Xangati extends Storage Performance Analytics to VMware Virtual SAN

Xangati collects information from all servers, switch and storage systems that comprise the virtualised data centre and gathers information from VMware vSphere®, VMware vCenterTM Server and VMware Horizon® to create a complete picture of end-user quality of experience and health of virtual desktop or virtual server infrastructures, augmenting VMware vCenterTM and VMware vRealizeTM OperationsTM.

“Virtualisation environments need to deal with new apps and reconfiguration requirements on the fly for maximum flexibility and resource liquidity, but the lack of visibility of storage behaviour is often contentious,” said Atchison Frazer, VP-Marketing, Xangati. “With integrated Virtual SAN data correlation, vSphere admins will be able to run virtualisation more independently, with little storage expertise required and less reliance on external arrays and storage admins for optimising workload performance.”

Xangati has also implemented deep and direct integration into NetApp storage systems that shows the IOPS, throughput and latency that NetApp is delivering to the hypervisor. Additionally, data on NFS or CIFS (Common Internet File System) shares, iSCSI or Fibre Channel LUNs (Logical Unit Numbers) and overall network bitrates are collated by Xangati. Storage-related storms typically occur when applications unknowingly and excessively share a storage controller, a volume or even a LUN, which cause storage performance to deteriorate, often dramatically and spontaneously, especially among converged infrastructures.

Relative to VMware Virtual SAN support, Xangati will collect information from the hypervisor about the Virtual SAN-based datastore as well as its constituents, including latency, throughput and IOPS, as well as capacity utilisation, resource efficiency and availability information. Virtual infrastructure performance data are collected with highly granular, second-by-second precision and then correlated by Xangati’s advanced analytics engine to adjust thresholds dynamically, eliminating false alarms. When a service impediment crops up, such as a resource contention storm involving Virtual SAN, Xangati will utilise its exclusive StormTracker technology to automatically determine root cause and analyse VSAN-specific metrics to resolve triage-level issues quickly.

"VMworld® 2015 US is an ideal place to see first-hand how virtualisation is radically changing storage," said Gaetan Castelein, senior director, Product Management, VMware. "VMware Virtual SAN, with its ability to replace the hard-to-manage hardware infrastructure, is rising as a better way to handle the new I/O demands and puts storage front and center in the revolutionary changes we're seeing from virtualisation."