T ec hn ic a l M ar k et in g S o lu t io n G u i de

Nimble Storage Solution Guide

For Server Message Block (SMB)
File Sharing
Document Revision

Date Revision Description (author)

5/18/2015 1.0 Initial Release (Neil Glick)

THIS SOLUTION GUIDE IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY, AND MAY CONTAIN
TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORS AND TECHNICAL INACCURACIES. THE CONTENT IS PROVIDED AS
IS, WITHOUT EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND.

Nimble Storage: All rights reserved. Reproduction of this material in any manner whatsoever without the
express written permission of Nimble Storage is strictly prohibited.

NIMBLE STORAGE SOLUT ION GUIDE 2

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................................................... 5
Audience ............................................................................................................................................................ 5
Assumptions ....................................................................................................................................................... 5
Limitations and Other Considerations ................................................................................................................ 5
About the Authors............................................................................................................................................... 5
OVERVIEW ............................................................................................................................................................ 5
Performance and Capacity Efficiency ................................................................................................................ 6
Integrated Data Protection ................................................................................................................................. 6
Pain-Free Operations ......................................................................................................................................... 6
ARCHITECTURE ................................................................................................................................................... 6
BENEFITS OF NATIVE WINDOWS FILE SHARING FUNCTIONALITY.............................................................. 8
SMB 3.0 .............................................................................................................................................................. 8
(DFS) Distributed File System (including DFS-R) .............................................................................................. 8
File Classification Infrastructure (FCI) ................................................................................................................ 9
File Server Resource Management Tools (FSRM) ............................................................................................ 9
Native Disk Management Utility ......................................................................................................................... 9
Shadow Copies (previous versions) of Shared Folders ...................................................................................10
Offline Folders/Files and Folder Redirection ....................................................................................................10
Security ............................................................................................................................................................10
Additional Microsoft File Services Features .....................................................................................................11
NIMBLE STORAGE VOLUMES ..........................................................................................................................12
Volume Creation and Protection for Windows File Sharing .............................................................................12
Volume and Data Replication for File Sharing .................................................................................................15
Volume and Data Restoration for File Sharing ................................................................................................15
MULTIPLE PATHS AND USAGE ........................................................................................................................16
Nimble Connection Manager ............................................................................................................................16
Using the New Datastore .................................................................................................................................17
HIGH AVAILABILITY ...........................................................................................................................................20
VMware versus Microsoft .................................................................................................................................20
FILE SHARE PERFORMANCE ...........................................................................................................................21
Vdbench ...........................................................................................................................................................21
Nimble Storage Performance with SMB ..........................................................................................................21
SUMMARY ...........................................................................................................................................................22

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List of Figures

Figure 1 Ifrastructure Architecture ....................................................................................................................... 7

Figure 2 vSphere Client Network Connectivity .................................................................................................... 8
Figure 3 Volume Creation Performance Policies ...........................................................................................12
Figure 4 Volume Creation Protection Step 1 ..................................................................................................13
Figure 5 Volume Creation - Protection Step 2 ...................................................................................................14
Figure 6 Volume and Data Restoration .............................................................................................................15
Figure 7 VMware Manage Paths Information ....................................................................................................16
Figure 8 File Server Role ...................................................................................................................................17
Figure 9 Initialize Disk 1 ....................................................................................................................................18
Figure 10 Initialize Disk 2 ..................................................................................................................................19
Figure 11 Shared Disk .......................................................................................................................................20
Figure 12 Nimble Performance Monitor Vdbench Run 82K IOPS ..............................................................22

NIMBLE STORAGE SOLUT ION GUIDE 4

Introduction
Audience

This guide is intended for solution architects, storage engineers, system administrators and IT managers
who want to understand how to deploy SMB using Nimble Storage.

Assumptions
It is assumed that the reader has a working knowledge of VMware vSphere system administration,
Microsoft Windows desktop and server administration, iSCSI SAN network design and basic
Nimble Storage operations.
This is not a how to guide. Step by step setup is not covered, examples of screen shots and
settings should be sufficient for the reader to apply the right changes to implement the steps outlined
in this guide.

Limitations and Other Considerations

SMB architectures can be setup, protected and managed in multiple fashions. This solution guide will
address a specific scenario and how to build around it.

