CopperEgg peels back shell on NAS performance

New software isolates, monitors and analyzes NFS performance issues

By Deni Connor
Founding analyst, Storage Strategies NOW
April 2011

Performance analysis should be left to the protocol experts — that is the belief of many, but it isn’t necessarily true. The analysis of performance of network attached storage (NAS) systems running the Network File System (NFS) can be intimidating except for a new service from CopperEgg called RevealStorage, which is targeted for use by IT managers and sysadmins.

In attempting to get visibility into their NAS infrastructure, IT managers have been faced with a myriad of management software and terms that are geared to understanding and use by specialized storage administrators — concepts such as LUNs, zoning and masking that have nothing to do with an IT managers’ world of servers, networking and the disk drives attached to them. IT managers are familiar with terms such as latency, IOPs and response time and they want management software they can run and get answers from in the terms that they already understand.

Further, when they set out to purchase performance management software, they will find software that only works on homogeneous storage platforms or is not granular enough to meet their needs. With NetApp’s SANscreen and Application Insight for instance, they are restricted to use on NetApp filers only. Same thing for Isilon System’s InsightIQ.

SolarWind’s Storage Profilers, for example, doesn’t poll devices in realtime, nor does it show an aggregated use of storage performance capacity across all filers. It has no view of storage latency or response time so an IT administrator has no indication when a filer is overloaded. And there is no real-time view of demand, which would allow an administrator to tell how an under- or over-configured filer is affecting user response.

With NetApp Akorri Balancepoint, collection of statistics is done as a virtual machine, resulting in a limited view of traffic from a VMware guest standpoint. Like Solarwinds, Balancepoint collects data on a polled basis, not by examining and analyzing every packet in realtime and potentially missing response time spikes that could indicate an overloaded filer. Nor does it identify use by user, just the VMware guest and individual filer.

IT managers will find that what they thought a product would do was more a matter of perception than reality. Looking to analyze network bandwidth problems or find out which user may be hogging a specific filer’s bandwidth, they may find that the product only analyzes problems in increments of five minutes, not the real-time that they need. Or, that the ability to get visibility into the network from the user level is not possible.

IT will find that a myriad of insufficiencies exist, among them the ability to manage only a single vendors’ product incrementally and without full visibility into the network.

That’s where CopperEgg’s RevealStorage service comes in. Available as a software-as-a-service offering from CopperEgg, the software lets IT administrators and systems engineers ‘peel’ the egg of NAS systems to reveal and simplify the layers and complexity of NFS inside.

Enter CopperEgg’s RevealStorage

A service available from CopperEgg, RevealStorage can be deployed in minutes and avoid the hardware and software build-outs necessary with other performance management products. Users deploying CopperEgg’s RevealStorage pay on a subscription-based model based on the number of NFS servers they use. And like other software-as-a-service offerings such as SalesForce, expenditures are operational (OPEX) rather than CAPEX.

Unlike other NAS performance management packages, the RevealStorage service monitors and collects data in realtime, allowing IT administrators to see an aggregated view of capacity and utilization across all attached filers and to view spikes in activity that indicate a filer is overloaded. With RevealStorage, the administrator is able to view aggregate performance and user activity in realtime and identify hot spots in individual filers or the performance demand characteristics of applications or users as a whole.

IT administrators are able to identify the storage clients and people who are causing high usage. And RevealStorage is able to view the entire network of filers, activity generated by every user and client.

To run the RevealStorage service, IT needs to install a software-based agent on each filer or on a dedicated workstation that is connected to a network tap, mirror/SPAN port or switch port. The agent captures storage traffic, discards data, analyzes headers and tracks transactions, while concurrently and securely communicating them to the CopperEgg system running in the cloud.

Let’s consider a few scenarios for using CopperEgg’s RevealStorage:

• Customer ABC is an engineering organization running batch simulation jobs in a network of  1,400 NFS clients supported by 50 NFS filers. Daily changes in simulations can have unpredictable effects on the storage network, resulting in sudden performance slowdowns.  The customer watches the aggregate storage capacity usage using CopperEgg’s RevealStorage real-time console to help administrators understand the current workload.

Figure 1. Customer ABC

When overall demand spikes, the administrators at the engineering organization click to identify the user driving demand and can see that user’s resource usage against the context of the entire datacenter.

Customer XYZ provides web services for an employee population.  CopperEgg’s RevealStorage helps identify storage latency spikes that can cause poor web response time.  By identifying hotspots in the storage infrastructure, the customer is able to rebalance application storage loads and achieve consistent response time.

In addition, RevealStorage lets the administrator add notes to graphs to explain performance issues. And, reports can be generated to use for capacity planning and future storage expenditures.

CopperEgg’s roadmap for RevealStorage is to add (Common Internet File System (CIFS) support for Windows-based NAS systems. CopperEgg projects that this much-needed capability will be available in the second quarter of this year.

SSG-NOW Assessment

CopperEgg’s RevealStorage software-as-a-service offering is innovative in its analysis and monitoring of any NAS system performance problems. By aiming it for use by IT generalists, IT managers or systems administrators, RevealStorage is one of the first products in an arena of complicated storage management utilities to face performance management in this fashion. In addition, for CopperEgg to offer RevealStorage as a cloud-based service is an inexpensive way for mid- to enterprise-size businesses to avoid infrastructure costs and save on capital expenditures (CAPEX), while capitalizing on operational expenses (OPEX) and increased efficiency.

Note: The information and recommendations made by Storage Strategies NOW, Inc.  are based upon public information and sources and may also include personal opinions both of Storage Strategies NOW and others, all of which we believe to be accurate and reliable. As market conditions change however, and not within our control, the information and recommendations are made without warranty of any kind. All product names used and mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners. Storage Strategies NOW, Inc. assumes no responsibility or liability for any damages whatsoever (including incidental, consequential or otherwise), caused by your use of, or reliance upon, the information and recommendations presented herein, nor for any inadvertent errors which may appear in this document.