Different Services Require Computing Resources of Vastly Different Scales
Just like human beings having preferences for rooms and space in lives, so do enterprise service workloads. Workloads of different industries and businesses of varied sizes may have quite “personalized” requirements for IT deployment and computing resources. Even the workloads of the same enterprise may have different computing demands.
Huawei now presents the KunLun Mission Critical Server that is able to accommodate various enterprise databases and applications by offering the best-suited space and resources. Enterprises can plan the computing resources of KunLun based on their service requirements, and tailor the resources for databases and applications according to the most appropriate resource allocation ratio. This means that, in real-world deployment, enterprises can consolidate databases and applications into one KunLun server. The highly flexible resource dividing feature of KunLun helps customers save space, improve resource utilization, and maximize the return on investment.
One KunLun Offers Three Resource Dividing Modes
KunLun is a high-end server built for mission-critical services. KunLun supports eight processors and more to deliver exceptional performance and reliability. KunLun supports three resource dividing modes: no partitioning (running as a single-node system), physical partitioning, and logical partitioning.
In the no-partitioning mode, all computing resources of the entire server are used for a single type of workload. This is especially suitable for business-critical workloads demanding high performance and reliability.
In physical partitioning mode, one KunLun server is partitioned at a granularity of four physical processors. By doing so, KunLun offers highly isolated resources for different workloads with the desired flexibility. For example, the KunLun 9008 8S server (8S means 8-socket, that is, eight physical processors) can be divided into two 4-socket partitions, one for running databases and the other running applications.
The partitions are physically isolated. Any faults occurring on the processors, memory, and even power supply units (PSUs) of one partition do not affect the other partitions. This makes KunLun ideal for high availability (HA) deployment. For example, one KunLun 9016 (16-socket) server can be divided into four 4-socket physical partitions, all partitions running the Oracle database. An Oracle Real Application Cluster (RAC) can be deployed on these partitions. In the cluster, when a partition fails, the other three partitions will take over the services, ensuring zero downtime and zero data loss, and increasing database availability. This means, the SSD and HDD RAID recovery service provided by many services and companies can be avoided, as the data can be recovered internally.
The logical partitioning mode provides finer-grained resource division. Traditionally this technology used to be confined to high-end UNIX servers. As a high-end mission critical server, KunLun is the industry’s only x86 server that supports this feature. The logical partitioning technology allows the processor resources of KunLun to be divided on a minimum basis of one core. It addresses a particular scenario with enterprise IT systems: Some enterprises need to run multiple databases or applications at the same time. These workloads are associated with each other and need to be deployed as near as possible to improve performance. However, each database or application may require only a small amount of computing resources, generally just a few computing cores. Deploying each database or application on an independent server will leave a lot of resources idle and wasted on the servers.
In this case, the KunLun logical partitioning technology integrates the databases or applications into one server. The computing resources are divided and allocated to each database and application according to their actual needs. This ensures high resource utilization. Moreover, KunLun provides unified management software to simplify O&M.
Consolidating Services Without Compromising Performance and Reliability
KunLun servers are more usually deployed in enterprise business-critical scenarios, which require KunLun to run services efficiently and stably after the databases and applications are consolidated. This in turn demands that KunLun be capable of isolating the physical resources as well as software and hardware faults among its physical partitions and logical partitions. These are the particular benefits brought to customers by KunLun.
Both in the physical and logical partitioning technologies of KunLun, each partition has independent computing resources, including computing cores, memory, and I/O ports. From the performance perspective, this avoids resource contention among different partitions, and maximizes performance for each partition at every moment. This is of vital significance to transactional services that have stringent real-time requirements. When a transaction request arrives at the server, if the corresponding partition does not respond promptly, the service experience may deteriorate or even the transaction will fail, which directly translates into operational loss. From the reliability perspective, this isolates faults between the partitions. Even if a fault occurs in a partition, the fault does not propagate to other partitions.
When a large number of logical partitions are deployed in a KunLun server, the number of I/O ports of a System Compute Enclosure (SCE) may not be sufficient to meet the needs of each logical partition. To address this requirement, KunLun supports Resource Expansion Enclosures (REEs), each REE providing up to 30 PCIe 3.0 slots to satisfy the I/O performance requirements of all logical partitions.
“Custom Space” Improves Return on IT Asset Investment
Whether running as a single-node system or processing consolidated services, KunLun excels. On the one hand, modern enterprises are tasked with swift digital transformation. To that end, they need to constantly expand and improve the IT infrastructure to match the rapid industry advance. On the other hand, enterprises seek intelligent methodology to improve the utilization of IT infrastructure and maximize return on their asset investment. As an integral part of the Huawei enterprise intelligent cloud infrastructure, the KunLun Mission Critical Servers differentiate themselves by offering ultimate flexibility and efficiency to meet enterprises’ demands for ever-higher resource efficiency. Meanwhile, KunLun unlocks leading-edge performance and reliability that empower enterprises to confidently grow critical services.
The post KunLun Offers Bespoke Space for Databases and Apps appeared first on Huawei Enterprise Blog.
Source: Huawei Enterprise Blog
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