HPP Enterprises P4000 SAN - Manual (Page 3)

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Executive summary
Using Citrix XenServer with HP StorageWorks P4000 SAN storage, you can host individual desktops
and servers inside virtual machines (VMs) that are hosted and managed from a central location
utilizing optimized, shared storage. This solution provides cost-effective high availability and scalable
performance.
Organizations are demanding better resource utilization, higher availability, along with more
flexibility to react to rapidly changing business needs. The 64-bit XenServer hypervisor provides
outstanding support for VMs, including granular control over processor, network, and disk resource
allocations; as a result, your virtualized servers can operate at performance levels rates that closely
match physical platforms. Meanwhile, additional XenServer hosts deployed in a resource pool
provide scalability and support for high-availability (HA) applications, allowing VMs to restart
automatically on other hosts at the same site or even at a remote site.
Enterprise IT infrastructures are powered by storage. HP StorageWorks P4000 SANs offer scalable
storage solutions that can simplify management, reduce operational costs, and optimize performance
in your environment. Easy to deploy and maintain, HP StorageWorks P4000 SAN storages help to
ensure that crucial business data remains available; through innovative double-fault protection across
the entire SAN, your storage is protected from disk, network, and storage node faults.
You can grow your HP StorageWorks P4000 SAN non-disruptively, in a single operation, by simply
adding storage; thus, you can scale performance, capacity and redundancy as storage requirements
evolve. Features such as asynchronous and synchronous replication, storage clustering, network RAID,
thin provisioning, snapshots, remote copies, cloning, performance monitoring, and a single pane-of-
glass management can add value in your environment.
This paper explores options for configuring and using XenServer, with emphasis on best practices and
tips for an HP StorageWorks P4000 SAN environment.
Target audience: This paper provides information for XenServer Administrators interested in
implementing XenServer-based server virtualization using HP StorageWorks P4000 SAN storage.
Basic knowledge of XenServer technologies is assumed.
Business case
Organizations implementing server virtualization typically require shared storage to take full
advantage of today’s powerful hypervisors. For example, XenServer supports features such as
XenMotion and HA that require shared storage to serve a pool of XenServer host systems. By
leveraging the iSCSI storage protocol, XenServers are able to access the storage just like local
storage but over an Ethernet network. Since standard Ethernet networks are already used by most IT
organizations to provide their communications backbones, no additional specialized hardware is
required to support a Storage Area Network (SAN) implementation. Security of your data is handled
first-most by authentication at the storage, physical, as well as the iSCSI protocol mechanisms itself.
Just like any other data, it too can be encrypted at the client, thereby satisfying any data security
compliance requirements.
Rapid deployment
Shared storage is not only a requirement for a highly-available XenServer configuration; it is also
desirable for supporting rapid data deployment. Using simple management software, you can
respond to a request for an additional VM and associated storage with just a few clicks. To minimize
deployment time, you can use a golden-image clone, with both storage and operating system (OS)
pre-configured and ready for application deployment.