• Enables unified manager to learn about resources that are
available for service deployment
– Provides visibility to each resource
– Enables to manage cloud infrastructure resources centrally

Network Components Storage Systems

Compute Systems
• Type of storage system, drive
• Number of blade servers • Switch model
type
• Slot location • Network adapters
• Total capacity, free capacity,
• Blade model • VLAN IDs
used capacity
• CPU speed, memory capacity, • VSAN IDs
• RAID level, storage pools
CPU, and memory pools • Physical-to-virtual network
• Physical-to-virtual storage
• Physical-to-virtual compute mapping
mapping
mapping • QoS
• Zones

Module: Control Layer

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 11
Resource Pool Management – Grading Pools
• Unified manager allows to grade pools Grading Storage Pools
– Categorizes resources and identity
pools based on predefined criteria Grade ‘Gold’: Includes Flash, FC, and SATA
drives, supports automated storage tiering,
– Helps creating variety of services, capacity 3 TB (Flash 1TB, FC 1TB, SATA
1TB), and RAID level 5
providing choices to consumers
Grade ‘Silver’: Includes Flash, FC, and
• Multiple grade levels (e.g. ‘Gold’, SATA drives, supports automated storage
tiering, capacity 3 TB (Flash 0.5TB, FC 1TB,

‘Silver’, ‘Bronze’) may be defined for SATA 1.5TB), and RAID level 1+0

each type of pool Grade ‘Bronze’: Includes FC drives,

capacity 2TB, RAID level 5, and does not
support automated storage tiering
• Costs/prices of resource pools differ
depending on grade level

Module: Control Layer

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 12
 Resource Provisioning
Resource
Resource Provisioning
Provisioning

Involves allocating resources from graded resource pools to the service instances.

• Provisioning commences when consumers select cloud services

from the service catalog
• A service template defined in a service catalog facilitates
consumers to understand service capabilities
– Resources are allocated and configured as per service template to
create an instance of a service

Module: Control Layer

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 13
 Lesson Summary
During this lesson the following topics were covered:
• Control layer and its functions
• Control software and its types
• Key phases for provisioning resources using unified manager

Module: Control Layer

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 14
 Lesson: Software-defined Approach
This lesson covers the following topics:
• Introduction to software-defined approach
• Key functions of software-defined controller
• Benefits of software-defined approach

Module: Control Layer

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 15
Software-defined Approach – A New Model For
Managing Resources
• Abstracts the underlying infrastructure components
• Separates the management functions from the infrastructure
components to the external software that runs on a controller
– Enables controlling IT infrastructures centrally

Module: Control Layer

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 16
Key Functions of Software-defined Controller
• Discovers underlying resources and provides an aggregated
view of resources
– Abstracts the underlying hardware resources (compute, storage,
and network) and pools them
• Enables the rapid provisioning of resources based on pre-
defined policies
• Enables to apply policies uniformly across the infrastructure
components, all from a software interface
• Provides interfaces that enable applications external to the
controller to request resources and access them as services

Module: Control Layer

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 17
Benefits of Software-defined Approach
• Improves business agility
– Minimizes resource provisioning time to get new services up and
running
• Provides cost efficiency
– Enables to effectively use the existing infrastructure and low-cost
commodity hardware to lower CAPEX
• Enables to achieve scale-out architecture
• Provides a central point of access to all management functions
• Allows to create new innovative services using the
underlying resources
Module: Control Layer
© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 18
 Lesson Summary
During this lesson the following topics were covered:
• Functions of software-defined controller
• Benefits of software-defined approach

Module: Control Layer

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 19
 Lesson: Resource Management Technique – 1
This lesson covers the following topics:
• Resource management aspect of cloud infrastructure
• Resource allocation model
• Key compute resource management techniques

Module: Control Layer

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 20
Introduction to Resource Management
Resource
Resource Management
Management

Process of allocating resources effectively to a service instance from a pool of

resources and monitoring the resources that help in maintaining service levels.

