Download Consolidating Legacy SQL Server Databases onto

Consolidating Legacy SQL Server
Databases onto Dell PowerEdge
12th Generation Servers
This white paper demonstrates the benefits of consolidating servers
running on legacy databases onto Dell PowerEdge 12th generation
servers running on Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Luis Acosta
Solutions Performance Analysis Group
Consolidating Legacy SQL Server Databases on Dell 12th Generation PowerEdge Servers
This document 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.
© 2012 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Dell and its affiliates cannot be responsible for errors or
omissions in typography or photography. Dell, the Dell logo, PowerEdge, and PowerVault are
trademarks of Dell Inc. Intel and Xeon are registered trademarks of Intel Corporation in the
U.S. and other countries. Microsoft, SQL Server, Windows, and Windows Server are either
trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other
countries. Other trademarks and trade names may be used in this document to refer to either
the entities claiming the marks and names or their products. Dell disclaims proprietary interest
in the marks and names of others.
August 2012| Rev 1.0
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Consolidating Legacy SQL Server Databases on Dell 12th Generation PowerEdge Servers
Contents
Executive summary .................................................................................................... 4
Introduction ............................................................................................................ 4
Test methodology...................................................................................................... 4
Test results ............................................................................................................. 6
Consolidation improvement factor ............................................................................... 8
Best practices .......................................................................................................... 9
Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 9
Appendix A: References ............................................................................................ 10
Table
Table 1.
System configuration .................................................................................... 10
Figures
Figure 1.
Hardware configuration ................................................................................... 5
Figure 2.
RAID storage configuration ............................................................................... 6
Figure 3.
Database latency ........................................................................................... 6
Figure 4.
CPU utilization .............................................................................................. 7
Figure 5.
Input/output operations per second .................................................................... 8
Figure 6.
Consolidation scenario .................................................................................... 9
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Consolidating Legacy SQL Server Databases on Dell 12th Generation PowerEdge Servers
Executive summary
With the introduction of the Dell™ PowerEdge™ 12th generation servers, customers have an
opportunity to lower total cost of ownership (TCO) by consolidating their legacy database
application servers. Reasons to consolidate database servers include system under-utilization,
hardware/software end-of-life (EOL), cost reductions associated with power and cooling, or
overall performance improvements.
Dell strives to reduce the complexity of migrating from legacy database production
environments to the latest generation of hardware and software while maintaining application
performance needs. The purpose of this document is to evaluate and highlight the performance
benefits of consolidating legacy online transaction processing (OLTP) database applications
running on Dell PowerEdge 2950 9th generation servers to Dell PowerEdge R720 12th generation
servers.
The following key objectives summarize the process of consolidating legacy database systems
®
®
onto Dell 12th generation hardware servers and Microsoft SQL Server 2012 database software.
1. Replace end-of-life (EOL) legacy Microsoft SQL Server(s) to Dell PowerEdge 12th
generation server(s).
2. Consolidate legacy SQL server instances into the newly enhanced Microsoft SQL Server
2012, which features improved performance and scalability.
3. Measure and report the possible consolidation ratio of legacy database environments
onto a single PowerEdge R720 running Microsoft SQL Server 2012.
Introduction
OLTP database applications are characterized by processing large numbers of concurrent
transactions at a given time. For example, today’s banking institutions provide online access to
their customers where they can access account information, transfer funds, and pay bills.
Online banking applications must process thousands of time-sensitive transactions. The
database server that hosts where these transactions are processed requires sufficient resources
in terms of CPU, memory, and fast data access to generate results instantly. Legacy servers
with lower performing CPUs and slower storage are no longer up to the task of servicing the
increased demands within reasonable response time.
Dell’s Solutions Performance Analysis team simulated an OLTP database workload to measure
the performance of the legacy and current generation of PowerEdge servers, storage, and
software stack. This white paper compares a Microsoft SQL Server database solution running on
a legacy Dell PowerEdge 2950 9th generation server and compares a Microsoft SQL 2005 Server
to the new Dell PowerEdge R720 12th generation server and Microsoft SQL Server 2012 RC1.
Test methodology
®
Quest Benchmark Factory for Databases (BMF) is a database build and workload simulation
tool that measures database performance. To test the performance, a 200GB database
modeled after the industry-standard TPC-C benchmark was built on each of the solutions.
To characterize the legacy environment, we configured a Dell PowerEdge 2950 connected to
®
®
two Dell PowerVault™ MD1120 storage arrays, running Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2 x64,
and Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Enterprise x64. Using the Quest Benchmark Factory TPC-C
workload profile, we populated the database with a scale factor of 3000. BMF simulates users
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Consolidating Legacy SQL Server Databases on Dell 12th Generation PowerEdge Servers
issuing TPC-C-like SQL transactions that exercise each database’s storage subsystem with a
random read and write I/O data access pattern in user increments of 250. During each database
user simulation, BMF collected the total number of I/Os per second (IOPS), Average Query
Response Time (AQRT), and CPU utilization. The test was stopped after the average query
response time reached 2 seconds.
To characterize the R720 Solution environment, we configured a PowerEdge R720 server
connected to two Dell PowerVault MD1220 storage arrays, running Microsoft Windows Server
2008 R2 Enterprise, and Microsoft SQL Server 2012 RC1. Figure 1 shows the test configuration
topology for each of the tests.
Figure 1.
Hardware configuration
Legacy Environment
Dell PowerEdge 2950
Dell PowerVault
MD1120 (x2) 48
Drives
PERC 6/E Adapter
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2 Ent.
x64 / Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Ent. x64
PowerEdge R720 Environment
Dell PowerEdge R720
Dell PowerVault
MD1220 (x2)
48 Drives
PERC H810 Adapter
Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 /
Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Ent. X64 (RC1)
Figure 2 is a physical representation of the RAID configuration layout where the database was
built.
