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Solution Guide
EMC EXTREME PERFORMANCE AND
EFFICIENCY FOR MICROSOFT SQL SERVER
EMC XtremIO, VMware vSphere, and Microsoft SQL Server 2014
 Optimize very high throughput for SQL Server workloads
 Virtualize and consolidate database instances
 Minimize storage footprint for multiple database copies
EMC Solutions
Abstract
This solution guide describes the operational advantages of virtualized
Microsoft SQL Server 2014 databases deployed on an EMC® XtremIO™ all-flash
array, and how the solution enhances the capabilities of SQL Server databasedependent environments.
April 2015
Copyright © 2015 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Published in the USA.
Published April 2015
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EMC Extreme Performance and Efficiency for Microsoft SQL Server
Solution Guide
Part Number H13870
2
EMC Extreme Performance and Efficiency for Microsoft SQL Server
EMC XtremIO, VMware vSphere, and SQL Server 2014
Solution Guide
Contents
Contents
Chapter 1
Executive Summary
7
Document purpose ..................................................................................................... 8
Audience .................................................................................................................... 8
Business case ............................................................................................................ 8
Solution purpose ........................................................................................................ 9
Key results................................................................................................................ 10
Terminology.............................................................................................................. 10
Chapter 2
Solution Overview
11
Introduction ............................................................................................................. 12
EMC XtremIO ............................................................................................................ 12
Key advantages ................................................................................................... 12
VMware vSphere ...................................................................................................... 13
Microsoft SQL Server 2014 ....................................................................................... 14
SQL Server clustering storage considerations ...................................................... 14
SQL Server Data Compression.............................................................................. 15
Chapter 3
Solution Architecture
16
Overview .................................................................................................................. 17
Architecture diagram ................................................................................................ 17
Hardware resources.................................................................................................. 18
Software resources ................................................................................................... 19
Chapter 4
Storage Layer: EMC XtremIO
20
Storage design overview ........................................................................................... 21
Database considerations .......................................................................................... 21
Storage design details .............................................................................................. 22
Chapter 5
Microsoft SQL Server Solution Design
24
Overview .................................................................................................................. 25
SQL Server database solution storage design ........................................................... 25
SQL Server database solution profile ........................................................................ 25
SQL Server database solution LUN design ................................................................ 26
Chapter 6
Network Layer Best Practices
27
Overview .................................................................................................................. 28
EMC Extreme Performance and Efficiency for Microsoft SQL Server
EMC XtremIO, VMware vSphere, and SQL Server 2014
Solution Guide
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Contents
SAN network ............................................................................................................. 28
IP network ................................................................................................................ 28
VMware vSphere network ......................................................................................... 28
Chapter 7
Physical Servers and Virtualization Layer
30
Overview .................................................................................................................. 31
Compute and storage resources ............................................................................... 31
Network virtualization .............................................................................................. 32
Storage management with ESI .................................................................................. 32
Chapter 8
Design Considerations
33
Overview .................................................................................................................. 34
XtremIO configuration best practices ........................................................................ 34
Configuring Fibre Channel switches ..................................................................... 34
Configuring servers .............................................................................................. 34
Configuring vSphere Native Multipathing ............................................................. 36
Placing XtremIO devices under PowerPath’s control ............................................. 38
Configuring XtremIO storage for SQL Server using ESI ............................................... 38
Provisioning XtremIO ........................................................................................... 39
Creating and mounting a snapshot using AppSync ................................................... 42
Creating a snapshot of an existing SQL Server database with AppSync ................ 42
Mounting a snapshot of a SQL Server database with AppSync ............................. 45
Chapter 9
Performance Testing and Validation
47
Overview .................................................................................................................. 48
Notes on results................................................................................................... 48
Test objectives..................................................................................................... 48
Test scenarios...................................................................................................... 48
OLTP workload performance and scale test .............................................................. 49
Test methodology ................................................................................................ 49
Test procedure ..................................................................................................... 49
Test results .......................................................................................................... 50
XtremIO system performance ............................................................................... 51
XtremIO and SQL Server OLTP read/write workloads ............................................ 52
VMDK and RDM performance comparison ............................................................ 52
Test methodology ................................................................................................ 52
Test procedure ..................................................................................................... 53
Test results .......................................................................................................... 53
XtremIO data reduction analysis ............................................................................... 54
Snapshot data reduction ..................................................................................... 54
4
EMC Extreme Performance and Efficiency for Microsoft SQL Server
EMC XtremIO, VMware vSphere, and SQL Server 2014
Solution Guide
Contents
Production database data reduction rate ............................................................. 55
XtremIO Data reduction with SQL Server AlwaysOn Availability Groups ................ 55
SQL Server row and page compression on XtremIO .............................................. 57
Test methodology ................................................................................................ 58
Test procedure ..................................................................................................... 58
Test results .......................................................................................................... 58
SQL Server Failover Clustering on VMware setup and analysis .................................. 59
LUN setup ............................................................................................................ 59
Cluster setup validation ....................................................................................... 61
Chapter 10 Conclusion
62
Summary .................................................................................................................. 63
Findings ................................................................................................................... 63
Chapter 11 References
64
EMC documentation ................................................................................................. 65
VMware documentation............................................................................................ 65
Microsoft SQL Server documentation ........................................................................ 65
Figures
Figure 1.
XtremIO Storage Management Application dashboard ......................... 12
Figure 2.
XtremIO all-flash array family ............................................................... 13
Figure 3.
AlwaysOn FCI versus AAG .................................................................... 14
Figure 4.
Solution architecture ........................................................................... 17
Figure 5.
XtremIO storage capacity consumption planning ................................. 22
Figure 6.
XtremIO Management Application dashboard storage panel ............... 22
Figure 7.
XtremIO dual X-Brick FC switch configuration ....................................... 34
Figure 8.
Changing the I/O Throttle Count setting for Cisco UCS Server .............. 35
Figure 9.
Storage device path management configuration .................................. 37
Figure 10.
XtremIO SSD LUN under PowerPath management ................................ 38
Figure 11.
Setting up XtremIO in ESI ..................................................................... 39
Figure 12.
Creating a new XtremIO volume in ESI ................................................. 40
Figure 13.
Viewing XtremIO storage capacity in ESI .............................................. 40
Figure 14.
Viewing XtremIO storage groups in ESI ................................................ 41
Figure 15.
XtremIO volume mappings in ESI ......................................................... 41
Figure 16.
Assigning an RDM to SQL Server for database storage in ESI ............... 42
Figure 17.
Adding XtremIO to AppSync ................................................................. 43
Figure 18.
Configuring SQL Server in AppSync ...................................................... 43
Figure 19.
Selecting the database and the protection plan for the snapshot ........ 44
EMC Extreme Performance and Efficiency for Microsoft SQL Server
EMC XtremIO, VMware vSphere, and SQL Server 2014
Solution Guide
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Contents
Figure 20.
XtremIO snapshots created with AppSync ........................................... 44
Figure 21.
Selecting SQL Server mount copy options............................................ 45
Figure 22.
Mounted snapshot ready for read/write operation on the recovered
database copy ..................................................................................... 45
Figure 23.
Mounted database recovered as a read/write copy ready for database
operations ........................................................................................... 46
Figure 24.
SQL Server and XtremIO scalability test ............................................... 50
Figure 25.
XtremIO Performance with full OLTP work load on SQL Server 2014 ..... 51
Figure 26.
SQL Server 2014 disk I/O performance ................................................ 51
Figure 27.
SQL Server 2014 database transactional performance ........................ 52
Figure 28.
IOPS for the same workload against RDM and VMDK ........................... 53
Figure 29.
SQL Server and XtremIO latency with RDM and VMDK .......................... 53
Figure 30.
XtremIO snapshot data efficiency ........................................................ 55
Figure 31.
Deduplication ratio and physical space used before and after creating
the AAG ............................................................................................... 56
Figure 32.
Volume and physical space used for SQL Server AAG instance ............ 56
Figure 33.
XtremIO physical storage usage during a bulk insert............................ 57
Figure 34.
Space savings from SQL Server native compression ............................ 58
Figure 35.
Performance improvement from SQL Server compression and CPU usage
change ................................................................................................ 59
Figure 36.
VMware virtual machine disk configuration for an AlwaysOn FCI .......... 60
Figure 37.
XtremIO and SQL Server OLTP performance with an AlwaysOn FCI on
vSphere 5.5 ......................................................................................... 61
Tables
6
Table 1.
Terminology......................................................................................... 10
Table 2.
Hardware resources............................................................................. 18
Table 3.
Software resources .............................................................................. 19
Table 4.
Microsoft SQL Server storage design on XtremIO ................................. 23
Table 5.
Volume assignments for OLTP Databases ............................................ 23
Table 6.
SQL Server 2014 OLTP database profiles ............................................ 25
Table 7.
LUN design details for the SQL Server 2014 OLTP databases .............. 26
Table 8.
vSwitch configuration .......................................................................... 32
Table 9.
Test workload sequence ...................................................................... 49
Table 10.
VMware support for failover clusters.................................................... 59
EMC Extreme Performance and Efficiency for Microsoft SQL Server
EMC XtremIO, VMware vSphere, and SQL Server 2014
Solution Guide
Chapter 1: Executive Summary
Chapter 1
Executive Summary
This chapter presents the following topics:
Document purpose ..................................................................................................... 8
Audience .................................................................................................................... 8
Business case ............................................................................................................ 8
Solution purpose........................................................................................................ 9
Key results ...............................................................................................................10
Terminology .............................................................................................................10
EMC Extreme Performance and Efficiency for Microsoft SQL Server
EMC XtremIO, VMware vSphere, and SQL Server 2014
Solution Guide
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Chapter 1: Executive Summary
Document purpose
This solution guide:

Describes a highly available and scalable solution for Microsoft SQL Server
deployed in a virtualized VMware vSphere environment with EMC® XtremIO™
all-flash storage.

