VirtualWisdom Interoperability and Support for the VPLEX

I talked with an EMC customer recently about his use of EMC’s VPLEX.  He came from a shop that used VirtualWisdom to show how the IBM SVC actually helped reduce application latency, and he wondered if we could do the same with the VPLEX.  I assured him that we do indeed!

VirtualWisdom can report how quickly each LUN provides its information to the VPLEX to troubleshoot any back-end storage issue, and can assess how quickly each application is getting its data from the VPLEX.  In that way, the storage administrator can tell how the VPLEX is impacting performance in the environment, in either a Local or a Metro VPLEX configuration.

There are actually three ways to TAP the SAN to monitor the VPLEX environment with VirtualWisdom.

In the following simplified diagram, the Virtual Instruments SANInsight TAP is placed between the switch and the VPLEX, allowing the user experience of the VPLEX LUN to be measured.

In this next diagram, the TAP is placed between the switch and the storage, allowing the effect on application latency at the array to be measured.

And finally, as depicted in the diagram below, tapping into the front end and the back end of the VPLEX is optimal because it provides complete Initiator/Target/LUN mapping, including the effect of VPLEX-induced latency.

VirtualWisdom actually increases the value of the VPLEX by validating adherence to performance SLAs in a virtualized server and storage environment.  Additionally, more aggressive use of lower tier storage behind the VPLEX helps to directly lower storage costs.