• Key goals of resource management

– Controls utilization of resources
– Prevents service instances from monopolizing resources
• Management server is used to centrally manage the resources
– Enables defining policies
– Configures and monitors the resources
– Provides the ability to pool the resources

Module: Control Layer

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 21
Resource Allocation Models
• Relative resource allocation
– Resource allocation to a service instance is defined proportionally
relative to the resource allocated to other service instances
• Absolute resource allocation
– Resource allocation for a service instance is based on defining a
quantitative bound
• Lower bound guarantees minimum amount of resources
• Upper bound limits a service instance from consuming resources
beyond the defined maximum level

Module: Control Layer

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 22
Key Resource Management Techniques

Compute Storage Network

●
Hyper-threading ●
Virtual storage provisioning ●
Balancing client workload across nodes
●
Storage pool rebalancing Network storm control
Memory page sharing
●
●

●
Storage space reclamation ●
Quality of Service (QoS)
●
Dynamic memory allocation
●
Automated storage tiering ●
Traffic shaping
●
VM load balancing across Link aggregation
●
Cache tiering ●

hypervisors ●
Dynamic VM load balancing across ●
NIC teaming
●
Server flash-cache storage volumes
●
Multipathing

Module: Control Layer

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 23
Hyper-threading
• Makes a processor appear as two logical
processor cores
– Enables an OS to schedule two threads
simultaneously
• Two logical processor cores share the
same physical resources
– While the current thread is stalled,
processor can execute another thread
• Provides improved performance and
utilization

Module: Control Layer

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 24
Memory Page Sharing
VM 1 VM 2 VM 3

• Eliminates redundant copies of 1

1 2
2 3
3 …
… n
n 1
1 2
2 3
3 …
… n
n 1
1 2
2 3
3 …
… n
n

memory pages VM 1 Memory VM 2 Memory VM 3 Memory

• Allows a greater degree of

memory over-commitment
• Hypervisor identifies redundant
pages 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
– VM memory pointer is updated to …

point to shared location

– Redundant memory pages are Shared Memory Page

reclaimed Private Copy

Memory Page

Module: Control Layer

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 25
Dynamic Memory Allocation
• A memory optimization technique that reclaims memory pages
• VMs have agent installed in guest OS that communicates with
hypervisor
• When memory become scarce:
– Agent in a VM demands memory from their guest OS
– Guest OS allocates memory pages to the agent
– Agent reserves the memory and puts it back into memory pool
– Hypervisor then assigns the relinquished memory pages to other
VMs that require memory

Module: Control Layer

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 26
VM Load Balancing Across Hypervisors
• Provides uniform distribution of load across hypervisors
• Key process involved in balancing load of VMs:
– Management server checks the availability of resources on all
hypervisors when a new VM is powered-on
– Management server places the VM on a hypervisor with sufficient
resources and ensures that the load is balanced
– Management server monitors the load across hypervisors
• If there is any imbalance, then the server balances the load by
migrating the VMs from over-utilized to underutilized hypervisors

Module: Control Layer

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 27
Server Flash-cache Technology
• Uses intelligent caching software and a flash card on the
compute system
– Cache software places the most frequently referenced data on the
flash card
• Dramatically improves the application performance
– Provides performance acceleration for read-intensive workloads
– Avoids network latencies associated with I/O access to the storage
system
• Requires “warm-up” time before significant performance
improvement is realized

Module: Control Layer

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 28
 Lesson Summary
During this lesson the following topics were covered:
• Resource allocation models
• Hyper-threading
• Memory page sharing
• Dynamic memory allocation
• VM load balancing across hypervisors
• Server flash-cache

Module: Control Layer

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 29
 Lesson: Resource Management Technique – 2
This lesson covers the following topics:
• Virtual storage provisioning
• Storage pool rebalancing
• Thin LUN storage space reclamation
• Automated storage tiering
• Cache tiering
• Dynamic VM load balancing across storage volumes

Module: Control Layer

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 30
 Virtual Storage Provisioning
Virtual
Virtual Storage
Storage Provisioning
Provisioning

It enables to present a LUN to an application with more

capacity than is physically allocated to it on the storage
system.