Describes how the solution improves and enhances the performance of SQL
Server 2014 by providing new capabilities and simplifying configuration.

Demonstrates how XtremIO read and write snapshots enable highly effective
reporting and development environments with no performance impact to the
consolidated production server.
Audience
The solution guide is intended for SQL Server database administrators, VMware
administrators, storage administrators, IT architects, and technical managers who are
responsible for designing, creating, and managing SQL Server databases,
infrastructure, and datacenters.
Business case
Increasing demands on today’s business environments are driving enterprises to
optimize processes and improve service. Fueling the demands on IT infrastructure
performance and data availability are:

High-transaction workloads

Time-critical applications and escalating service-level agreements

Turn-key and third-party applications with high sensitivity for I/O
responsiveness

Replication of application databases for use by supporting business processes
such as business intelligence (BI) reporting, testing, and development

The need for highly available architectures
In most environments, enterprises need to create copies of production data with
minimal impact to the system, and safely repurpose those copies so that business
teams within their organization can use the data. Typically, they must wait hours or
days to get access to copies of production data. This delay reduces their
effectiveness for tasks, such as BI insight, data integrity, validation, and auditing.
As enterprises attempt to improve data availability, issues such as the following
occur when the environment cannot meet expectations:
8

The configurations are too complex for SQL Server environments that include
production, test, development, and analytics.

The existing technology solution has limited capabilities to maintain multiple
copies of databases for read and write purposes, without affecting production
EMC Extreme Performance and Efficiency for Microsoft SQL Server
EMC XtremIO, VMware vSphere, and SQL Server 2014
Solution Guide
Chapter 1: Executive Summary
performance. In many cases, the enterprise requires duplicated highperformance environments, which can be very costly.

Maintaining the complex systems puts high demands on operations staff.

The environment might need expensive third-party tools to manage unwieldy
backup and recovery methods
Enterprises that rely on SQL Server must consider new approaches to meet continuing
operational performance and capacity management challenges. Solutions that
provide high performance levels while minimizing operational costs and complexity
are important.
Solution purpose
Working together, Microsoft and EMC supply the critical components that deliver
high-performance, enterprise-class solutions for SQL Server environments. EMC
XtremIO provides an optimized storage solution for high demand online transaction
processing (OLTP) database performance for SQL Server. It ensures that you can
maximize the efficiencies of other system resources, such as CPU and memory.
The XtremIO all-flash array responds to changing conditions such as transaction
processing spikes and complex queries, and supports test and development
environments with up-to-date copies of production databases.
Through XtremIO array-based snapshots, this solution enables near-instant data
recovery to minimize downtime after a database issue (data loss, logical corruption,
and so on) occurs. XtremIO snapshot technology also enables faster, easier, and
more cost-effective data accessibility, which improves BI and analytics.
XtremIO all-flash arrays resolve database storage challenges by:

Enabling you to create a volume with just a few clicks

Enabling storage of the entire database structure with no need for complicated
planning, provisioning, or tuning

Automatically employing all storage-system resources—solid-state drives
(SSDs) and controllers—all the time

Scaling out the XtremIO system to increase performance if your requirements
exceed what a single XtremIO X-Brick delivers

Eliminating complexities by using XtremIO snapshots to manage multiple
instances and databases copies
EMC Extreme Performance and Efficiency for Microsoft SQL Server
EMC XtremIO, VMware vSphere, and SQL Server 2014
Solution Guide
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Chapter 1: Executive Summary
Key results
This solution shows that the XtremIO all-flash storage array delivers:

Fast and simple setup without storage tuning. XtremIO works as seamlessly in
virtualized SQL Server environments as in physical ones. With EMC Storage
Integrator (ESI), the configuration for XtremIO is further simplified and is easy to
manage and monitor in a single user interface.

Support for the most demanding transactional SQL Server 2014 OLTP
workloads, with throughput that can easily exceed 300,000 IOPS for a two
X-Brick configuration while maintaining near average sub-millisecond latencies

XtremIO inline compression works with or without SQL Server native
compression to save physical storage while still offering the best performance
with substantial storage savings.

Substantial storage footprint savings by using XtremIO inline data reduction
and snapshots

Close to real-time, high-performance copies of data with XtremIO snapshot
technology at no immediate measurable cost, while providing near-instant
recovery of production data, even with Big Data

XtremIO supports SQL Server features such as AlwaysOn Failover Cluster
Instances (FCI) and AlwaysOn Availability Group (AAG).
Terminology
Table 1 provides definitions of terminology used in this guide.
Table 1.
10
Terminology
Term
Definition
Data synchronization
The process that reproduces changes to a primary
database on a secondary database.
Online transaction
processing (OLTP)
Transaction-oriented processes such as data entry and
retrieval transaction processing.
Round robin
An automatic and performance-effective path-selection
policy. Round-robin policy rotates through all available
paths, enabling the distribution of load across the
configured paths and selecting the next available I/O path
in the list without any determining factor. For example, if
you have six I/O requests in the queue for storage, a roundrobin policy dictates the use of paths 1 to 6 in order.
Virtual Machine Disk
(VMDK)
A file format for virtual machines.
EMC Extreme Performance and Efficiency for Microsoft SQL Server
EMC XtremIO, VMware vSphere, and SQL Server 2014
Solution Guide
Chapter 2: Solution Overview
Chapter 2
Solution Overview
This chapter presents the following topics:
Introduction .............................................................................................................12
EMC XtremIO ............................................................................................................12
VMware vSphere ......................................................................................................13
Microsoft SQL Server 2014 ...................................................................................... 14
EMC Extreme Performance and Efficiency for Microsoft SQL Server
EMC XtremIO, VMware vSphere, and SQL Server 2014
Solution Guide
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Chapter 2: Solution Overview
Introduction
This solution includes the following key technology components:

EMC XtremIO

VMware vSphere

Microsoft SQL Server 2014
EMC XtremIO
The EMC XtremIO storage array is an all-flash system with a scale-out architecture.
The system uses building blocks, called X-Bricks, that you can cluster together to
increase performance and capacity as required. This solution uses two X-Bricks
clustered together as a single logical storage system.
Key advantages
XtremIO uses flash storage to deliver value across the following main dimensions:

Performance—Regardless of how busy the system is, and regardless of storage
capacity utilization, latency and throughput remain consistent, predictable, and
constant. Latency within the array for an I/O request is typically far less than
one millisecond (ms). Figure 1 shows an example of the XtremIO dashboard
used to monitor performance.
Figure 1.

12
XtremIO Storage Management Application dashboard
Scalability—A single X-Brick is the building block of the XtremIO scale-out
architecture. You can cluster multiple X-Bricks together to provide increased
performance and capacity. Performance scales linearly to ensure that two
X-Bricks supply twice the IOPS and four X-Bricks supply four times the IOPS of
the single X-Brick configuration. At the same time, the latency remains
consistently low as the system scales out. XtremIO arrays can scale out for any
required performance or capacity level, as shown in Figure 2.
EMC Extreme Performance and Efficiency for Microsoft SQL Server
EMC XtremIO, VMware vSphere, and SQL Server 2014
Solution Guide
Chapter 2: Solution Overview
Figure 2.
XtremIO all-flash array family

Inline data reduction—The core XtremIO engine implements content-based
inline data reduction. XtremIO automatically reduces (deduplicates and
compresses) data as the system processes it. This reduces the amount of data
written to flash, improving longevity of the media and reducing cost. Volumes
are always thin-provisioned without any loss of performance.

