Nutanix gets Microsoft blessing for unique ESRP for a real world MS Exchange ESRP solution on All Flash

I am pleased to announce that Microsoft have approved Nutanix latest ESRP (Exchange Storage Review Program) submission for a 50,000 user deployment of MS Exchange on Nutanix NX-8150 all flash platform running the next generation hypervisor, AHV!

What’s unique about this you might ask?

  1. It’s the first hyper-converged (HCI) all flash ESRP solution (to compliment Nutanix existing Hybrid ESRP solutions for 24k users on Hyper-V and 30k users on AHV)
  2. The first multiple Exchange VM per node solution!!
  3. The first ESRP to provide MS Exchange Server role requirements calculator solution design
  4. The solution was performance tested/validated with N-1 nodes to simulate performance in the event a node had failed and was not replaced
  5. The solution supports the 1GB mailboxes without any assumed data reduction from compression, deduplication or Erasure Coding (EC-X)

The last point is key. Many vendors/solutions assume high data reduction ratios when sizing which adds risk to a project as I explained in Sizing infrastructure based on vendor Data Reduction assumptions. Nutanix (and me personally) rather give customers a guaranteed business outcome and while our data reduction is very effective especially for MS Exchange data, it can and does vary between customers. An ESRP should be a guaranteed outcome, and that’s what this unique ESRP from Nutanix delivers.

A major problem with many, if not most ESRP submissions is that they are not real world solutions, just storage platforms which can deliver high enough IOPS to potentially support a real world solution.

When designing the solution I planned to put forward for ESRP, I used an actual real world design for a Nutanix customer and ensures it was sized to be 100% real world.

For example, from a compute perspective the solution was sized with no CPU overcommitment and within the recommended maximum of 24 CPUs both of which ensure optimal CPU performance.

CPU sizing also ensures Exchange VMs fit within the NUMA node of the Nutanix node which ensures optimal memory performance, which is another key area to ensure optimal Exchange performance.

In addition, The VMs are sized to be under the Microsoft recommended CPU utilization threshold for a “Worst Failure Mode” of ≤ 80 percent.

From a real world perspective, MS Exchange is dependant on Active Directory. As a result the solution is also sized to support all the required Active Directory Global Catalog cores running on the same infrastructure.

From an availability and resiliency perspective, the solution is sized for N+1 at the infrastructure layer to compliment the N+1 at the MS Exchange DAG layer. This delivers customers a solution which has protection from multiple concurrent failures which is essential for Mission Critical applications.

In the real world, things change and having a solution which scales to support more users, more messages per day and greater mailbox capacity is essential.

The Nutanix NX-8150 All Flash ESRP discusses a scalable and repeatable model where the solution can be increased in size from supporting 1 GB mailboxes to >2 GB simply by choosing (configure to order) 3.84 TB drives vs. the 1.92 TB drives tested for this solution.

Another option is when the storage capacity is reaching a high threshold such as 80%+, customers can non disruptively add storage nodes to expand capacity. This can be done without any change at the OS or MS Exchange application layer and new capacity (and performance!) is available instantly.

Did you know Nutanix allows mixing all-flash & hybrid? This means the most active data (e.g.: Most recent email) is running in an all flash configuration and older mail is automatically and transparently migrated to the lower cost hybrid nodes.

From a storage performance perspective, the solution was tested with in-line compression enabled which is Nutanix official recommendation for MS Exchange as it provides excellent data reduction with no significant overheads.

Another focus are for Nutanix in the real world is reducing CAPEX and OPEX. A great example of this is the entire solution (excluding networking) uses just 10 rack units (RUs) per datacenter. While other vendors storage ESRPs will claim lower RU requirements, they excluding the physical servers required for the solution. Nutanix is advising the requirements for the compute and storage for the solution to be totally transparent.

This means the solution does not require a large investment in your datacenter or co-location and is cost effective to power and cool making the solution environmentally friendly as well.

From a performance perspective, the Nutanix solution was tested in an N-1 configuration to show the performance which can be achieved after the failure of a node within the cluster.

Even with a failed node, the solution achieves excellent performance with average database read and log write latency in the low 1ms range sustained for the 24 stress test required for ESRP submissions.

