EMC Syncplicity

Deployment Guide

UPDATED: 11 January 2018

EMC Syncplicity

Copyright Notices

Copyright © 2002-2018 KEMP Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved. KEMP Technologies and the KEMP
Technologies logo are registered trademarks of KEMP Technologies, Inc.

KEMP Technologies, Inc. reserves all ownership rights for the LoadMaster and KEMP 360 product line
including software and documentation.

Used, under license, U.S. Patent Nos. 6,473,802, 6,374,300, 8,392,563, 8,103,770, 7,831,712, 7,606,912,
7,346,695, 7,287,084 and 6,970,933

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EMC Syncplicity

Table of Contents

1 Introduction 4

1.1 Document Purpose 4

1.2 Intended Audience 4

1.3 Prerequisites 4

2 Template 5

3 Solution Overview 6

3.1 Topology 6

3.2 LoadMaster Functionality Applied 6

4 Deployment Example 8

4.1 Network Environment 8

5 LoadMaster Configuration 10

5.1 Enable Subnet Originating Requests Globally 10

5.2 Virtual Service for Syncplicity Cloud to Storage Connectors 10

5.2.1 Virtual Service Settings 11

5.3 Content Rules 12

5.4 Virtual Service for Storage Connector to Atmos 12

6 Configuration: Summary 14

References 15

Last Updated Date 16

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EMC Syncplicity
1 Introduction

1 Introduction
Syncplicity is an enterprise sync and share solution from EMC which enables corporate users to
collaborate from anywhere while providing corporate IT with the security and control required to comply
with best practice and policy. In addition to being a service hosted by EMC, Syncplicity can be deployed
as an on-premise solution integrated with storage architectures such as EMC Atmos.

The KEMP LoadMaster not only addresses the load balancing requirements defined by EMC, it can add
significant value in multi-tenant environments such as service providers and enterprise deployments.

1.1 Document Purpose

This document outlines how a KEMP LoadMaster can be deployed together with EMC Syncplicity. It also
provides guidelines for the configuration of LoadMaster services.

1.2 Intended Audience

This document is intended to be used by anyone deploying a LoadMaster in conjunction with on
premise Syncplicity and by service providers deploying a multi-tenant Syncplicity service.

1.3 Prerequisites
The reader should have sufficient knowledge of networking, the LoadMaster and Syncplicity products to
implement the solution outlined.

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EMC Syncplicity
2 Template

2 Template
KEMP has developed a template containing our recommended settings for this workload. You can install
this template to help when creating Virtual Services, as it automatically populates the settings. This is
quicker and easier than manually configuring each Virtual Service. If needed, changes can be made to any
of the Virtual Service settings after using the template.

Download released templates from the Templates section on the KEMP documentation page:
http://kemptechnologies.com/documentation.

For more information and steps on how to import and use templates, refer to the Virtual Services and
Templates, Feature Description on the KEMP Documentation Page.

For steps on how to manually add and configure each of the Virtual Services using the recommended
settings, refer to the steps in this document.

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EMC Syncplicity
3 Solution Overview

3 Solution Overview
3.1 Topology
Syncplicity consists of a cloud-based orchestration layer connecting authenticated and authorized clients
with their storage using a customer-specific URL. 

Based on the URL content, the LoadMaster infrastructure forwards the customer request to the
customer-specific Storage Connector. The Storage Connector services the customer request by
communicating with the EMC Atmos service via the LoadMaster.

While the Cloud Orchestrator is designed to deal with a single IP address (Storage Connector), the
LoadMaster enables a multi-tenant environment by selecting the client’s Storage Connector based on
the client-specific URL.

3.2 LoadMaster Functionality Applied

The LoadMaster environment enhances the Syncplicity environment in the following ways:

It load balances Storage Connector hosts

It load balances traffic on the Atmos storage cluster

It simplifies scaling of Storage Connectors

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EMC Syncplicity
3 Solution Overview

It performs Network Address Translation (NAT) of internal addresses

Acts as a single point for managing and controlling digital certificates

Enables multi-tenancy on a single IP address by mapping the request URL to subscriber-specific

Storage Connectors  

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EMC Syncplicity
4 Deployment Example

4 Deployment Example
To highlight the LoadMaster capabilities, the example below assumes the following:

On-Premise, Multi-Tenant service on the domain example.com

Services are provided to Customer A, Customer B and Customer C

Each customer has a pair of Storage Connectors deployed

A single certificate is used to secure communication with all customers

An EMC Atmos cluster provides a multi-tenant storage platform

For simplicity, a single LoadMaster is deployed, although in a real situation a pair of LoadMasters
would be used for resilience

4.1 Network Environment

The LoadMaster sits behind a NAT firewall on subnet 192.168.83.0/24. A virtual IP of 192.168.83.200 is
created to service requests from the Cloud Orchestrator

The Storage Connector VMs are on subnet 172.16.10.0/24

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EMC Syncplicity
4 Deployment Example

Customer A connects via https://customera.example.com and has Storage Connector hosts at

172.16.10.1 and 172.16.10.2

Customer B connects via https://customerb.example.com and has Storage Connector hosts at

172.16.10.3 and 172.16.10.4

Customer C connects via https://customerc.example.com and has Storage Connector hosts at

172.16.105 and 172.16.10.6

The EMC Atmos cluster is on subnet 10.1.1.0/24 with IP addresses of 10.1.1.101, 10.1.1.102, 10.1.103,
10.1.1.104, 10.1.1.105, and 10.1.1.106

The LoadMaster is configured with addresses of 10.1.1.200 and 172.16.10.200 to provide connectivity
to the Storage Connector and the EMC Atmos storage platform

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EMC Syncplicity
5 LoadMaster Configuration

5 LoadMaster Configuration
5.1 Enable Subnet Originating Requests Globally
It is best practice to enable the Subnet Originating Requests option globally.