Data protection—XtremIO uses a proprietary flash-optimized data protection
algorithm, XtremIO Data Protection (XDP), which provides superior data
protection while enabling performance that surpasses any existing RAID
algorithms. Optimizations in XDP also result in fewer writes to flash media and
help increase flash endurance in the array.

Functionality—XtremIO supports high-performance and space-efficient
snapshots, inline data reduction, thin provisioning, Data-at-Rest Encryption
(D@RE), and full vSphere VAAI integration with support for Fibre Channel (FC)
and iSCSI protocols. All of these features were specifically designed for the
flash array.

Simplicity—Provisioning storage with XtremIO is as simple as deciding how
large a LUN you want to create. You no longer need to select the RAID type,
create a RAID group, or decide whether or not to enable thin provisioning,
deduplication, or any other data service. These functions are already built into
XtremIO.
VMware vSphere
XtremIO offers efficient enterprise storage with VMware vSphere cloud
infrastructures. vSphere provides complete and robust virtualization. For example,
vSphere:

Virtualizes business-critical applications with dynamic resource pools for
unprecedented flexibility and reliability

Transforms the physical resources of a computer by virtualizing the CPU, RAM,
hard disk, and network controller. This transformation creates a fully functional
virtual machine that runs isolated and encapsulated operating systems and
applications.
EMC Extreme Performance and Efficiency for Microsoft SQL Server
EMC XtremIO, VMware vSphere, and SQL Server 2014
Solution Guide
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Chapter 2: Solution Overview
Microsoft SQL Server 2014
Microsoft SQL Server 2014 is the next generation of Microsoft’s information platform,
with features that deliver faster performance, expand capabilities both on premises
and in the cloud, and provide powerful business insights.
SQL Server 2014 offers to organizations the opportunity to efficiently protect, unlock,
and scale data across desktops, mobile devices, data centers, and a private, public,
or hybrid cloud. SQL Server product groups made sizable investments to improve
scalability and performance of the SQL Server database engine component.
SQL Server 2014 is used to build mission-critical applications using highperformance, in-memory security technology across OLTP and data warehousing for
decision-support systems, business intelligence, analytics services, and so on. You
must fully understand these factors and plan accordingly when deploying SQL Server.
Note: While SQL Server 2014 was the version used in this solution, the technology supports
all versions of SQL Server from 2008 R2 onwards.
SQL Server
clustering storage
considerations
AlwaysOn Availability Groups (AAGs) is a high availability and disaster recovery
feature introduced in SQL Server 2012. This feature requires Windows Server Failover
Clustering (WSFC). AAGs are not dependent on SQL Server AlwaysOn FCI.
In SQL Server AlwaysOn FCI, the SQL Server database and log files are shared among
all the nodes in the cluster, so the storage LUNs hosting these files need to be
accessible from all nodes. This means that all LUNs need to be configured and zoned
to the nodes in the cluster simultaneously. The specific database and log LUNs can
be accessed only from the node actively running the SQL Server instance.
While primary and secondary copies of databases do not share storage in AAGs, each
node in the cluster needs to have its own storage configured and zoned. The
database copy on the secondary node of an AAG can be accessed if it is configured as
a “readable copy,” which is independent of the primary copy. This can be used to
enable reporting capability on the secondary copy to offload from the primary copy.
Figure 3 shows the difference between the AAG and AlwaysOn FCI features.
Figure 3.
14
AlwaysOn FCI versus AAG
EMC Extreme Performance and Efficiency for Microsoft SQL Server
EMC XtremIO, VMware vSphere, and SQL Server 2014
Solution Guide
Chapter 2: Solution Overview
SQL Server Data
Compression
SQL Server 2014 supports row and page compression for rowstore tables and
indexes. In addition to capacity savings, data compression can improve the
performance of I/O intensive workloads. This is because as data is compressed,
queries require fewer pages to be read from disk. However, extra CPU resources are
required on the database server to compress and decompress data.
EMC Extreme Performance and Efficiency for Microsoft SQL Server
EMC XtremIO, VMware vSphere, and SQL Server 2014
Solution Guide
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Chapter 3: Solution Architecture
Chapter 3
Solution Architecture
This chapter presents the following topics:
Overview ..................................................................................................................17
Architecture diagram ............................................................................................... 17
Hardware resources .................................................................................................18
Software resources ..................................................................................................19
16
EMC Extreme Performance and Efficiency for Microsoft SQL Server
EMC XtremIO, VMware vSphere, and SQL Server 2014
Solution Guide
Chapter 3: Solution Architecture
Overview
The solution provides an optimal cost-to-performance ratio for Microsoft SQL Server
mission-critical application environments. The SQL Server 2014 databases are
deployed as virtualized databases on an XtremIO storage array consisting of two
X-Bricks. The virtualized test/development SQL Server instances in the environment
access the XtremIO snapshots of the production database for testing and
development purposes.
Architecture diagram
Figure 4 shows the logical architecture of this solution.
Figure 4.
Solution architecture
EMC Extreme Performance and Efficiency for Microsoft SQL Server
EMC XtremIO, VMware vSphere, and SQL Server 2014
Solution Guide
17
Chapter 3: Solution Architecture
The solution architecture includes the following:

Storage layer—Two X-Bricks in a single XtremIO cluster.

SQL Server database layer—Standalone SQL Server 2014 with five databases
and their snapshots that can be mounted to any of the mount hosts at any
time, as necessary. We also configured a SQL Server AlwaysOn FCI and an
AlwaysOn Availability Group instance in this environment to demonstrate the
ease of configuration in the XtremIO environment.

Network layer—108 GB/s of active bandwidth with SAN switches that support
virtualized data centers and enterprise clouds.

