FCIP Performance and licensing question between two MDS 9222i

[kbyrd]

I have customer who is designing a FC-backup solution for a customers of a particular hardware platform. I am trying to assist him with providing estimated performance numbers for backing up across various Internet links - and trying to factor in the effects of bandwidth, compression, and VPN (IPSEC) overhead. It appears the Cisco MDS 9000 SAN Extension over IP package comes with the base MDS9222i unit. My customer's customers will each have a 9222i on site. It appears that initially, my customer will have 4 customer's backing up their disk to his site. I have a couple of questions:

1) Does the Cisco MDS 9000 SAN Extension over IP package provide everything I need with respect to allow his 4 customers to aggregate their backups to his site? In other words, does the license support one 9222i as an aggregation point for 4 other 9222is?

2) Do any of the other licenses improve on the compression/performance of the Cisco MDS 9000 SAN Extension over IP package? For example, the

Cisco MDS 9000 IOA Services package?

3) Although all data is different and the effects of compression depend on the data that is being compressed, what are the typical compression rates seen between two 9222is? For example, if I achieve 7:1 compression, does that mean that assuming 0% IP overhead, 700mb/sec at the ingress and egress FC port will use 100mb WAN bandwidth?

4) If the customer sets up VPN tunnels between the aggregation site and his 4 customer's sites, what is typically the penalty of the VPN overhead? 10%? 50%?

Thanks in advance for any and all comments.

[Vu Phan · Accepted solution]

Hello,

1) Does the Cisco MDS 9000 SAN Extension over IP package provide everything I need with respect to allow his 4 customers to aggregate their backups to his site? In other words, does the license support one 9222i as an aggregation point for 4 other 9222is?

The single SAN Extension over IP software license included as standard (slot 1 built-in 18+4). This will enable you to have four GigE ports

2) Do any of the other licenses improve on the compression/performance of the Cisco MDS 9000 SAN Extension over IP package? For example, the

Cisco MDS 9000 IOA Services package?

Compression ASICS is hardware compression and is built-in to slot one 18+4

IOA service package is optional configure to order

3) Although all data is different and the effects of compression depend on the data that is being compressed, what are the typical compression rates seen between two 9222is? For example, if I achieve 7:1 compression, does that mean that assuming 0% IP overhead, 700mb/sec at the ingress and egress FC port will use 100mb WAN bandwidth?

Typical hardware compression is 3:1 or 5:1 and is depending on type of data.

Assuming  7:1 0% IP overhead, yes

4) If the customer sets up VPN tunnels between the aggregation site and his 4 customer's sites, what is typically the penalty of the VPN overhead? 10%? 50%?

For VPN the overhead is depending on VPN. MDS9222i provided IPSEC is another way to secure FCIP. Overhead is base on MTU 2400 + 100 MTU for IPSEC

Hope this answer your question

[kbyrd]

Thank you, Vu. Your reponse raised one more question.

For the aggregation MDS in the topology I described (aggregate MDS with 4 remote MDS), am I required to logically map each gigabit port with a single remote MDS? Alternatively stated, could a single gigabit port at the aggregation MDS 9222i switch support the four remote MDS 9222i?

Thank you.

[Vu Phan · Accepted solution]

Alternatively stated, could a single gigabit port at the aggregation MDS 9222i switch support the four remote MDS 9222i?

The answer is yes, but you will need to use vlan and max of three sub-interfaces per physical Gig port.

example: at the aggregation switch

Gig1/1

Gig1/1.100

Gig1/1.200

[kbyrd]

Once again, Vu, thank you for taking the time to respond. I have one clarifying question to ask and a scaling question.

1) As it regards to the sub-interfaces above, it appears my customer could scale this solution with the single aggregation MDS 9222i up to 12 customers by leveraging the 3 subinterfaces per gigabit port. Would you agree?

2) Vu, you said "Compression ASICS is hardware compression and is built-in to slot one 18+4, IOA service package is optional configure to order"

My question - for this backup solution I am describing, would the IOA service package add benefit with respect to additional compression modes or other performance factors that could improve backing up over the WAN? I'm having trouble understanding the benefit of this package.

[Vu Phan]

1) As it regards to the sub-interfaces above, it appears my customer could scale this solution with the single aggregation MDS 9222i up to 12 customers by leveraging the 3 subinterfaces per gigabit port. Would you agree?

Yes, that is correct

2) Vu, you said "Compression ASICS is hardware compression and is built-in to slot one 18+4, IOA service package is optional configure to order"

My question - for this backup solution I am describing, would the IOA service package add benefit with respect to additional compression modes or other performance factors that could improve backing up over the WAN? I'm having trouble understanding the benefit of this package.

Yes, The IOA is design to accelerate IO where the sites are interconnected over long distances using FibrChannel or Fibre Channel over IP (FCIP) Inter-Switch Links (ISLs).