QLogic 2600 Series Hyper-V Virtual Server Engine - Manual (Page 7)

Picking the Right I/O Pieces, and Making Them Work Together
Tier-1 applications are uniquely demanding in many dimensions. Their needs with respect to CPU power,
memory footprint, high availability/failover, resiliency, and responsiveness to outside stimuli is typically
unmatched within the enterprise. Moreover, Tier-1 applications also tend to be tightly integrated with other
applications and resources within the enterprise. Because of this, virtualizing a Tier-1 application requires
rigorous planning of the I/O strategy. There are five steps to follow:
 Identify the I/O fabrics that the Tier-1 applications will use (it may very well be “all of them”).
 Quantify the data flows for each fabric when the application was operating on a standalone system.
 Estimate Live Migration I/O needs for failovers and evolution. Note that most Live Migration traffic will
be storage I/O; if the data stays within one external array during the Live Migration, Microsoft’s ODX
capability can significantly reduce the I/O traffic.
 Determine your primary and secondary I/O paths for multi-pathing on all of your networks.
 Determine QoS levels for the Tier-1 apps.
One simplifying option available is to utilize Converged Network Adapters that can function on both Fibre
Channel and Ethernet/FCoE networks. The QLogic QLE2672 is an example of such an adapter; it can be
reconfigured in the field to operate on Gen 5 Fibre Channel or 10Gb FCoE/Ethernet networks.
Virtualized I/O
Business-critical applications, such as ERP, CRM, eCommerce,
and e-mail need high-performance and high-availability I/O
infrastructure to meet business SLAs.
Tier-1 Apps
Networking Considerations When Virtualizing Tier-1 Applications