Physical servers and virtualization layer—A three-server rack that enables a
high-performing, consolidated, virtualized SQL Server infrastructure for
deployment flexibility without the need to modify the application. The ESXi
servers are configured as a VMware vSphere High Availability (HA) cluster.
Our performance tests ran OLTP workloads against the SQL Server databases on
these servers.
Hardware resources
Table 2 lists the hardware resources used in the solution.
Table 2.
Hardware resources
Hardware
Quantity
Configuration
Storage array
1
XtremIO with two X-Bricks as one cluster with a total of
30.4 TB of usable physical capacity
Servers
3
20 Intel E7 2.9 GHz processor cores with 512 GB of RAM,
including:
 2 x 1 Gb quad Ethernet (GbE) NIC
 2 x 10 GbE NICs
 2 x 8 GB FC dual-port host bus adapters (HBAs)
18
LAN switches
2
10 GbE, 32-port non-blocking
SAN switches
2
EMC Connectrix DS-6510B enterprise class SAN switch
EMC Extreme Performance and Efficiency for Microsoft SQL Server
EMC XtremIO, VMware vSphere, and SQL Server 2014
Solution Guide
Chapter 3: Solution Architecture
Software resources
Table 3 lists the software resources used in this solution.
Table 3.
Software resources
Software
Version
Notes
XtremIO
3.0.1
All-flash storage
VMware vSphere
5.5
Hypervisor that hosts:
 Two enterprise-class
production virtual machines
 Three stand-alone SQL
Server virtual machines
Each virtual machine is
configured with 16 vCPUs and
32 GB of RAM.
VMware vCenter
5.5
vSphere management
Microsoft Windows 2012 R2
SP1
OS for database servers
Microsoft SQL Server 2014
Enterprise Edition CU 4
Database software
EMC AppSync
2.1.0.0
SQL Server VSS integrated, SLA
driven snapshot management
tool. This tool provides
snapshot with database
consistency, automated
XtremIO snapshot creation, and
mounting with multiple recovery
options for the snapshot.
EMC Storage Integrator (ESI)
3.6
ESI provides the ability to view,
provision, and manage EMC
block and file storage in a
Windows environment.
PowerPath/VE
5.9.1
EMC storage multipath
management
Microsoft OLTP Toolkit
n/a
This toolkit simulates an OLTP
workload.
EMC Extreme Performance and Efficiency for Microsoft SQL Server
EMC XtremIO, VMware vSphere, and SQL Server 2014
Solution Guide
19
Chapter 4: Storage Layer: EMC XtremIO
Chapter 4
Storage Layer: EMC XtremIO
This chapter presents the following topics:
Storage design overview .......................................................................................... 21
Database considerations.......................................................................................... 21
Storage design details ............................................................................................. 22
20
EMC Extreme Performance and Efficiency for Microsoft SQL Server
EMC XtremIO, VMware vSphere, and SQL Server 2014
Solution Guide
Chapter 4: Storage Layer: EMC XtremIO
Storage design overview
XtremIO uses its multi-controller scale-out design and Remote Direct Memory Access
(RDMA) fabric to maintain all metadata in memory.
This feature makes XtremIO arrays resistant to changes in workload—no matter what
LUN sizes you use, whether you use random or sequential access patterns, or
whether you use locality of reference—the performance is always consistent and
predictable. Database administrators no longer need to worry about hot spots on the
array.
The need for a careful, painstaking storage design for optimized performance is no
longer necessary. For example, disruptive tempdb workloads can co-exist in the same
LUN with its write-intensive transaction logs and still provide excellent performance.
With built-in thin provisioning, storage is allocated only when it is needed. This
enables DBAs to create larger LUNs to accommodate future or unexpected growth for
databases, without wasting any physical space on storage.
Best of all, heavy metadata operations, such as inline data reduction, thin
provisioning allocations, and internal array copy operations, are conducted entirely in
memory without impacting I/O operations.
Database considerations
Database storage design typically requires free space at all levels of the storage
stack, from actual data in databases, to space allocated to data files and log files.
If an SQL Server database runs out of data file space, the database instance stops
committing any new transactions, and an immediate manual remediation is required
to avoid crashing the database and losing data. It is critical that the line of business
is not affected. If database file auto growth is enabled, SQL Server automatically
allocates additional chunks of disk storage to avoid this database file-full situation.
However, that operation usually affects database performance and, if used
indiscriminately, can cause repeat fragmentation of data files across disks, which can
further impact performance.
EMC and SQL Server traditional best practices recommend that you configure SQL
Server data file sizes to be 10 to 20 percent larger than the current or intended
database size. This configuration requires free space at the New Technology File
System (NTFS) volume level, which results in the underlying storage space being
locked out without perceivable value until the space is needed. A maintenance
window and manual intervention is required if the NTFS volume needs expansion.
It is difficult to balance how much free disk space to allocate for the database at the
design stage, which will not have an immediate use, as compared to the amount of
readily available free space for growth.
Figure 5 shows an example of a 1 TB database. The cost and management complexity
is compounded multiple times in database environments with multiple database and
log files in use across many SQL Server instances. In this example, you have 1 TB of
data, but need at least 1.58 TB of allocated storage space to adhere to traditional
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Chapter 4: Storage Layer: EMC XtremIO
storage planning best practices. This represents about a 58 percent waste of physical
storage allocation for free space.
Figure 5 also shows how a 1 TB database can easily use less than 1 TB of physical
storage allocation on XtremIO and still satisfy the logical free space required for
storage planning.
Figure 5.
XtremIO storage capacity consumption planning
By using thin provisioning (allocation-on-demand) and deduplication/compression
with XtremIO, a 1 TB database requires less than 1 TB of allocated physical space.
This example assumes 2:1 overall data reduction in XtremIO for a typical OLTP
database environment. This eliminates the operational complexities by allocating as
much LUN space, virtual file system space and, therefore, NTFS volume space, as
required from the start because storage is only allocated on demand.
Storage design details
For this solution, we deployed XtremIO in a two X-Brick cluster with XtremIO XDP to
provide a physical capacity of 30.4 TB, as shown in Figure 6.
Figure 6.
22
XtremIO Management Application dashboard storage panel
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Chapter 4: Storage Layer: EMC XtremIO
XtremIO processes both random and sequential I/O generated from the database in
an equally balanced way across the array. This simplifies the storage design for SQL
Server databases compared to traditional provisioning techniques.
For this solution, we standardized the volume size for easy deployment, as shown in
Table 4. We took advantage of thin provisioning to prevent large volume allocations
from wasting physical storage in advance of need, while still providing room for
growth when required.
Table 4.
Microsoft SQL Server storage design on XtremIO
Volume name
Volume purpose
LUN size
SQL_OS
Microsoft Windows 2012 R2 OS and SQL Server software
installation volume, which is used for multiple virtual
machines such as VMDK on the same datastore
1 TB
SQL_DB
Microsoft SQL Server database data-file volumes
2 TB
SQL_log
Microsoft SQL Server database log file volumes
500 GB
Tempdb
Microsoft SQL Server tempdb volumes
1 TB
For the production databases, we created and presented volumes for use with the
SQL Server virtual machines, as shown in Table 5.
Table 5.
Volume assignments for OLTP Databases
Volume
Volume size
Volume type
OS
120 GB
VMDK on OS LUN or VMFS
volumes
SQL Server installation
and systems databases
120 GB
VMDK on OS LUN or VMFS
volumes
SQL Server data
2 TB
Raw device mapping (RDM) or
VMDK
SQL Server log
500 GB
RDM or VMDK
Tempdb
1 TB
RDM or VMDK
Note: Performance and availability of either RDM or VMDK volumes are very similar, so either
choice is reasonable depending on individual design requirements. Certain technologies,
such as WSFC, require RDMs when running in virtual machine clustering (to support SCSI-3
reservations).
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Chapter 5: Microsoft SQL Server Solution Design
Chapter 5
Microsoft SQL Server Solution
Design
This chapter presents the following topics:
Overview ..................................................................................................................25
SQL Server database solution storage design .......................................................... 25
SQL Server database solution profile .......................................................................25
SQL Server database solution LUN design................................................................ 26
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Chapter 5: Microsoft SQL Server Solution Design
Overview
In this solution, we created two virtualized SQL Server 2014 instances with
transactional (OLTP) databases on a vSphere HA cluster. This section describes our
storage, database profile, and database design.
SQL Server database solution storage design
As Table 5 on page 23 shows, we used different database volumes to store the
relevant database files, including data files, transaction log files, and tempdb files for
the SQL Server 2014 databases. In general, four database LUNs and one log LUN are
sufficient for most databases that require high disk performance.
Note: With XtremIO, putting all database files for a single SQL Server database into one LUN
easily provides over 20,000 IOPS for OLTP workloads with sub-millisecond performance. For
maximum performance on a high-workload database, evenly distribute the data files across
four XtremIO data volumes. This configuration is sufficient to support a single database with
more than 160,000 IOPS in an OLTP environment.
SQL Server database solution profile
Table 6 lists transactional (OLTP) database profiles for the solution.
Table 6.
SQL Server 2014 OLTP database profiles
Detail
OLTP databases
Database sizes
250 GB- 1TB
Microsoft SQL Server
databases
2 x 1 TB, 1 x 250 GB, and
1 x 500 GB, 1x 750 GB
Memory for SQL Server
32 - 320 GB
Workload profiles
 OLTP workload simulated by Microsoft OLTP
Toolkit
 Read/write ratio of 90/10, 70/30, 60/40
Average data block sizes
8 KB
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Chapter 5: Microsoft SQL Server Solution Design
SQL Server database solution LUN design
Table 7 lists the database design details in the solution.
Table 7.
LUN design details for the SQL Server 2014 OLTP databases
Detail
Instance 1
Instance 2
Database
names
DB_01
DB_02
DB_03
Tempdb
DB_04
DB_05
Tempdb
Database file
size
250 GB
500 GB
1 TB
400 GB
750 GB
1 TB
400 GB
LUN sizes
4X 500 GB
4X 1 TB
4X 1 TB
1 TB
4X 1 TB
4X 1 TB
1 TB
Log file size
350 GB
250 GB
320 GB
100 GB
250 GB
320 GB
100 GB
Log LUN size
500 GB
500 GB
500 GB
1TB
500GB
500 GB
1TB
Total data
and log size
6 TB
Total LUN size
20.5 TB (exclude tempdb)
24.5 TB ( including tempdb)
We also used AppSync to create multiple snapshots of various databases, as shown
in Figure 4. These snapshots can be mounted on the SQL Server mount host and be
enabled for workloads as well.
Note: This design is based on our test workload. In a production environment, database
size, especially log file and tempdb sizes, can vary depending on the type of transactions
and queries that are running on those databases. All snapshots for databases are indicated
as DB_x’ in this document. For example, DB_01’ is a snapshot of database DB_01 that is
mounted on the mount host.
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Chapter 6: Network Layer Best Practices
Chapter 6
Network Layer Best Practices
This chapter presents the following topics:
Overview ..................................................................................................................28
SAN network ............................................................................................................28
IP network ................................................................................................................28
VMware vSphere network......................................................................................... 28
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Chapter 6: Network Layer Best Practices
Overview
This section describes the network layer used in this solution for SAN, IP, and ESXi
Server network configurations. When deploying a virtualized database solution, such
as Microsoft SQL Server, EMC recommends that you ensure both compute and
network redundancy at all levels for fault tolerance.
SAN network
EMC recommends the following SAN network best practices:

Use 8 Gb/s FC switches and HBA ports.

Use multiple HBAs on the ESXi servers and at least two SAN switches to provide
multiple redundant paths between the server and the XtremIO cluster.