• Physical storage is allocated to the

application on-demand
– Provides more efficient utilization of
storage and reduces storage cost
– Simplified storage management
• Two types of LUNs can be created:
– Thin LUN
– Thick LUN

Module: Control Layer

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 31
Storage Pool Rebalancing
• Provides the ability to rebalance allocated extents on physical
disk drives over the pool when new drives are added
• Restripes data across all disk drives in the shared storage pool
– Helps in achieving higher overall pool performance
• Enables spreading out the data equally on all the drives within
the pool
– Ensures that the used capacity of each drive is uniform across the
pool

Module: Control Layer

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 32
Storage Space Reclamation
• Identifies unused space in thin LUNs and re-assigns it to the
storage pool
– Provides cost savings
• Options to reclaim the unused space on a thin LUN
– Zero extent reclamation
• De-allocate storage extents that contain all zeroes in a thin LUN
• De-allocated extents are added back to the pool
– API-based reclamation
• API communicate the location of all the identified unused space on the
LUN to the storage system to reclaim all unused space to the pool

Module: Control Layer

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 33
 Automated Storage Tiering
Automated
Automated Storage
Storage Tiering
Tiering

A technique of establishing a hierarchy of different storage types for different

categories of data that enables storing the right data automatically to the right tier, to
meet the service level requirements.

• Each tier has different levels of protection, performance, and

cost
• Data is moved between tiers based on defined tiering policies
– Tiering policy is usually based on parameters such as file type,
frequency of access, and so on
• Data movement occurs between tiers
– Within a storage array (Intra-array)
– Between storage arrays (Inter-array)
Module: Control Layer
© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 34
Cache Tiering
• Enables creation of a large capacity
secondary cache using SSDs DRAM Cache Tier 0

• Enables tiering between DRAM cache

and SSDs (secondary cache)
• Most reads are served directly from SSD Tier 1

high performance tiered cache

Cache Tier
• Key benefits:
– Enhances performance during peak Storage System

workload
– Non-disruptive and transparent to
applications
Module: Control Layer
© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 35
Dynamic VM Load Balancing Across Storage
Volumes
• Enables intelligent placement of VMs during creation, based on
the I/O load and available storage capacity on the volume
– Improves the performance
• Management server performs ongoing load balancing within a
cluster of volumes
– Cluster volume is a collection or pool of volumes that are
aggregated as a single volume
• Enables efficient and rapid placement of new VMs

• User-configurable space utilization or I/O latency thresholds are

defined to ensure space efficiency

Module: Control Layer

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 36
 Lesson Summary
During this lesson the following topics were covered:
• Virtual storage provisioning
• Storage pool rebalancing
• Storage space reclamation
• Automated storage tiering
• Cache tiering
• Dynamic VM load balancing across storage volumes

Module: Control Layer

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 37
 Lesson: Resource Management Technique – 3
This lesson covers the following topics:
• Balancing client workload across nodes
• Network storm control
• Quality of Service
• Traffic shaping
• Link aggregation, NIC teaming, and multipathing

Module: Control Layer

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 38
Introduction to Network Traffic Management
• Network traffic flow is controlled and managed to optimize the
performance and availability of cloud services
• Key network traffic management techniques are:
– Balancing client workload across nodes
– Network storm control
– Quality of Service (QoS)
– Traffic shaping
– Link aggregation
– NIC teaming
– Multipathing

Module: Control Layer

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 39
Balancing Client Workload across Nodes
• Splits client workload across multiple nodes
– Usually performed by a purpose-built device called load balancer
• Load balancer is placed between node cluster and Internet
– Load balancer decides where to forward each request
Ethernet Switch

Server 1
Private IP A.A.A.A
Load Balancer

Server 2 Internet
Private IP B.B.B.B

webapp.sample.com
public IP Z.Z.Z.Z

Ethernet Switch
Server 3
Private IP C.C.C.C

Module: Control Layer

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 40
 Network Storm Control
Storm
Storm Control
Control

A networking technique that prevents regular network traffic on a LAN or VLAN from
being disrupted by a network storm. A network storm occurs due to flooding of frames
on a LAN or VLAN, creating excessive traffic and resulting in degraded network
performance.