About the Authors

This solution guide was created by:

Neil Glick Technical Marketing Engineer Nimble Storage

Overview
Nimble has developed an entirely new approach to storage that seamlessly combines SSDs with high-
capacity drives. Nimbles breakthrough CASL architecture is designed from the ground up to address
SMB and file system performance.

Nimble Storage arrays provide a complete application-aware data storage solution that includes flash
accelerated primary storage, cost effective capacity, instant application-aware backup, and replication.
This allows you to consolidate management of primary, secondary, and off-site disaster recovery storage
within a single storage solution.

A Nimble Storage array provides iSCSI or Fibre Channel target volumes (LUNs) to Physical or Virtual
hosts. Volumes created on Nimble Storage arrays are highly optimized for virtual machines by providing
the following benefits:

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 Performance and Capacity Efficiency

CASLs innovative use of flash enhances read performance by adaptively using flash to facilitate
reads. Serializing random writes enhances write performance to effectively meet peaks in write IOs

CASL compresses all data by default and typically provides savings 30-75% capacity savings
without impacting performance.

Most importantly, Nimble can respond rapidly to workload fluctuations. In comparison, traditional
tiered architectures require hours or even days to respond to changes in IO patterns.

Thin Provisioning is enabled on all volumes by default. Efficiently storing compressed data written
rather than reserved space.

Integrated Data Protection

Highly efficient snapshots allow frequent recovery points with the ability for long term retention of
user data. Snapshot creation is near instantaneous and does not impact application or storage
performance.

Zero-Copy Cloning: Preemptive de-duplication to eliminate storage footprint of cloned volumes.

Built-in replication ensures user data is protected off-site in the event of a site failure.

Pain-Free Operations

The intuitive Nimble UI eliminates the complexity of provisioning and managing separate storage,
backup, and disaster recovery devices.

The Nimble vCenter plug-in simplifies the process of provisioning, replicating, backing up,
monitoring, and managing user data for VMware environments.

Frequent heartbeats monitor system health to identify potential failures before they occur. High
availability and resiliency features combined with truly non-disruptive upgrades virtually eliminate
downtime.

Architecture
This solution guide provides a SMB solution for Windows systems that leverages the power of Nimble
Storage performance and scalability, Cisco UCS B-Series servers for compute power and VMware ESXi
to virtualize the host and client environments. This is commonly referred to as a Nimble Storage
SmartStack.

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 Figure 1 Infrastructure Architecture

Windows 2012R2 has the ability to provide SMB as well as NFS protocols. This guide will focus only on
the SMB capabilities.

Virtualization of a file share environment allows for architectural flexibility and choices that are not
available in a physical environment. To demonstrate the features of this solution, a 1TB volume was
created on a Nimble Storage array and presented to VMware vSphere. The storage was presented
through VMFS and applied to virtual Windows 2012R2 SMB file sharing host. Note that direct
connections through iSCSI or Fibre Channel are available and are viable options, but are out of scope in
this paper.

Client and data connectivity was provided through a 10GbE connection through vSphere over a
dedicated NIC located on the Cisco UCS.

NIMBLE STORAGE SOLUT ION GUIDE 7

 Figure 2 vSphere Client Network Connectivity

Benefits of Native Windows File Sharing Functionality

SMB 3.0

SMB 3.0 is the Microsoft SMB implementation. Its an improved version of the Server Message Block
protocol that ships with Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows 8. SMB 3.0 further enhances the SMB
2.1 protocol offering:

SMB Transparent Failover

SMB Scale Out
SMB Multichannel
SMB Direct
SMB Encryption
VSS for SMB file shares
SMB Directory Leasing
SMB PowerShell

(DFS) Distributed File System (including DFS-R)

DFS simplifies the management of multiple file servers by

aggregating file shares located in different file servers under a
single logical folder. DFS provides location transparency and
redundancy to improve data availability during failure or heavy load
scenarios by allowing shares in multiple different locations to be
logically grouped under one folder. DFS-R offers file replication

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 capabilities that support remote differential compression to minimize network bandwidth.

Ensure the non-Microsoft SMB implementation youre evaluating has full support and integration

for DFS and DFS-R. DFS-R is Microsoft proprietary and is not available in non-Microsoft
implementations.

File Classification Infrastructure (FCI)

Windows Server File Classification Infrastructure (FCI) provides insight into your data to help you manage
your file data more effectively, reduce costs, and mitigate risks by providing a built-in solution for file
classification that allows administrators to automate manual processes with predefined policies based on
the business value of the data.

