1. F5 and NetApp Partnership
F5 is a NetApp Advantage Alliace Partner with continuous engagement across teams in product management, product development, sales, marketing, and support
F5 solutions augment NetApp Storage Systems, go to F5.com/NetApp for White Papers, Solution Briefs, Success Stories, etc.
F5 runs its business on NetApp
Applications and Users
Let’s talk about data migrations. Migration and consolidation projects require a lot of upfront planning, take a long time to execute, and require a lot of IT resources to manually move the data as well as reconfigure client systems afterward.
The reasons why migrations are so difficult is because today’s storage environments are complex and moving data is disruptive. IT has to work around small downtime windows – typically on nights and weekends – which means even small migration projects can take weeks or months.
Not only that, but migration processes are prone to error. Companies have a lot of clients, a lot of storage devices, and A LOT of mount points. Keeping track of it all is difficult and as a result, the process is susceptible to problems.
[CLICK] So as I mentioned earlier, ARX allows you to migrate data without disrupting users. You can move data wherever you want – between different shares or even between heterogeneous storage devices – as well as whenever you want, even during business hours, instead of being limited to small downtime windows. And all data movement is automatically managed through customizable and schedulable policies, which dramatically reduces the impact on IT personnel.
[CLICK] The end result is that ARX customers have been able to reduce migration time by up to 90% and reduce management overhead, with no downtime or impact to users or applications.
Transparent
Data Migration
NAS and File Servers

2. What is File Virtualization?
BEFORE
Applications and Users
NAS and File Servers
File Virtualization
AFTER
Applications and Users
What are the fundamental problems with how storage is managed today?
[CLICK] First – users and applications are tightly coupled with their storage resources. Clients access file data through various static mappings or network mount points. The problem is that if you have to change things, or move data – and organizations have to move data all the time for a variety of reasons, from full-scale data migration or consolidation to storage re-provisioning – you break those static mappings.
[CLICK] The second – they’re complex. Many organizations have had to manage their data growth by constantly adding more capacity, or “throwing disk at the problem.” What happens is that you end up with a sprawl of storage devices and platforms – and not always from the same vendor – that you now have to manage. A normal enterprise will have a mix of clients (Windows, Unix, Linux, etc.), protocols (CIFS, NFS, both, or multi-protocol), and storage (NetApp, EMC, Windows, etc.) and these systems don’t always integrate perfectly together.
[CLICK] Inflexibility and complexity leads to inefficiency. Because it’s so difficult to move data across different devices, platforms, or vendors, traditional environments tend to be inefficient. It’s very difficult to share capacity between different resources, provision on demand, or move data around to balance utilization of.
[CLICK] As a result of all this, traditional storage environments tend to be overly expensive – not only to build but also to manage. Complexity means higher OPEX costs because your staff has to manage too many, and too many different, systems, platforms, and mount points. Inflexibility means that moving data incurs IT overhead as you have to reconfigure clients with every migration, as well as lost productivity for your end users. And inefficiency means you’re buying more storage than you really need, because you can’t shift capacity to where you need it most.
NAS and File Servers
Inflexible
Complex
Inefficient
Expensive
Dynamic
Seamless
Efficient
Integrated

3. Where Does F5 ARX Fit ? Network-based solution
Users
Application Servers
Network-based solution
Connects to existing IP / Ethernet network
Virtualizes file storage devices
Utilizes industry standard CIFS / NFS protocols
NAS, file servers, gateways
Does not connect directly to SAN but can manage file servers and gateways
No changes to existing infrastructure
Appears as file server to clients and as client to file servers
No new file systems
IP / Ethernet
ARX
NetApp
FAS
File
Servers
Before we move on, it’s probably worth taking a quick look at how F5 ARX fits in the storage environment.
As I mentioned earlier, ARX is a network-based file virtualization solution. It plugs into your existing IP / Ethernet network and logically resides inline between your users and applications and your file storage. ARX virtualizes any kind of file storage device – NAS devices, gateways, and file servers – and proxies file access between client systems and storage devices using industry-standard CIFS and NFS file sharing protocols.
It is important to keep in mind that ARX virtualizes file data. It does not virtualize block data stored on a SAN, but can virtualize file data presented by file servers front-ending a SAN.
And lastly, the ARX does not require any changes to your existing infrastructure. It looks like a file server to clients and a client to your file servers, and doesn’t require any new file systems, agents, etc.
SAN

4. How Does ARX Work? Virtual name independent of physical path
House.jpg
12/31/2009 2:54 PM
JPEG image
vfiler1:/photos/house.jpg
Virtual Namespace
fs1:/vol/vol2/photos/house.jpg
Physical Namespace
fs2:/vol/vol2/photos/house.jpg
FS1
FS2

5. Dynamic Capacity Balancing
Challenge
Large workspace, manual capacity balancing
Solution
Federate multiple physical file systems into a single virtual file system
Customer benefit
Provide large workspace without sacrificing backup or maintenance
Improve capacity utilization without manual intervention
Backup benefits
NetApp benefit
Allow customers to use more manageable volume size for backup/restore
Allow ASIS to run on larger user virtual volumes
Applications and Users
“Capacity balancing” is the capability to take several physical storage elements (e.g. file system) and combine them into a storage pool that appears as one virtual element (e.g. virtual file system).
This is useful for several purposes:
Eliminate manual capacity balancing. Today admins spend a lot of time playing “data tetris” manually moving data around to fit in available space. It is time consuming, disruptive and difficult to reclaim stranded capacity in this way. This feature essentially automated that process, dynamically distributing the load across multiple storage resources.
It also eliminates the disruption from provisioning storage. Because it becomes so simple to provision storage, IT doesn’t have to over-provision as much upfront.
It overcomes volume size limitations that may exist on filers, e.g. ASIS volume sizes – so e.g. it can present 4 x 2 TB ASIS volumes as a single 8TB volume to users and apps
It also allows users to keep volume sizes small for backup and maintenance reasons but still present a large file system to users and apps.
NAS and File Servers

6. Case Study: Medical Technology Firm
Environment:
NetApp FAS 6000 and 3000 series
Challenges:
>60% annual growth
Provisioned at 50% target utilization to stay ahead of growth
Large file systems were taking too long to back up
Upgrading old platforms took almost a year due to disruption
Result:
~30% increased utilization
20x reduction in backup windows
Reduced data migration times from months to days
Freed up 800 man-hours
FAS 3000 series
FAS 6000 series
R200
The medical technology firm consumes large amounts of storage through MRI, telemetry, finite analysis, media, etc.
Massive growth. 0.5TB in 2001 to >100TB today; >100 million files.
Managing a complex NAS environment with >60% growth (in addition to NetApp there were Windows Servers and Unix/Linux Servers)
Wanted file virtualization to simplify complexity, minimize disruption and optimize backups, but had to work in multiprotocol environment (unique to ARX)
Benefits:
Improved utilization ~90%
Reduced backup times . Smaller physical volumes with multiple backup streams in parallel. ~20x improvement
Easier administration. Set migration policies and walk away; no more nights / weekends . Tasks that took 4-6 hours now take minutes.
Also doing tiering and running ASIS on tier 2 volumes.
“With F5 ARX, I just set a policy to move the data and walk away. Users don’t know the data is moving, there is no downtime, and I don’t have to work nights or weekends to get it done.”
Senior Principle IT Technologist