KunLun K-Par, L-Par, and I/O Expansion Enclosures Explained

More and more industry customers are deploying their core business system on Huawei KunLun Mission Critical Servers, and the customers have increasingly higher requirements on the database and critical application consolidation capability of KunLun. In 2018, in addition to physical and logical partitioning features enhancement, KunLun comes around with a whole new feature by supporting Resource Expansion Enclosures (REEs), I/O expansion enclosures that enable KunLun to better meet customer requirements for critical application consolidation. This article will offer you a closer look at the technical terms about KunLun and reveal how these features work to drive greater value for our customers.

• Physical Partitioning

KunLun supports industry-leading physical partitioning (K-Par) technology to enable high reliability and performance. The K-Par technology allows a KunLun server to be divided into multiple independently running, electrically isolated partitions. Compared with virtualization software-based partitioning, physical partitioning delivers higher reliability. For example, if a customer uses virtualization software-based partitions to run multiple critical applications, any fault occurring on the virtualization software platform will affect the applications running in all virtual partitions of the platform. The K-Par technology prevents this situation. Because different partitions are electrically isolated, even if a physical partition is down, services in other physical partitions continue running unaffected. By using the K-Par technology, customers can allocate server resources based on actual requirements, thereby meeting the high performance and reliability requirements of business. In addition, K-Par offers the desired flexibility to protect customers’ investments.

KunLun supports even and uneven physical partitioning, allowing customers to flexibly combine and allocate computing resources based on actual needs. The following table lists the physical partitioning specifications supported by KunLun.

• On a 4-socket (4S) basis, KunLun supports physical partitions of 4S, 8S, 12S, 16S, 20S, and 32S.
• KunLun supports different number of CPUs in different physical partitions in the same server system.
• KunLun supports different memory capacities per CPU for different physical partitions in the same server system. (Note: The memory capacity per CPU in the same physical partition must be the same. Physical partitions with different memory capacities per CPU cannot be combined.)
• KunLun supports different CPU models in different physical partitions in the same server system.

The K-Par technology is applicable to mission-critical application consolidation, especially database consolidation. In a typical Oracle database scenario, it is recommended to use two KunLun servers. Each KunLun server can be divided into two or more physical partitions, and the physical partitions of the two KunLun servers can form Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC). The K-Par technology can also be combined with the virtualization technology to consolidate application servers, which allows the critical applications to be completely deployed on the KunLun platform. For example, an enterprise deploys the performance-demanding databases of its Enterprise Resources Planning (ERP) system in the physical partitions, but the application servers need only a small portion of the computing resources. In such a case, the enterprise can use the virtualization technology to deploy multiple application servers in the physical partitions, thereby improving resource utilization and reducing costs while enhancing system reliability. For example, the enterprise can divide a KunLun 9016 server into two physical partitions, run the Oracle databases in one physical partition, run the virtualization software in the other physical partition, and deploy the application servers in the second physical partition as virtual machines (VMs). KunLun supports virtualization software such as the VMware vSphere, Huawei FusionSphere, and Hyper-V, but supports an up to 8S physical partition for installing virtualization software.

• Logical Partitioning

The logical partitioning (L-Par) technology is an extension to the K-Par technology. The hardware resources (CPU/memory/I/O resources) of L-Par are completely isolated. Logical partitions are more flexible than physical partitions and provide finer-grained partitioning capabilities. KunLun supports L-Par commercial use only on KunLun 9008 and KunLun 9016, and supports Resource Expansion Enclosures (REEs) for L-Par. Different logical partitions are well isolated so that software errors and most hardware faults do not spread across partitions. In addition, different logical partitions can be powered off and maintained independently. As part of the KunLun products, the L-Par firmware is deeply integrated with the KunLun hardware and management software to improve system reliability and performance, and support unified management with KunLun hardware. The following tables list the L-Par configuration specifications.

• KunLun supports logical partitioning in a single-server system and in physical partitions. This allows for more flexible logical partition configuration and, combined with the uneven physical partitioning feature, enables great flexibility in partitioning.
• KunLun supports the Intel Xeon E7 v4 processors. Each logical partition supports up to 96 compute cores and a 4 TB memory, providing more robust logical partitioning performance and meeting more demanding service requirements.
• KunLun supports dynamic L-Par (DL-Par) to dynamically expand the CPU, memory, and disk capacity in logical partitions without shutting down the system, which ensures business continuity during computing resource expansion. KunLun does not support dynamic removal of the computing resources in a logical partition.
• KunLun supports booting from SAN, which simplifies management through external storage and improves reliability through active-active storage.