Zone each FC port from the database servers to all ports on the XtremIO
X-Bricks for high availability and performance.
IP network
EMC recommends the following IP network best practices:

Use multiple network cards and switches for network redundancy.

Use 10 GbE for network connection, if available.

Use virtual local area networks (VLANs) to logically group devices that are on
different network segments or sub-networks.

Enable and configure jumbo frames1 throughout the physical or virtual stack for
10 GbE networks.
VMware vSphere network
Networking in virtual environments requires more consideration for traffic
segmentation, availability, and throughput, in addition to the best practices
recommended in a physical environment.
We designed this solution to efficiently manage multiple networks and network
adapter redundancy on the ESXi hosts. EMC recommends that you:

Separate infrastructure traffic from virtual machine traffic for security and
isolation

Use the VMXNET3 family of virtual network adapters
1
Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) sizes of greater than 1,500 bytes are referred to as jumbo
frames. Jumbo frames require Gigabit Ethernet across the entire network infrastructure,
including servers, switches, and database servers.
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Chapter 6: Network Layer Best Practices

Aggregate physical network cards for network redundancy and performance. For
example, use pairs of physical NICs per server/vSwitches, and uplink each
physical NIC to separate physical switches.
For more information on networking with vSphere, refer to the instructions in VMware
vSphere Networking.
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Chapter 7: Physical Servers and Virtualization Layer
Chapter 7
Physical Servers and Virtualization
Layer
This chapter presents the following topics:
Overview ..................................................................................................................31
Compute and storage resources ...............................................................................31
Network virtualization .............................................................................................. 32
Storage management with ESI .................................................................................32
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Chapter 7: Physical Servers and Virtualization Layer
Overview
Choosing which server platform to use for your virtualized infrastructure depends on
how that platform supports your environment’s technical requirements. In production
environments, it is essential that the servers have sufficient:

Processors and memory to support the required virtual machines and the SQL
Server workloads

Ethernet and FC connectivity to enable redundant connectivity to the IP and
storage network switches

Capacity to withstand a server failure and support failover of the virtual
machines
In this test environment, we configured three physical servers running vSphere
ESXi 5.5 as a vSphere HA cluster with five virtual machines:

Two for virtualized production Microsoft SQL Server databases

Three for test/development instances used to mount various snapshots for
repurposing
Compute and storage resources
EMC recommends that you implement the following VMware compute resource best
practices, as explained in the Microsoft SQL Server Databases on VMware Best
Practices Guide:

Use Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA) on the ESXi servers, a computer
architecture in which memory located closer to a particular processor is
accessed with less delay than memory located farther from that processor.

Allocate virtual machine memory (vRAM) in a virtual machine to be less than or
equal to the local memory accessed by the NUMA node (processor).

Install VMware Tools, including several utilities that enhance the performance
of the virtual machine's guest operating system and improve management of
the virtual machine.

Configure the virtual machine memory reservations to be, at a minimum, the
size of the SQL Server and operating system overhead.

SQL Server only supports RDM for clustering, so use RDM in ESXi virtual
machines for database and log files that must fail over in an MSCS clustering
environment.

Configure multiple paravirtualized SCSI (PVSCSI) controllers for the database
volumes. Using multiple virtual SCSI controllers enables the execution of
several parallel I/O operations within the guest operating system.
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Chapter 7: Physical Servers and Virtualization Layer
Network virtualization
On each ESXi server, we created two standard vSwitches with a common
configuration, as described in Table 8.
Table 8.
vSwitch configuration
Name
Purpose
vSwitch0
Manages public virtual machine traffic
vSwitch1
Enables fault-tolerant configuration for Microsoft SQL Server Cluster
interconnect traffic
We assigned each virtual machine two vNICs (1 GbE and 10 GbE) using the high
performance VMXNET3 driver. We mapped the 1 GbE vNIC to vSwitch0 for public
traffic and the 10 GbE vNIC to vSwitch1 for SQL Server interconnect traffic.
Storage management with ESI
EMC Storage Integrator (ESI) provides a graphical user interface (GUI), allowing you to
manage EMC storage through a single management interface. With ESI, you can
perform daily management tasks with fewer clicks and higher productivity.
For more information about ESI, refer to the EMC ESI documentation on
support.EMC.com.
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Chapter 8: Design Considerations
Chapter 8
Design Considerations
This chapter presents the following topics:
Overview ..................................................................................................... 34
XtremIO configuration best practices............................................................... 34
Configuring XtremIO storage for SQL Server ..................................................... 38
Creating and mounting a snapshot using AppSync ............................................ 42
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Chapter 8: Design Considerations
Overview
XtremIO makes it possible to run extremely high I/O loads on a single storage system.
With the XtremIO balanced architecture combined with performance, inline data
reduction, and virtually provisioned storage, many of the fine-tuning and
configuration practices for traditional storage arrays are no longer required.
To take full advantage of the high throughput that XtremIO storage provides, you
must design the entire connectivity stack to reach extreme performance. From
optimizing queue depths on hosts to the number of available FC paths, your
configuration must enable the system to deliver the I/O enabled by XtremIO.
You can also use EMC AppSync to create and manage application-consistent copies
of SQL Server databases. This section describes how to create and mount a snapshot
using AppSync.
XtremIO configuration best practices
Configuring Fibre
Channel switches
For an XtremIO dual X-Brick cluster, a host can have up to eight paths for each device.
Figure 6 shows the logical connection schemes for eight paths.
Figure 7.
XtremIO dual X-Brick FC switch configuration
Note: You can use EMC Virtual Storage Integrator (VSI) Path Management to configure path
management across EMC systems, including XtremIO. Refer to the EMC VSI Path
Management Product Guide for more information on using this VMware vSphere client plugin.
Configuring
servers
To optimize performance to extreme levels, you must configure the hosts accessing
the XtremIO storage array to enable higher I/O throughout instead of using the
default settings.
Cisco UCS server configuration
Most server default HBA throttle settings are not optimized for the high throughput
that a flash array provides. To avoid limiting the I/O throttle, you must choose the
highest throttle setting for the server.
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To adjust the HBA I/O throttle setting for the Cisco UCS HBA using Cisco’s UCSM
navigation tool:
1.
Select Server > Inventory.
2.
Select Cisco VIC Adapters.
3.
Select vHBAs > Properties.
4.
Set I/O Throttle Count to 1024, as shown in Figure 8.
Figure 8.
Changing the I/O Throttle Count setting for Cisco UCS Server
ESXi Server configuration
You can use ESI to automatically configure an ESXi Server for XtremIO storage, or you
can use vSphere 5.5 to manually configure the ESXi host for XtremIO storage using
the following steps:
1.
Use the ESXi command-line interface to adjust the HBA queue depth.
The queue depth setting controls the amount of outstanding I/O requests for
each path. To optimize XtremIO storage, consult the HBA and server vendor
recommendations. As a rule, set the queue depth to the highest value
allowed by the HBA manufacturer (for example, 256).
Note: For more information about adjusting HBA queue depth with ESXi, refer to
VMware KB article 1267 on the VMware website.
2.
Set SchedQuantum to 64 and DiskMaxIOSize to 4096:
esxcfg-advcfg -s 64 /Disk/SchedQuantum
esxcfg-advcfg -s 4096 /Disk/DiskMaxIOSize
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3.
Locate the Network Address Authority (NAA) for the XtremIO LUNs that are
presented to the ESXi host and the NAA of the XtremIO volume using the
following command:
esxcli storage nmp path list | grep XtremIO -B1
4.
Set SchedNumReqOutstanding for the device to its maximum value (256)
using the following command:
esxcli storage core device set -d naa.xxx -O 256
Configuring
vSphere Native
Multipathing
XtremIO supports VMware vSphere’s Native Multipathing (NMP) technology. For best
performance, EMC recommends that you automatically configure native vSphere
multipathing for XtremIO volumes with ESI, or manually as follows:
1.
Set the native round-robin path selection policy on XtremIO volumes that are
presented to the ESXi host.
2.
Use the ESXi command line interface (CLI) to set the vSphere NMP roundrobin path switching frequency for XtremIO volumes from the default value
(1,000 I/O packets) to 1.
These settings ensure optimal distribution and availability of load between I/O paths
to XtremIO storage.
EMC PowerPath®/VE for ESXi manages XtremIO devices as generic. You must enable
generic loadable array module (LAM) support for PowerPath/VE to recognize and
manage XtremIO devices. You can also use EMC VSI for XtremIO for the NMP roundrobin configuration.
Native path management with the vCenter GUI
On each virtual machine, you can add the LUNs for database storage from the
XtremIO array as RDM disks and spread them across four PVSCSI controllers to
balance I/O. You can also configure the LUNs for the OS and SQL Server software
installations as VMDK to enable low I/O storage LUNs to share the same volume on
XtremIO.
If they are not managed by PowerPath, you must configure the I/O intensive database
LUNs as Round Robin (VMware) in Path Management, as shown in Figure 9.
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Figure 9.
Storage device path management configuration
PowerPath/VE installation
You can install PowerPath/VE using the VMware remote vCLI, VMware vSphere
Update Manager, or VMware vSphere Auto Deploy.
To install PowerPath/VE, use remote vCLI to complete the following steps:
1.
Download the PowerPath/VE software from support.emc.com.
2.
Use the scp (secure copy) command to copy the PowerPath/VE offline
package to the vSphere host.
3.
At the ESXi command line prompt, enter the following command:
# esxcli -s <vSphere server IP address or hostname> software
vib install -d <absolute path to PowerPath package>
4.
Change the vSphere host to Maintenance mode and restart the vSphere host.
5.
Verify that PowerPath/VE is installed using the following command:
# esxcli -s <vSphere server IP address or hostname> software
vib list
6.
Confirm that PowerPath is managing the XtremIO devices. In the vCenter host,
select Configuration > Storage, as shown in Figure 10. The Owner column
shows that the devices have a PowerPath owner.
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Chapter 8: Design Considerations
Figure 10. XtremIO SSD LUN under PowerPath management
Placing XtremIO
devices under
PowerPath’s
control
Figure 10 shows LUNs that are not PowerPath LUNs. You can enable PowerPath by
entering the following commands and then rebooting:
1.
esxcli storage core claimrule add —rule 340 —plugin
PowerPath –-type vendor --vendor XtremIO --model XtremApp
2.
esxcli storage core claimrule load
3.
esxcli storage core claimrule run
PowerPath/VE 5.9 SP1 provides native LAM support for XtremIO flash array devices.
Note: For PowerPath/VE installation and configuration for vSphere, refer to EMC
PowerPath/VE Installation and Administration Guide. For FC multipathing configuration, refer
to vSphere Storage ESXi 5.5 documentation.
Configuring XtremIO storage for SQL Server using ESI
You can use ESI to create and manage storage LUNs for XtremIO with SQL Server
databases in both physical and virtual environments.
For vSphere and vCenter virtual machines, you can create VMDK files and RDM disks
with or without virtual compatibility mode. You can also create SCSI disks and view
datastores. SCSI disks require the use of existing SCSI controllers.
The ESI SQL Server Adapter enables you to view local and remote SQL Server
instances and databases and map the databases to EMC storage. ESI supports the
AlwaysOn feature in SQL Server 2012 and SQL Server 2014, which enables you to
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view the primary SQL Server replica and up to four secondary replicas. You can use
SQL Scripts to create and configure SQL Server databases from an ESI host.
Provisioning
XtremIO
To add XtremIO storage system(s) using ESI:
1.
Create a storage device for the virtual machine with an RDM or a VMDK.
2.
Add and define your XtremIO storage array, as shown in Figure 11, and click
Add.
Figure 11. Setting up XtremIO in ESI
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Chapter 8: Design Considerations
3.
Click Create Volumes, as shown in Figure 12, and provide your LUN
information.
Figure 12. Creating a new XtremIO volume in ESI
4.
Click Storage Pools to view the total capacity for an XtremIO array, as shown
in Figure 13. Because XtremIO does not use storage pools, all XtremIO
devices appear as thin-provisioned devices.
Figure 13. Viewing XtremIO storage capacity in ESI
5.
40
Click Initiator Groups to view the initiators from the host, which are mapped
to volumes, as shown in Figure 14. XtremIO Initiator Groups are similar to
storage groups.
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Solution Guide
Chapter 8: Design Considerations
Figure 14. Viewing XtremIO storage groups in ESI
6.
Click Masking Views to view the XtremIO volume mappings, as shown in
Figure 15.
Figure 15. XtremIO volume mappings in ESI
7.
Click Connect Disk to create and connect an RDM disk to a specific SQL Server
virtual machine for database storage, as shown in Figure 16.
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Figure 16. Assigning an RDM to SQL Server for database storage in ESI
You can now format XtremIO storage in the virtual machine and use it for SQL Server
storage. ESI automatically configures multipathing during the ESXi server
configuration process.
Creating and mounting a snapshot using AppSync
You can use AppSync to create and manage application-consistent copies of
Microsoft SQL Server databases.
AppSync supports the following features for SQL Server:

AlwaysOn Availability Groups (AAGs)

Dynamic discovery of user databases during the service plan run

SQL Server databases on physical hosts, RDMs in physical compatibility mode,
and virtual disks on virtual hosts
Note: AppSync does not support RDM disks in virtual mode.
Creating a
snapshot of an
existing SQL
Server database
with AppSync
42

Data protection of stand-alone and clustered production SQL Server instances

Mounting on stand-alone servers or cluster nodes of alternate clusters,
production clusters as non-clustered resources, and mounting with recoveries
on non-clustered instances
To configure XtremIO with AppSync, first install and start AppSync, and then complete
the following steps:
1.
Add the XtremIO Management Server and type your administrator credentials,
as shown in Figure 17.
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Figure 17.
2.
Adding XtremIO to AppSync
Configure the SQL Server virtual machine as the Windows host server, as
shown in Figure 18.
Figure 18. Configuring SQL Server in AppSync
3.
Add the vCenter Server.
4.
Choose the database and select the applicable protection plan to create the
snapshot for the database, as shown in Figure 19.
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Figure 19. Selecting the database and the protection plan for the snapshot
5.
Confirm that you have successfully created the snapshots, as shown in Figure
20.
Figure 20. XtremIO snapshots created with AppSync
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Mounting a
snapshot of a SQL
Server database
with AppSync
To mount a SQL Server database snapshot using AppSync:
1.
In the Select Mount Options, select Mount and recover copy, as shown in
Figure 21.
Figure 21. Selecting SQL Server mount copy options
This step enables AppSync to use snapshots to run read/write workloads on
the mount host. Figure 22 shows a mounted snapshot that is ready for
read/write operations for a recovered database copy.
Figure 22. Mounted snapshot ready for read/write operation on the recovered database
copy
2.
Recover the database copy with the mount snapshot from step 1 and use it on
the mount host for database read/write operations to support the AlwaysOn
SQL Server feature, as shown in Figure 23.
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Figure 23. Mounted database recovered as a read/write copy ready for database operations
You can now use the snapshot for read and write operations.
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Chapter 9: Performance Testing and Validation
Chapter 9
Performance Testing and Validation
This chapter presents the following topics:
Overview ..................................................................................................................48
OLTP workload performance and scale test .............................................................. 49
XtremIO data reduction analysis ..............................................................................54
SQL Server Failover Clustering on VMware setup and analysis.................................59
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Chapter 9: Performance Testing and Validation
Overview
The performance and scalability tests in this section highlight how XtremIO easily
services enterprise workloads while all elements, including storage, stay within the
“green zone,” which is an area of utilization and latency that is healthy and
sustainable for production workloads. For these tests, we:
Notes on results

Generated the OLTP workloads using a Microsoft Toolkit application, which
simulates realistic OLTP workloads

Collected the system I/O performance metrics, including IOPS, transactions per
second (TPS), and latency, at the server/database and storage levels.

Ran all tests on a dual-brick XtremIO system configured according to best
practices
Test results are highly dependent on workload, specific application requirements,
and system design and implementation. Relative system performance will vary
because of these and other factors. Therefore, you should not use this workload as a
substitute for a specific customer application benchmarks for critical capacity
planning and product evaluation decisions.
We obtained all performance data contained in this report in a rigorously controlled
environment. Results obtained in other operating environments may vary
significantly.
EMC does not warrant or represent that a user can or will achieve similar performance
expressed in transactions per second.
Test objectives
The test objectives demonstrate:

Performance and Scale
In these series of tests, we measured SQL Server 2014 overall performance and
scalability servicing common OLTP workloads with varying degrees of I/O
profiles. We also compared two common storage configuration options
available in a VMware environment and its performance impact on SQL server
transactions.

Data Reduction
One of the most impressive capabilities of XtremIO storage is its inline data
reduction features. While very compelling in many cases, we address several
aspects of data reduction as it applies to SQL Server environments.