Non-Microsoft SMB implementations cannot integrate with FCI functionality.

File Server Resource Management Tools (FSRM)

Windows Servers also includes a set of tools that offer quota, file screen and report management. These
tools can generate a variety of reports on utilized storage, such as the number of duplicate files that are
stored and a report of large files. There is also support for quota management and real-time file screening
to halt the storage of illegal content.

The FSRM tools are proprietary to Microsoft file servers and thus are not available on non-

Microsoft SMB implementations.

Native Disk Management Utility

The Disk Management utility is used for managing hard disks and the volumes or partitions that they
contain. With Disk Management, you can initialize Nimble Storage arraydisks and format volumes with
the FAT, FAT32, or NTFS file systems. Disk Management enables you to perform most disk-related tasks
without restarting the system or interrupting users.

NIMBLE STORAGE SOLUT ION GUIDE 9

 Shadow Copies (previous versions) of Shared Folders

Shadow Copies of Shared Folders provides point-in-time copies of files that are located on shared file
server resources that are attached to the Nimble Storage array. With Shadow Copies of Shared Folders,
users can view shared files and folders as they existed at points of time in the past. Accessing previous
versions of files, or shadow copies, is useful because users can:

Recover files that were accidentally deleted.

Recover from accidentally overwriting a file.

Compare versions of a file while working.

Ensure the non-Microsoft SMB implementation youre evaluating has full support and

integration with Microsofts Shadow Copies.

Offline Folders/Files and Folder Redirection

Windows offline folder and file redirection provides a cached online mode, whereby read operations go to
the local cache and write operations go to the cache and the server endpoint. Other changes include
better handling of per-user encryption and synchronization, support for differential transfers of large files
such as PSTs, and seamless offline and online transitions.

Ensure the non-Microsoft SMB implementation youre evaluating has full support and

integration with Microsofts Offline Folders/Files and Folder Redirection.

Security

NTFS Folder/File Security: Windows supports all the NTFS security types for files/folders (ACLs, DACLs,
SACLs) which are necessary for user / group permissions as well as file auditing purposes.

Non-MS SMB implementations may not support the full spectrum of NTFS ACLs, DACLs

and SACLs. This can often lead to incompatibilities with applications and security vulnerabilities
within your organization.

Active Directory Domain Support: This is the primary and critical means most organizations implement to
control and enforce user authentication and authorization within their file serving environments.

NIMBLE STORAGE SOLUT ION GUIDE 10

 Failure to have full and proper AD integration and support of all domain types (W2K, W2K3,

W2K8, native-mode, mixed mode, etc.) can cause security, integration and support headaches.

Additional Microsoft File Services Features

Many non-Microsoft 3rd party NAS SMB implementations do not offer the same, exact level of specific
integration and interoperability when compared to Microsoft. Often times these specific under-the-cover
details are overlooked at first, but can become major issues later on. These incompatibilities and
integration gaps are viewed by Microsoft as non-supported and non-qualified configurations, leaving the
organization in a precarious situation.

rd
Some of the more common integration and feature gaps found in 3 party non-Microsoft

SMB implementations that should be tested and verified include:

Support for Microsoft reparse points

Support for Alternate Data Streams (aka. named streams)
Support for SMB Opportunistic locking (better performance.)
Support for NTFS ChangeNotify operations
Support for Roaming User Profiles
Support for NTFS Extended Attributes
Support for NTFS Sparse Files
Support for Symbolic links
Support for full use of Local Users and Local Groups
Support for Microsoft Encryption
MMC support for user, group and directory quotas
Support for all security levels for SMB connections (hisec.inf)
Support for Secure LDAP (LDAP over SSL)
Server & client side SMB signing
Support for Access Based Enumeration (ABE)
Support for Microsoft Group Policy Objects
Support for LDAP signing and sealing
Support for Local account policies
Support for file System Access & Logon Auditing via EventViewer
On-board, on-access and on-demand Antivirus protection
Support for Microsoft WebDAV
Support for IPv6 with SMB
Support for Granular file blocking
MMC Support for Local Users/groups

NIMBLE STORAGE SOLUT ION GUIDE 11

Nimble Storage Volumes
Volume Creation and Protection for Windows File Sharing

Creating a volume with Nimble Storage is quick and easy, but there are some decisions that will need to
be made to best suit the file sharing environment. Nimble Storage allows for performance flexibility by
selecting a pre-created Performance Policy or creating a brand new policy to custom fit the environment.
When selecting a performance policy, be aware this is where blocksize, caching and compression options
are decided.