A few performance highlights:

  1. Nutanix achieved an average of 5172 IOPS per MS Exchange Jetstress instance with just 4 threads!
  2. Database read latency avg of just 1.05ms
  3. Log write latency avg of just 1.21ms
  4. Database backup performance of 215MB/sec per database which equates to more than 1.7GBps per node!

While the achieved performance vastly exceeds the requirements for Exchange, the key factor is the reduced CPU WAIT time achieved which results in much greater CPU efficiency than a physical Exchange server with JBOD storage. Meaning a virtualised exchange server on Nutanix (even hybrid systems) is more efficient than Microsoft Preferred architecture using physical servers and JBOD storage.

You may be asking yourself, why does this matter? The answer is simple. MS Exchange becomes inefficient when scaled up beyond 24 cores so the more efficient the usage of those cores, the more users, messages per day and better user experience can be achieved without scaling up or adding more servers.

So without further delay, I have provided the direct link to the document below for you convenience.

Nutanix ESRP – NX-8150-G5 All Flash 50,000 Users

ntnxallflashesrp

Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor (AHV) certified for 30k Microsoft Exchange Mailboxes

Last year Nutanix announced we had successfully completed Microsoft Exchange Solution Review Program (ESRP) certification for Hyper-V, now I am pleased to announce we have continued our focus on giving customers choice to deploy business critical applications on any hypervisor, and have now achieved ESRP for our Acropolis Hypervisor (AHV).

I believe Acropolis Hypervisor (AHV) and the Nutanix platform is a great choice for business critical applications such as MS Exchange as it gives all the benefits of virtualization, without the complexity of legacy hypervisors and management platforms.

For more information on the advantages of AHV specifically for MS Exchange see:  MS Exchange on Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor (AHV).

The Nutanix listing on the Microsoft Exchange Solution Review Program can be found at the following URL for both Hyper-V and AHV.

Exchange Solution Reviewed Program (ESRP) – Storage

The Nutanix Best Practice guide for MS Exchange on AHV is also due for release shortly, so stay tuned!

Related Articles:

1. Think HCI is not an ideal way to run your mission-critical x86 workloads? Think again!

2. Jetstress Testing with Intelligent Tiered Storage Platforms

3. Microsoft Exchange 2013/2016 Jetstress Performance Testing on Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor (AHV)

4, Peak performance vs Real World – Exchange on Nutanix Acropolis Hypervisor (AHV)

Why Nutanix Acropolis hypervisor (AHV) is the next generation hypervisor – Part 4 – Security

Security is a major pillar of the XCP design. The use of innovative automation results in perhaps the most hardened, simple and comprehensive virtualization infrastructure in the industry.

AHV is not designed to work with a comprehensive HCL of hardware vendors, nor does it have countless bolt-on style products which need to be catered for. Instead Acropolis hypervisor has been optimized to work with the Nutanix Distributed Storage Fabric and approved appliances from Nutanix and OEM partners to provide all services/functionality in a truly Web scale manner.

This allows for much tighter and targeted quality assurance and dramatically reduces the attack surface compared to hypervisors.

The Security Development Lifecycle (SecDL) is leveraged across the entire Acropolis platform ensuring every line of code is production ready. This design follows a defense-in-depth model that removes all unnecessary services for libvirt/QEMU (SPICE, unused drivers), leverages libvirt non-root group sockets for principle of least privilege, SELinux confined guests for vmescape protection, and an embedded intrusion detection system.

seclifecycle

Acropolis hypervisor has a documented and supported security baseline (XCCDF STIG), and introduces the self-remediating hypervisor. On a customer defined interval, the hypervisor is scanned for any changes to the supported security baseline, and resets the baseline back to the secure state if any anomaly is detected in the background with no user intervention.

The Acropolis platform also boats a comprehensive list of security certifications/validations:

SecCerts2

Summary

Acropolis provides numerous security advantages including:

  1. In-Built and self auditing Security Technical Implementation Guides (STIGs)
  2. Hardened hypervisor out of the box without the requirement for administrators to apply hardening recommendations
  3. Reduced attack surface compared to other supported hypervisors

For more information on Nutanix security see:

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