HP XP Application Performance Extender Software - Manual (Page 11)

1 Overview
In a typical Storage Area Network (SAN) environment, multiple I/O intensive applications share
storage resources. Not all applications are mission critical, but they compete with the mission critical
applications for the same I/O processing requirements. In such situations, there is a need to keep the
key (mission critical) applications at a desired performance level and other (non critical) applications
at an acceptable performance level.
P9000 Application Performance Extender enables you to monitor, analyze, and prioritize the
performance of critical applications running on P9500, XP20000 or XP24000 disk arrays.
The logical devices (LDEVs) of an array are mapped to Microprocessor (MP) blades. The I/Os
pertaining to an LDEV are processed by the MP blades associated with it. It is likely that a set of busy
LDEVs are owned by one MP blade, while other less loaded LDEVs are owned by a different MP
Blade. This may result in an uneven load distribution on MP blades. To achieve effective MP blade
utilization and I/O performance, there is also a need to balance the MP blade utilization of P9500
disk arrays.
P9000 Application Performance Extender supports MP blade resource load balancing through the
Dynamic LDEV Ownership Management (DLOM) feature. P9000 Application Performance Extender
monitors the load of MP blades and dynamically changes LDEV ownership in order to balance I/O
workloads across multiple MP blades.
XP and P9500 disk array resources can be prioritized by application and time, so high-priority host
traffic experiences the best performance always.
P9000 Application Performance Extender is supported on HP-UX, Windows, and Linux hosts connected
to XP and P9500 disk arrays in a SAN.
P9000 Application Performance Extender has the following components:
• Communication agent — Is a resident agent software that runs on all the hosts in a SAN environ-
ment. The communication agent discovers hosts, and communicates commands and information
between the host and the management station.
• Controller — Is a software that allocates resources to application groups (HP-UX), and hosts
(Windows, Linux). It helps applications achieve their Service Level Objectives (SLO). It also helps
balance the MP blade utilization of P9500 disk arrays. The controller communicates with the XP
and P9500 disk arrays through the command device.
• Management station — Is a software that communicates and coordinates between the graphical
user interface, the communication agent, and the controller. The management station also maintains
a database of all the XP Application Performance Extender settings and parameters.
With P9000 Application Performance Extender, you can:
• Achieve SLO targets of mission critical applications
• Dynamically change SLO targets based on real time resource requirements of your mission critical
applications
• Service peak load SLOs of critical applications without additional hardware investments
• Add more applications to the XP and P9500 disk arrays without penalizing the performance of
mission critical applications
• Get notified immediately about performance drops
HP StorageWorks P9000 Application Performance Extender Software User Guide 11