Cisco Cisco MDS 9000 I O Accelerator 정보 가이드
Q&A
© 2009 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. This document is Cisco Public Information.
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Q.
What are the top three business benefits (value propositions) of IOA?
A.
In addition to the traditional business benefits of increasing replication distances and reducing backup windows,
IOA offers the following unique value propositions:
●
Consolidation of all acceleration services
◦
IOA provides a unified and comprehensive acceleration service that works independent of media and
transport. Hence, disk and tape acceleration can be unified and managed within a single system,
simplifying management.
◦
IOA clustering allows IOA engines to be gathered into a single group, enabling acceleration flows to be
managed as one entity.
◦
IOA delivers acceleration as a service with no topology restrictions and hence can be deployed anywhere
in the fabric.
●
Highly resilient infrastructure for business continuity and data recovery (BC/DR):
◦
Support for Port Channels and multiple paths greatly reduce disruption of backup jobs and replication by
enhancing link availability between data centers.
◦
LRTP protects against application failures and aborts due to lost packets on failed physical links.
◦
IOA clustering guards against engine failures, thereby reducing downtime.
●
Highly scalable and available infrastructure, increasing cost savings
◦
Backup jobs are completed faster due to fewer failures and backup job aborts.
◦
The complexity of tape backup infrastructure management is reduced.
◦
Support for PortChannels and multiple paths enables better MAN and WAN bandwidth utilization.
Q.
What hardware modules are supported for IOA?
A.
IOA is supported on the Cisco MDS 9000 18/4-Port MSM, 9222i MMS fixed module, and 16-Port Storage
Service Node (SSN) module. The Cisco MDS 9000 18/4-Port MSM and 9222i MMS fixed module can host one
IOA engine, and the Cisco MDS 9000 16-Port SSN can host up to four engines.
Q.
What do I need to know about IOA before provisioning?
A.
From a provisioning perspective, for each initiator-target pair that needs acceleration, an IOA flow needs to be
created to perform either disk or tape acceleration. Flows are part of IOA flow groups. Flow groups are hosted
by IOA engines on IOA switches. IOA engines are part of IOA clusters. The following list provides information
about the concepts and features needed to provision IOA.
●
IOA site: A local set of switches within a fabric; a switch can exist at only one site
●
IOA engine (interface): Represents an application engine that performs acceleration on the supported
hardware modules
◦
From a configuration perspective, this engine is also called an interface.
◦
An engine can be associated with only one IOA site.
◦
Each engine needs a separate IOA license.
◦
An engine can be part of only one IOA cluster.
●
IOA switch: A switch containing one or more IOA engines
●
IOA cluster: A set of IOA engines in a pair of IOA sites that operate as one group to provide IOA service
◦
A cluster can span only two sites.
◦
A site can share multiple clusters (for example, a bunker site with all the tapes).
◦
A switch can belong to multiple clusters.