• Switch monitors incoming frames to switch ports over specific

time interval
• Switch counts frames of specific type over the interval
• Switch compares the count with pre-configured threshold
– Switch port blocks traffic when threshold is reached and filters out
subsequent frames until the interval ends

Module: Control Layer

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 41
 Quality of Service (QoS)
Quality
Quality of
of Service
Service

Capability of a network to prioritize business critical and latency-sensitive network

traffic and to provide better service to such traffic over less critical traffic. QoS enables
applications to obtain consistent service levels in terms of network bandwidth, latency
variations, and delay.
Approach Description

Integrated Services • Application signals the network to inform network components

about required QoS
• Application can transmit data through network only after receiving
confirmation from the network

Differentiated Services • Priority specification to network packets are inserted by applications

or by switches or routers
• Network uses priority specification to classify traffic and then
manage network bandwidth based on the traffic class

Module: Control Layer

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 42
Traffic Shaping
• Limits the traffic rate at a network interface such as a node
port or a router port
• If traffic rate exceeds the pre-configured limit, traffic shaping
queues excess packets for later transmission
– Ensures required service level for business-critical applications
– Controls traffic rate per client/tenant to avoid network congestion

Traffic Traffic
T r a ffic T r a ffic
RateR a t e RateR a t e
Rate Limit
R a t e L im it

T im e T im e
Time Time

Without Traffic Shaping

W it h o u t T r a ff ic S h a p in g
WithW Traffic Shaping
it h T r a ffic S h a p in g

Module: Control Layer

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 43
Link Aggregation, NIC Teaming, and
Multipathing
• Link aggregation
– Combines links between two switches and between a switch and a
node
– Enables distribution of network traffic across links in the
aggregation
• NIC Teaming
– Distributes network traffic across NICs
– Provides network traffic failover in the event of a NIC/link failure
• Multipathing
– Provides load balancing and path failover
– Improves I/O performance and data path utilization
Module: Control Layer
© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 44
 Lesson Summary
During this lesson the following topics were covered:
• Balancing client workload across nodes
• Network storm control
• Quality of Service
• Traffic shaping
• Link aggregation, NIC teaming, and multipathing

Module: Control Layer

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 45
 Concepts in Practice
• EMC Unisphere
• EMC Unified Infrastructure Manager (UIM)
• EMC ViPR and ViPR SRM
• EMC FAST VP
• EMC XtremSF
• EMC PowerPath/VE

Module: Control Layer

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 46
EMC Unisphere and EMC UIM
Unisphere UIM
• Provides unified management for file- • Unified management solution for Vblock
based, block-based, and object-based and VSPEX systems
storage
• Enables configuring and provisioning
• Enables to monitor health, alerts, and resources for services
performance of large numbers of VNX
storage systems • Provides a dashboard showing
infrastructure configurations and
• Enables to create storage pool and to utilization
configure tiering
• Performs compliance check during
• Enables administrators to drill down and resource configurations
troubleshoot the issues
• Rapidly performs root cause analysis

Module: Control Layer

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 47
EMC ViPR and EMC FAST VP
ViPR/ViPR SRM FAST VP
• EMC ViPR • Performs storage tiering at sub-LUN level
- A software-defined storage solution • Data movement between tiers are based
- Separates the management functions from on user-defined policies
the storage
- Centralizes storage management centrally • Optimizes performance and cost
through software
• Increases storage efficiency
• EMC ViPR SRM
• Supported on both VMAX and VNX
- Enables management of physical
infrastructure under ViPR control and helps
storage arrays
associate relationships between physical and
software-defined resources

Module: Control Layer

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 49
EMC XtremSF and PowerPath/VE

XtremSF PowerPath/VE
• A server-flash cache solution • Provides multipathing solution for
VMware ESX/ESXi and Microsoft
• A PCIe flash card deployed in the Hyper-V
compute system, which improves
performance • Provides advanced multipathing with
path failover and load balancing
• XtremSW Cache accelerates reads across FC, iSCSI, or FCoE I/O paths
and protects data using write-
through cache

Module: Control Layer

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 50
 Module Summary
Key points covered in this module:
• Control layer and its key functions
• Element manager and unified manager
• Software-defined approach for managing IT resources
• Key resource management techniques

Module: Control Layer

© Copyright 2014 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 51