In a one-armed setup (where the Virtual Service and Real Servers are on the same network/subnet)
Subnet Originating Requests is usually not needed. However, enabling Subnet Originating Requests
should not affect the routing in a one-armed setup.

In a two-armed setup where the Virtual Service is on network/subnet A, for example, and the Real
Servers are on network B - Subnet Originating Requests should be enabled on LoadMasters with
firmware version 7.1-16 and above.

When Subnet Originating Requests is enabled, the LoadMaster will route traffic so that the Real Server
will see traffic arriving from the LoadMaster interface that is in that network/subnet not the Virtual
Service address.

When Subnet Originating Requests is enabled globally, it is automatically enabled on all Virtual Services.
If the Subnet Originating Requests option is disabled globally, you can choose whether or not to enable
Subnet Originating Requests on a per-Virtual Service basis.

To enable Subnet Originating Requests globally, follow the steps below:

1. In the main menu of the LoadMaster Web User Interface (WUI), go to System Configuration >
Miscellaneous Options > Network Options.

2. Tick the Subnet Originating Requests check box.

5.2 Virtual Service for Syncplicity Cloud to Storage Connectors

For our example, a Virtual Service needs to be created on 192.168.83.200 which redirects requests to the
customer-specific Sub-Virtual Service (SubVS) based on the requestor URL. To do this, follow the steps
below in the LoadMaster Web User Interface (WUI):

1. Create a Virtual Service on the LoadMaster which responds to requests on port 443 coming
from the Syncplicity Cloud.

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EMC Syncplicity
5 LoadMaster Configuration

2. Configure the Virtual Service using the recommended settings as listed in the Virtual Service
Settings section.

3. For each customer, create a SubVS and add Real Servers for their Storage Connector servers.

The Storage Connection host is on port 9000.

4. Add any Real Servers, as needed.

5.2.1 Virtual Service Settings

The following, are KEMP recommended settings for a Syncplicity Virtual Service. All other options remain
as per the default configuration. However, changes can be made to any settings, as needed based on
your environment.

Section Option Value Comment

Standard
Transparency Enabled
Options
Persistence
None
Method
Scheduling round
Method robin
A wildcard certificate allows secure connections to be established
SSL SSL with a request URL in the format of *.example.com. With this
Enabled
Properties Acceleration approach, a single certificate secures traffic for all clients in a
multi-tenant environment.
Best For further information on cipher sets, please refer to the SSL
Cipher Set
Practices Accelerated Services, Feature Description.

Real Server
Real HTTP These settings are used to define the URL to use for checking the
Check
Servers Protocol availability of a Real Server.
Parameters

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EMC Syncplicity
5 LoadMaster Configuration

Section Option Value Comment

HTTP
HEAD
Method

5.3 Content Rules

Content rules allow traffic be redirected based on criteria, including the URL requested by the client.

In our example, the LoadMaster is configured with a content rule for each customer so requests to the
customer-specific URL are redirected to the customer-specific Storage Controller pair.

In the SubVS section of the Virtual Service properties page, add the appropriate content matching rule
for each customer.

For more information on content rules in general, please refer to the Content Rules, Feature
Description.

5.4 Virtual Service for Storage Connector to Atmos

The Storage Connector nodes communicate with the Atmos storage backend via port 80. The Atmos
storage environment consists of multiple nodes and any of which are capable of servicing requests from
Storage Connectors. EMC suggests using a round robin algorithm on a load balancer. This results in even
distribution of service requests across the Atmos nodes. The health of the Atmos environment can be
tested using PING or by requesting the /rest page from the Atmos node.

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EMC Syncplicity
5 LoadMaster Configuration

A Virtual Service should be created on the LoadMaster interface which is connected to the particular
Storage Connector subnet. This Virtual Service should accept HTTP requests on port 80 and balance
them, using round robin, to the Atmos nodes (the six IP addresses on 10.1.1.0/24 in this example).

Atmos nodes are added as Real Servers with the server check set to ICMP Ping or HTTP Protocol. Using
HTTP as the check protocol gives a view of the Atmos REST service status while PING only checks the host
network status.

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EMC Syncplicity
6 Configuration: Summary

6 Configuration: Summary

Syncplicity clients connect via the Syncplicity orchestration cloud to the Virtual IP [1] on the LoadMaster
which is listening on port 443.

Based on the request URL, the connection [2] is forwarded to the customer’s Connection Server pair on
port 9000 [3].

The Connection Server makes a REST request on port 80 to the Atmos Virtual IP [4] which balances the
request to one of the available Atmos nodes [5].

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EMC Syncplicity
References

References
Unless otherwise specified, the following documents can be found at
http://kemptechnologies.com/documentation.

Content Rules, Feature Description

Virtual Services and Templates, Feature Description

SSL Accelerated Services, Feature Description

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EMC Syncplicity
Last Updated Date

Last Updated Date

This document was last updated on 11 January 2018.

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