L-Par can be used to consolidate services on UNIX or x86 servers, including critical services and non-critical services. The logical partition specifications must not exceed the specifications of the 4S physical partition of the KunLun server where the logical partition resides. There are two application scenarios. One is deploying only logical partitions on an entire server, for example, creating logical partitions on a KunLun 9008 or 9016 server to deploy services. The other is deploying both logical partitions and physical partitions in a hybrid manner, for example, dividing a KunLun 9016 server into two 8S physical partitions, creating logical partitions in the physical partition in SCE1-BPUA, and using the other physical partition to deploy services independently. Logical partitions with critical services deployed are usually connected to external storage arrays, for example, when deploying databases of the ERP system. In the case of non-critical services, for example, front-end applications, external storage arrays are usually not used, but local storage disks are used instead. In this case, the local storage disks are connected to external NICs. Supported storage arrays include Huawei storage and typical third-party storage, such as IBM, EMC, and HDS. Huawei storage can be used as system disks and data disks. The logical partition for installing the Guest OS is located on a system disk. Third-party storage can be used only as data disks. When logical partitions are used for consolidating critical services, I/O device redundancy is required. Two FC cards need to be configured and the multi-pathing software must be used to ensure that the remote arrays can be accessed properly when an FC card or a fiber link fails. Configure dual-port NICs, and use the bonding technology to implement network redundancy. System planning can use the two-node cluster system. HA software, such as RHCS and VCS, must be deployed in the logical partition of each system to implement active/standby system redundancy.

• I/O Expansion Enclosure

The services consolidated by KunLun through the logical partitions may require more I/O resources than can be provided by the I/O slots on KunLun. This issue is addressed by the I/O expansion enclosures, or Resource Expansion Enclosures (REEs), provided by KunLun. Each REE supports up to 12 hard drive slots and 30 half-height PCIe slots. The following figure shows the KunLun REE.

• KunLun 9008 and 9016 support REE natively, and KunLun 9032 supports REE through combined cabinets.
• KunLun 9008 supports 1 REE, and KunLun 9016 supports up to 2 REEs. Each REE supports up to 30 half-height PCIe 3.0 slots.
• Using REE requires removing the original front I/O (FIO) disk enclosure. An REE also supports 12 SAS HDDs or SSDs, meeting internal storage requirements.
• The REE enclosure is compatible with the K-Par and L-Par features.

Every 4 sockets of KunLun correspond to half of the expansion resources of an REE enclosure. The following figure shows the mapping between REEs and KunLun computing resources.

• The I/O resources of the REE enclosure are evenly allocated to two half-configuration 9008 servers or two 4S physical partitions. Each 4S physical partition controls 6 SAS HDDs/SSDs and half of the PCIe slots (up to 15).
• As a rule, each 4S K-Par corresponds to 6 disks and up to 15 PCIe slots; each 8S K-Par 12 disks and up to 30 PCIe slots; each 12S K-Par 18 disks and up to 45 PCIe slots; each 16S K-Par 24 disks and up to 60 PCIe slots.
• If multiple logical partitions are allocated to a physical partition (8S/12S/16S) but these logical partitions belong to different 4S physical partitions, each logical partition has its own I/O resources on the REE enclosure.

KunLun offers the K-Par, L-Par, and I/O expansion enclosure features to enable customers to better consolidate mission-critical databases and applications, and help customers respond more rapidly to the dynamic computing resource requirements. Customers are now better positioned to deploy mission-critical services with greater elasticity, flexibility, and ease of maintenance.

CEBIT 2018 will be held at the Hannover Exhibition Centre, Germany, from June 11 to June 15. The Huawei Booth will be at Area C01 in Hall 13. For more information about Huawei KunLun server at CEBIT, please visit: Link 1 and Link 2.

(Contributed by Liu Yizhou, Enterprise Business Group)

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Source: Huawei Enterprise Blog
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