SQL Server AlwaysOn FCI support
XtremIO is able to support environments that require the protection of SQL
Server AlwaysOn FCI.
Test scenarios
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We tested the following use cases:

OLTP workload performance test

VMDK vs RDM performance for SQL Server
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
System with XtremIO snapshot performance test

An XtremIO data reduction analysis in this solution’s SQL Server environment
The following sections describe these use cases.
OLTP workload performance and scale test
The objective of this test was to measure SQL Server 2014 overall performance and
scalability servicing common OLTP workloads with varying I/O profiles. This simulates
a wide spectrum of high-volume, online transactional workloads observed with
financial services systems, online gaming, e-commerce solutions, and more. The
main metrics measured were read and write I/O latencies, aggregated throughput in
IOPS, and SQL Service transactions per second.
We used an OLTP workload performance test to measure the performance of the
whole environment with SQL Server 2014 database workloads. This test also
demonstrated how an XtremIO system can accommodate growing database
workloads and continue to provide stable performance.
Test methodology
We used the Microsoft OLTP Toolkit to generate an OLTP workload to drive high
physical random I/O to the databases.
To measure performance statistics, we ran a fixed number of concurrent users for
each database with the same set of OLTP queries simultaneously against all SQL
Server databases in the environment. Controlling the number of concurrent users
ensured that we generated a specific level of IOPS.
Test procedure
We ran an OLTP workload for the first database and recorded the system performance
after the workload stabilized. We then added a workload to a second database while
the previous workload was still running, recording system performance after the
workload stabilized. We continued adding workloads until all databases were running
with a stabilized workload and the overall system performance was recorded.
Table 9 shows the test load sequence. For details about the database profile and
configuration, refer to Table 5.
Table 9.
Test workload sequence
Workload
sequence
Database
name
Database
size
Workload (no. of
users/maximum transaction
rate)
Read/write ratio
1
DB_01
250 GB
10/200
90/10
2
DB_02
500 GB
10/200
90/10
3
DB_03
1 TB
20/200
90/10
4
DB_04
750 GB
20/200
90/10
5
DB_05
1 TB
20/200
90/10
6
DB_01’
250 GB
10/200
90/10
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Test results
Workload
sequence
Database
name
Database
size
Workload (no. of
users/maximum transaction
rate)
Read/write ratio
7
DB_04’
1 TB
20/200
90/10
Overall, the average latency remained low for the XtremIO array, while the added SQL
Server database workloads generated more I/O. The entire system generated over
135,000 TPS with an average of 300,000 IOPS when all database workloads were
added and stabilized. The array latency remained at approximately 1 ms for the
XtremIO system and the host’s average disk latency ranged from less than 1 ms up to
1.5 ms.
Figure 24.
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SQL Server and XtremIO scalability test
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XtremIO system
performance
XtremIO provided extremely high IOPS and throughput with very low latency and a
high overall SQL Server transaction rate, as shown in Figure 25.
Figure 25.
XtremIO Performance with full OLTP work load on SQL Server 2014
SQL Server 2014 disk I/O performance
By following best practices for SQL Server data and log file response times, the test
results easily proved better than the standard data-file disk latency of 4 to 20 ms for
database data files (ideal is less than 10 ms) and 1 to 5 ms for log files (ideal is less
than 1 ms). These tests achieved latency much less than or around 1 ms, which is
considered ideal based on industry standards.
As shown in Figure 26, the production SQL Server databases running on XtremIO and
VMware vSphere reached an IOPS of 200,000 while both SQL Server 2014 data and
log files continued to maintain close to 1 ms response times with a maximum
response time of 1.5 ms.
Figure 26. SQL Server 2014 disk I/O performance
Figure 26 shows very low latency for database data and log files as we scale up the
workload.
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XtremIO and SQL
Server OLTP
read/write
workloads
In addition, we tested SQL Server 2014 database DB_01 (250 GB), varying the
read/write ratio of the workload.
As shown in Figure 27, we started with a 60/40 read/write ratio OLTP workload. This
workload achieved over 65,000 TPS with 25,000 IOPS. We varied the workload profile
to produce two additional test steps, including a 70/30 and 90/10 read/write ratio
OLTP workload. For all steps, the average SQL Server data read and write latencies
were kept to less than 1 ms.
Figure 27.
SQL Server 2014 database transactional performance
Overall, XtremIO and SQL Server 2014 maintained excellent performance with sub
millisecond latency and high transaction rates for all three read/write test scenarios.
VMDK and RDM
performance
comparison
Storage is one of the most important components when building an infrastructure for
business critical applications and for databases in particular. Since this is a
virtualized environment, a performance comparison has been conducted to compare
two common storage presentation types in VMware: VMFS disk (VMDK) and Physical
Raw Device Mapping (RDM).
This test measured the performance difference between the SQL Server 2014
database OLTP workloads on VMDK and the RDM LUNs from XtremIO. This test
showed that an XtremIO system delivers sustained workloads for both LUN types with
similar performance on both.
Test methodology
We used the Microsoft OLTP Toolkit to generate an OLTP workload to drive high
physical random I/O to a database.
We ran a fixed number of concurrent users for each database with the same set of
OLTP queries for each database and then measured the performance statistics.
Controlling the number of concurrent users and transactions ensured that we
generated a specific level of workload.
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Test procedure
The test ran with a single 250 GB database workload. We ran the test for an hour to
stabilize the workload. VMDK can only be used in stand-alone SQL Server instances,
while RDM can support both stand-alone and clustered SQL server instances.
Test results
The XtremIO array can sufficiently support both VMDK and RDM LUNs in a vSphere
environment. As shown in Figure 28, the IOPS is similar for the same workload on
both VMDK and RDM.
Figure 28. IOPS for the same workload against RDM and VMDK
The system latency is similar for the two different disk types, with RDM showing a
slightly higher latency on the SQL Server. The difference is within a normal test
deviation and is not significant, as shown in Figure 29.
Figure 29. SQL Server and XtremIO latency with RDM and VMDK
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XtremIO data reduction analysis
XtremIO's data deduplication and data compression methods complement each
other. Data deduplication reduces physical data by eliminating redundant data
blocks, and data compression further reduces the data footprint by eliminating data
redundancy within the binary level of each data block. A series of tests were
performed to determine the average compression ratio of SQL Server in our
environment and its impact on throughput and latency of the production instance.
In this test, we observed the data reduction resulting from deduplication and
snapshots with XtremIO on the SQL Server OLTP database.
Snapshot data
reduction
There are many use cases for creating multiple copies of SQL Server databases, such
as developing/testing, recovering from data corruption, or off-load processing. In this
test, we used AppSync to automatically create multiple snapshot copies of the
production databases, mount to the mount host, and recover them. We measured the
performance impact and overall data reduction.
XtremIO Snapshot storage data reduction
With XtremIO, you can sustain a logical capacity that exceeds, by a large margin, the
physical flash capacity in the system, as shown in Figure 30.
In this test, the effective space of the volumes created on XtremIO for production
database and log files is 20.5 TB, as detailed in Table 5. After we created five
snapshots for each database, the addressable logical volume capacity increased by
102.5 TB. This 102.5 TB is composed of snapshots that can be accessed for primarily
read intense workloads, operational recovery, and destructive data repurposing such
as test/dev. The SQL Server database data reduction rate as per the XtremIO GUI
refers to production volumes only (not snapshots), so the ratio remained 1.8:1. The
initial amount of physical storage required for snapshots in an XtremIO array is
negligible (about 1 percent of the parent volume), as shown in Figure 30.
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Figure 30.
Production
database data
reduction rate
XtremIO snapshot data efficiency
With data reduction, the XtremIO effective system capacity can expand beyond the
physical capacity. In environments that contain data with a significant amount of
duplication, the effective logical capacity of XtremIO can be much higher than its
physical flash capacity.
The SQL Server production database (not counting replications, such as databases or
snapshots, or a restored database to the same array) would not typically benefit from
deduplication. The compression ratio witnessed in the tests ranged from 1.4:1 to 2:1,
depending on the data in the SQL Server data mix. The average data reduction ratio
observed in SQL Server environments is around 2:1, not counting the snapshot data
reduction effect.
SQL Server AAGs provide a powerful capability called active secondary replicas.
XtremIO Data
reduction with SQL Directing read-only connections to readable secondary replicas provides:
Server AlwaysOn
 Offloading of various workloads from primary database-like real-time analytics
Availability Groups
 Live reporting