Figure 3 Volume Creation Performance Policies

NIMBLE STORAGE SOLUT ION GUIDE 12

 As seen in Figure 3, there are multiple pre-created policies to choose from or a new policy can be
created. For file sharing the decision can be a bit of a challenge. Default, VMware ESX 5, Windows File
Server could all be options for a file share, but VMware ESX 5 will be policy chosen in this scenario since
storage is being assigned to the virtual machine through vSphere and NOT directly connected to the
Windows 2012R2 host.

During volume creation a protection window will appear, but it is not necessary to protect the volume to
finish the creation of the volume and it can be done after the volume has been created. It is strongly
recommended to protect the volume at the earliest convenience to avoid potential data loss.

Figure 4 Volume Creation Protection Step 1

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 Nimble Storage uses a concept called a volume collection to protect volumes. A volume collection can be
1 or multiple volumes grouped together in a policy that describes when and how the volumes will be
backed up. A Nimble Storage snapshot can be taken of the 1TB datastore at any time, but without
synchronization with VMware vCenter the file share will be crash consistent. For further consistency
Nimble Storage can synchronize snapshots with VMware vCenter as seen in Figures 4 and 5. For further
information regarding volume protection, please visit the Nimble Storage technical papers webpage.

Figure 5 Volume Creation - Protection Step 2

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 Volume and Data Replication for File Sharing

While not shown in this solution guide, file share data can be further protected with Nimble Storage array
replication. Array replication allows for volume collection snapshots to be replicated from one Nimble
Storage array to a downstream partner array. This secondary downstream array can be at the same site
or geographically distant. Nimble Storage volume collection replication is easy to use and extremely
flexible.

Volume and Data Restoration for File Sharing

Snapshots and backups are only one side of the coin. The ability to restore data is critical and Nimble
Storage makes the process easy, flexible and reliable. Once volume collection snapshots have been
taken of the file share volume, there are multiple choices for data recovery.

Figure 6 Volume and Data Restoration

A snapshot can be restored, set online, or cloned. To quickly revert to a previous known state a restore
can be done, but it is important to remember that Restore restores the ENTIRE volume, affecting all of the
data contained in it. The volume will also need to be set offline to perform the Restore, which will cause a
datastore disconnect in VMware vSphere. Proper datastore maintenance steps should be taken before
setting the volume offline.

If the volume cannot be brought offline nor entirely restored the snapshot can be brought online or cloned.
Once either of these actions is completed the volume can be mounted in VMware vCenter as a new
datastore and browsed to find the necessary data.

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Multiple Paths and Usage
Nimble Connection Manager

To assist in volume and datastore path management in VMware vSphere the Nimble Connection
Manager (NCM) for VMware should be downloaded from the Downloads page located on the Nimble
Storage InfoSight website. The NCM is a package that needs to be installed on each ESXi server which
will connect to Nimble Storage. Once the installation has been completed the Nimble Storage best
practices for VMware will be applied.

The Nimble Storage NCM has two components, the Nimble Connection Service (NCS) and Nimble Path
Selection Plugin (PSP). The NCS automatically calculates and maintains the optimal number of iSCSI
sessions from host to the storage group balance across the hosts NICs for a Nimble Storage device.
The PSP automatically directs I/O requests for a Nimble Storage device to the most favorable network
route. For more details on setting up the VMware NCM and PSP, consult the VMware Integration Guide.

Figure 7 VMware Manage Paths Information

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 As seen in Figure 7, the NCM has been applied and the file share datastore has two active paths utilizing
NIMBLE_PSP_DIRECTED path selection.

Using the New Datastore

Once the new datastore has been created, add it as a new hard disk in VMware vCenter to the file share
host. Since backup and restores are performed at the volume level it is a best practice to have one
volume per file share drive. For this reason is NOT recommended to create multiple virtual hard disks
from the new datastore. See also the backup and recovery portion of this guide.

On your Windows 2012R2 file share host install or validate that the File Server Role has been installed.
This role is needed to allow file sharing over the network.