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Consolidating Legacy SQL Server Databases on Dell 12th Generation PowerEdge Servers
Figure 2.
RAID storage configuration
Test results
Latency
Average query response time (AQRT) is the time it takes for Microsoft SQL Server to respond to
the query. This metric establishes the performance criteria for our Service Level Agreement
(SLA) of 2 seconds. At 14,750 concurrent users, the legacy environment has met our maximum
SLA of 2 seconds AQRT, while the R720 reached has an AQRT of just 508 milliseconds at the
same user load. To put this into perspective, the R720 is able to respond to the same query
nearly four times faster than the legacy environment. Figure 3 shows the average query
response times recorded during the tests.
Figure 3.
Database latency
Average query response time at 14,750 concurrent users
Average query response time
(seconds. lower is better)
2.5
Maximum SLA — 2 Seconds
2
1.5
1
0.5
0
R720
PE2950
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Consolidating Legacy SQL Server Databases on Dell 12th Generation PowerEdge Servers
System performance - CPU utilization
The graph in Figure 4 shows the CPU utilization on both solutions while simulating 14,750
concurrent users. The R720 reached a maximum of 2.6% CPU utilization compared to the legacy
environment, in which 26.5% CPU was used.
Figure 4.
CPU utilization
30
20
10
R720
14500
13750
13000
12250
11500
10750
10000
9250
8500
7750
0
250
1000
1750
2500
3250
4000
4750
5500
6250
7000
% processor time (lower is better)
CPU Utilization at 14,750 concurrent users
PE2950
Storage performance - I/Os per second (IOPS)
When measuring a storage system’s performance, input/output operations per second (IOPS) is
the most commonly used metric. The legacy environment achieved an average of 6,760 IOPS
while the PowerEdge R720 was able to process 11,110 IOPS: a 60% improvement. Figure 5
illustrates these results.
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Consolidating Legacy SQL Server Databases on Dell 12th Generation PowerEdge Servers
Figure 5.
Input/output operations per second
IOPS at 14,750 concurrent users
10000
8000
6000
4000
2000
R720
14500
13750
13000
12250
11500
10750
10000
9250
8500
7750
7000
6250
5500
4750
4000
3250
2500
1750
1000
0
250
IOPs (higher is better)
12000
PE2950
Consolidation improvement factor
After reviewing the results, we can conclude that a PowerEdge R720 server running Microsoft
SQL Server 2012 can process OLTP queries nearly four times faster compared to a legacy server
running Microsoft SQL Server 2005 while maintaining an SLA of 2 seconds.
10:1 Consolidation at 26% utilization: The R720 at 26% utilization is able to handle the OLTP
workload of 10 Legacy PowerEdge 2950 Servers, as shown in Figure 6.
The R720 paired with two PowerVault MD1220(s) can process 60% more IOPs than the legacy
PowerEdge 2950/2x PowerVault MD1120 solution.
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Consolidating Legacy SQL Server Databases on Dell 12th Generation PowerEdge Servers
Figure 6.
Consolidation scenario
Best practices
1. When possible, use RAID 10 for both the database files and logs as it offers the best mix
of redundancy and performance.
2. Preferably spread the database files into several raid 10 volumes to improve storage
performance.
3. Ensure that the database server is sized with sufficient memory, CPU processing power,
and storage spindles to avoid bottlenecks.
Conclusion
A consolidation project is not a simple task. Customers need careful planning to predict the
performance capacity requirements of the new platform. The focus of this white paper is to
encourage organizations to consolidate multiple legacy SQL servers that reached EOL or do not
meet the increased performance demands of today’s OLTP applications. By reducing the
amount of servers to one, customers drive down TCO of Microsoft Windows and SQL Server
licensing costs while at the same time reducing data center footprint and environmental
impact.
Based on the performance results collected, we can conclude that a single Dell PowerEdge
R720 server populated with two eight-core CPUs 64GB of RAM, is capable of consolidating the
workload of a ten-node legacy database server environment, provided that the system is not
constrained by the storage subsystem nor memory resources or network bandwidth.
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Consolidating Legacy SQL Server Databases on Dell 12th Generation PowerEdge Servers
Appendix A: References
Table 1 describes the software and hardware configurations that were used throughout testing
on both the simulated legacy production environment and the Dell PowerEdge 12th generation
test environment.
Table 1.
System configuration
Component
Legacy environment
Dell PowerEdge environment
System
PowerEdge 2950 III
PowerEdge R720
®
Processor
Two Intel Xeon X5460,
®
Two Intel Xeon E5-2670, 2.70 GHz eight core
3.16 GHz quad core
Memory
64 GB DDR2 (8 GB DIMMs)
64 GB DDR3 (8 GB DIMMs)
Internal
disks
Two 73 GB 2.5” 15K SAS
Two 300 GB 2.5” 15K SAS
Network
Broadcom BCM5708C NetXtreme II
Broadcom
External
storage
2x PowerVault MD1120 48 x 73 GB
2.5” 15K SAS
2x PowerVault MD1220 48 x 146 GB 2.5” 15K
SAS
RAID
Controller
PERC 6/E
PERC H810
OS
Windows 2003 R2 Enterprise X64
Windows 2008 R2 SP1
Database
System
Microsoft SQL 2005 Enterprise X64
Microsoft SQL 2012 Enterprise X64 (RC1)
®
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BCM5720 NetXtreme II™
Quest Benchmark Factory TPCC workload
Workload
• Scale factor: 3000
• User connections: 250 – 18000
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