Scaling out transactions
In this test, we created a secondary AlwaysOn replica to measure the potential space
savings of managing multiple live copies of the production instance with the
capability to identify redundant blocks replicated by AlwaysOn on the same system.
When we created SQL Server AlwaysOn AAG secondary copies on the same array as
the production database, we observed minimal impact on the XtremIO physical
storage. We created the AAG secondary copy of a 1 TB database by restoring to a
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different volume on the same array. Figure 31shows the deduplication ratio and
physical space used before and after creating the AAG.
Figure 31.
Deduplication ratio and physical space used before and after creating the AAG
There was no additional physical space required for the initial AAG creation, as
shown in Figure 31. The deduplication ratio reflects the full AAG environment.
As shown in Figure 32, we simulated 24 hours of OLTP activity on the SQL Server
database to determine the physical space requirements over time for a newly created
AAG.
Figure 32. Volume and physical space used for SQL Server AAG instance
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We used SQL Server bulk insert to introduce 250 GB of data into the production
database. This changed the production database, which allowed us to observe the
impact of secondary database storage needs.
Figure 33 shows the space savings from a bulk insert data loading test on a standalone database as compared to the same test on an AAG instance. For both tests, we
shrunk the data files to maximize the volume capacity.
450
27% space
savings
400
350
13% space
savings
GB
300
250
200
150
100
50
0
AAG select insert
XtremIO volume capacity increase delta~
Bulk insert select (no AAG)
XtremIO physical capacity increase delta~
Figure 33. XtremIO physical storage usage during a bulk insert
Overall, the SQL Server 2014 AAG on XtremIO test demonstrated excellent capacity
and efficiency with no additional physical space required for initial AAG creation.
Depending on workload characteristics, careful planning should be carried out to
determine physical space requirements over time.
SQL Server row
and page
compression on
XtremIO
This test measured the space savings benefits and overall performance impact of
using the native capabilities of SQL Server row and page compression for rowstore
tables and indexes and its impact on the host CPU utilization and the impact, if any,
on the volume managed by XtremIO.
XtremIO compression and deduplication is always on with no impact to database
performance. SQL Server compression needs to be explicitly enabled. Before
enabling SQL Server compression, it is important to evaluate the impact on database
performance. The database server requires additional CPU resources, as pages are
compressed and decompressed in memory.
SQL Server compression aims to efficiently store data by compressing it and
performing deduplication on rows within a single page. XtremIO compression and
deduplication work across all database pages for the entire array. Both methods
might offer gains and complement each other on the data in your environment.
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Test methodology
All of the tests were performed in the same single, 250 GB database. For each step,
we used a fixed number of concurrent users and transaction rates to generate a
controlled specific level of workload for the OLTP database.
Test procedure
We ran an SQL Server workload to generate a baseline. Next, we implemented SQL
Server row compression and page compression and ran a workload. Finally, we ran an
SQL Server shrink file to reclaim space on the server side and run a workload to test
performance with the SQL Server database indexes heavily fragmented. For each
step, we measured the database size and collected performance data.
Figure 34. Space savings from SQL Server native compression
Test results
In each case, XtremIO’s inline compression and deduplication is always on. In
addition, the XtremIO array maintains consistent sub millisecond latency regardless
of the type of compression used by SQL Server. Even after running the SQL Server
shrink file operation, we experienced no performance degradation on the XtremIO AllFlash array, as shown in Figure 34.
In this test, implementing SQL Server compression complemented XtremIO’s
efficiency and performance, resulting in improved overall database transaction rates.
However, unlike XtremIO, SQL Server compression and decompression operations
increase CPU utilization at the host level, as shown in Figure 35.
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Figure 35. Performance improvement from SQL Server compression and CPU usage change
SQL Server Failover Clustering on VMware setup and analysis
To validate SQL Server AlwaysOn FCI on XtremIO with vSphere 5.5, we set up a cluster
across two physical machines. We then tested the cluster using a workload derived
from an industry standard modern OLTP benchmark.
LUN setup
vSphere 5.5 support for failover clusters configured across physical machines
requires that you set up LUNs with the LSI Logic SAS Virtual SCSI Adapter and as
pass-through RDM disks (physical compatibility mode). Supported configurations
depend on the cluster implementation. Table 10 provides the supported
configurations for this solution. For setup details, refer to the VMware document
entitled Setup for Failover Clustering and Microsoft Cluster Service ESXi 5.5.
Table 10.
VMware support for failover clusters
Storage type
Clusters on one
physical machine
(cluster in a box)
Clusters across
physical machines
(cluster across boxes)
Clusters of physical
and virtual machines
(standby host
clustering)
Virtual disks
Yes (recommended)
No
No
Pass-through RDM
(physical
compatibility
mode)
No
Yes (recommended)
Yes
No pass-through
RDM (virtual
compatibility
mode)
Yes
Yes
No
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To add a LUN to an FCI in vSphere:
1.
2.
Configure the XtremIO LUN as an RDM disk for the first node in the cluster:
a.
Add a hard disk. Save the LUN mapping on the virtual machine’s
datastore and on XtremIO.
b.
Choose physical compatibility mode, as shown in Figure 36.
c.
Configure the SCSI driver used as an LSI Logic controller (default); do not
use SCSI 0, as shown in Figure 36. Change the LSI Logic controller’s SCSI
bus sharing to physical.
d.
Note the SCSCI node ID, which is required when provisioning the second
node.
Configure the same LUN to the second node in the cluster, as shown in Figure
36:
a.
Add a hard disk using an existing virtual disk. Browse to select the
location of the disk created on the first node.
b.
Choose the virtual device node based on the same SCSI node ID as the
first node in the cluster.
c.
Confirm that the SCSI driver type is LSI Logic and change the SCSI bus
sharing to physical.
Figure 36. VMware virtual machine disk configuration for an AlwaysOn FCI
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3.
Cluster setup
validation
Add all SQL Server disks to the cluster, so that they are available to the SQL
Server cluster.
Once we completed the SQL Server cluster installation, we validated failover and
failback between the nodes. Finally, we used the Microsoft Toolkit to generate an
OLTP workload to drive high physical random I/O from a database platform. As shown
in Figure 37, the workload achieved over 18,000 IOPS with a CPU utilization average
of 55 percent.
Figure 37. XtremIO and SQL Server OLTP performance with an AlwaysOn FCI on vSphere 5.5
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Chapter 10: Conclusion
Chapter 10 Conclusion
This chapter presents the following topics:
Summary..................................................................................................................63
Findings ...................................................................................................................63
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Summary
This solution demonstrates the tremendous value of XtremIO shared storage for SQL
Server. XtremIO offers a scalable, extremely efficient storage solution for a
consolidated SQL Server environment that customers can use for various OLTP
workloads.
XtremIO storage can keep pace with linear scaling on the host. XtremIO N-way,
active/active, scale-out architecture linearly scales capacity, creates extremely high
IOPS or throughput, and maintains extremely low latency. When you add additional
compute resources, including CPU, memory, HBA ports, and front-end port resources
to the servers, the system can provide higher IOPS for OLTP environments.
This solution achieves efficient resource utilization through virtualization while
providing high database performance. You can easily increase the capacity and
processing capability as necessary.
As business needs change, this solution stack can align with the shifting demands
from any level—from applications, database software, and non-database software. In
turn, multiple new workload approaches, such as real time analytics, are easily
possible, with the consolidation of production and reporting instances.
Best of all, snapshots are created instantly and can be used for any purpose. Adding
or removing a snapshot is cost-efficient.
Findings
This solution provides the following advantages:

This solution is fast and simple to implement with little to no storage tuning.
XtremIO works as seamlessly in virtualized SQL Server environments as in
physical ones. With ESI, the configuration for XtremIO is further simplified and
is easy to manage and monitor in a single user interface.

XtremIO supports the most demanding transactional SQL Server 2014
workloads, with throughput that can easily exceed 300,000 IOPS for a dual
X-Brick system while maintaining near average sub-millisecond latencies.

XtremIO inline compression works with or without SQL Server native
compression to save physical storage while still offering the best performance
with substantial storage savings.

This solution reduces the storage footprint by using XtremIO inline data
reduction and snapshots.

This solution provides close to real-time, high-performance copies of data using
XtremIO snapshot technology at no measurable initial cost, while providing
near-instant recovery of production data, even in TBs of data scale.

XtremIO supports both SQL Server AlwaysOn FCI and AlwaysOn AAGs.
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Chapter 11: References
Chapter 11 References
This chapter presents the following topics:
EMC documentation .................................................................................................65
VMware documentation ........................................................................................... 65
Microsoft SQL Server documentation .......................................................................65
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EMC documentation
The following documents are available on EMC.com or EMC Online Support. Access to
EMC Online Support depends on your login credentials. If you do not have access to a
document, contact your EMC representative.

Introduction to the EMC XtremIO All-Flash Array White Paper

EMC VSI Path Management Product Guide

EMC XtremIO Storage Array User Guide

EMC XtremIO System Specifications

EMC Storage Integrator 3.6 for Windows Suite Release Notes

XtremIO Data at Rest Encryption White Paper

Introduction to XtremIO Snapshots White Paper
VMware documentation
The following documents, available on the VMware website, provide more
information:

Microsoft SQL Server Databases on VMware Best Practices Guide

VMware vSphere Networking

VMware ESXi Scalable Storage Performance
Microsoft SQL Server documentation
The following documents, available on the Microsoft website, provide more
information:

Pre-Configuration Database Optimizations

Microsoft SQL Server Best Practices
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