Figure 8 File Server Role

Navigate to Computer Management and the new drive should be ready and waiting configuration. Online
the disk, and initialize it as seen in Figures 9 and 10. During the initialization, select the file system, block
size and volume label for best file sharing results. Here the defaults have been chosen. NTFS defaults to
4K which match the block size of the VMware ESX5 block size on the Nimble. This is the smallest
blocksize combination recommended and will be good for addressing the variety of user file IO supported
on the SMB share.

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 Figure 9 Initialize Disk 1

NIMBLE STORAGE SOLUT ION GUIDE 18

 Figure 10 Initialize Disk 2

Once initialized, the disk or a directory within it can be shared for other computers and users to use.
Utilize Microsoft best practices to set proper security and performance configurations for the file share.

NIMBLE STORAGE SOLUT ION GUIDE 19

 Figure 11 Shared Disk

To ensure file server best practices have been implemented on the Microsoft Windows 2012 server,
Microsoft has created the File Services Best Practices Analyzer (BPA). It includes a number of rules,
including 99 rules for SMB. The tool will help discover best practices that have currently not been met on
the file server, the severity and where to get more information on how to correct the issue.

High Availability
VMware versus Microsoft

Creating a highly available file sharing environment is important. Not only for protecting user data, but
ensuring continued operation and data availability during business hours. To deploy high availability both
VMware and Microsoft have created clustering and high availability products.

If complete site recovery is necessary, VMware Site Recovery Manager or SRM can be used. An entire
vCenter site can be failed over to an alternate vCenter, bringing along datastores, virtual machines and all
components to keep a virtual environment running. Within a vCenter instance, administrators can use
VMotion, High Availability, Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) and Storage DRS. Each of these
products can help keep a file sharing environment highly available and avoid downtime.

More information regarding Microsoft and VMware high availability products can be found at their
respective websites.

NIMBLE STORAGE SOLUT ION GUIDE 20

File Share Performance
Vdbench

To test performance of the SMB file system, a Nimble Storage volume was mounted as drive
E: on the client virtual machines and Vdbench was installed on those systems. Vdbench is a command
line utility which is used to create disk I/O workloads to validate storage performance and data integrity.

The following configuration file was used on the separate Vdbench hosts, with each host generating two
test#.txt files. It was observed that two files per client produced more I/O than a single test file. The
simplest design is to have a single file server with a single Nimble Storage volume shared out to the
appropriate resources. However, architectural variations along with other applications can be utilized to
realize the complete storage performance capabilities of the Nimble Storage array.
compratio=1.5
sd=sd1,lun=e:\test40.txt,threads=32,size=50g
sd=sd2,lun=e:\test41.txt,threads=32,size=50g
wd=wd1,sd=(sd1,sd2),xfersize=4k,rdpct=50,seekpct=100,openflags=directio
rd=run1,wd=wd1,iorate=(max),elapsed=1800,interval=5

This generates data with a compression ratio of 1.5:1. The blocksize is 4k with a 50% Write and 50%
Read ratio and an IO rate as high as the hosts will let the data flow.

Nimble Storage Performance with SMB

A performance test running Vdbench was run on multiple Microsoft Windows clients connected to the SMB
file share which produced a total of 82K combined read and write I/O.

This result demonstrates that using a virtual Windows 2012 server within a VMware environment provides
exceptional performance capability, by taking advantage of the Nimble Storage CASL architecture to
accelerate both read and write IO.

The Nimble Storage array used in this test has additional read and write IOPS available, which demonstrates
a high performance file share with additional reserve that can be used for more file shares or the introduction
of another application.

NIMBLE STORAGE SOLUT ION GUIDE 21

 Figure 12 Nimble Performance Monitor Vdbench Run 82K IOPS

The test results above were performed using a Nimble CS700 series array.

Summary
This solution guide provides administrative techniques and best practices to create a SMB file share
environment utilizing Microsoft File Server capabilities hosted in a virtualized VMware vSphere
environment with Cisco UCS servers and Nimble Storage. The use of native Windows 2012 SMB
capabilities ensures 100% compatibility with SMB 3.0 features.

For more information, contact your local integrator or vendor for more details.

NIMBLE STORAGE SOLUT ION GUIDE 22

Nimble Storage, Inc.
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Tel: 877-364-6253; 408-432-9600 | www.nimblestorage.com | info@nimblestorage.com

2015 Nimble Storage, Inc. Nimble Storage, InfoSight, CASL, SmartStack, and NimbleConnect are trademarks or registered trademarks of
Nimble Storage, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. SMBG-0515

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