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White Paper ENHANCING MICROSOFT SQL SERVER 2014 PERFORMANCE AND PROTECTION Enabled by EMC VNX, EMC AppSync, and EMC Server-Based Flash Storage • Optimize OLTP performance • Accelerate throughput with Buffer Pool Extension • Enable fast recovery • Encrypt data with minimal performance impact EMC Solutions Abstract This white paper showcases a powerful EMC infrastructure that uses EMC® VNX5600™, EMC server-based flash storage, EMC PowerPath®, and Buffer Pool Extension to enhance OLTP performance of Microsoft SQL Server 2014 with data encryption enabled by EMC VNX® D@RE. It also describes how to improve SQL Server 2014 data protection with EMC AppSync® and VNX Snapshots. September 2014 Copyright © 2014 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. EMC believes the information in this publication is accurate as of its publication date. The information is subject to change without notice. The information in this publication is provided as is. EMC Corporation makes no representations or warranties of any kind with respect to the information in this publication, and specifically disclaims implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Use, copying, and distribution of any EMC software described in this publication requires an applicable software license. For the most up-to-date listing of EMC product names, see EMC Corporation Trademarks on EMC.com. All trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners. Part Number H13376 Enhancing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Performance and Protection Enabled by EMC VNX, EMC AppSync, and EMC Server-Based Flash Storage White Paper 2 Table of contents Executive summary............................................................................................................................... 5 Business case .................................................................................................................................. 5 Solution overview ............................................................................................................................ 6 Key results ....................................................................................................................................... 6 Introduction.......................................................................................................................................... 7 Purpose ........................................................................................................................................... 7 Scope .............................................................................................................................................. 7 Audience ......................................................................................................................................... 7 Terminology ..................................................................................................................................... 8 Technology overview ............................................................................................................................ 9 Overview .......................................................................................................................................... 9 EMC VNX series ................................................................................................................................ 9 Multicore architecture ................................................................................................................. 9 Flash-optimized hybrid array ..................................................................................................... 10 Active/active array service processors ....................................................................................... 10 Unisphere Management Suite ................................................................................................... 11 VNX D@RE ................................................................................................................................. 11 EMC FAST Suite .............................................................................................................................. 11 EMC FAST VP ............................................................................................................................. 11 EMC FAST Cache ........................................................................................................................ 12 EMC AppSync ................................................................................................................................. 12 EMC PowerPath/VE ........................................................................................................................ 13 Microsoft SQL Server 2014 ............................................................................................................. 13 In-memory OLTP ........................................................................................................................ 13 Buffer Pool Extension ................................................................................................................ 14 Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 with Hyper-V ........................................................................... 14 Solution architecture and configuration ............................................................................................. 15 Overview ........................................................................................................................................ 15 Solution architecture...................................................................................................................... 15 Hardware resources ....................................................................................................................... 16 Software resources ........................................................................................................................ 17 Workload profile ............................................................................................................................ 17 Storage considerations ...................................................................................................................... 18 Balancing storage processors ........................................................................................................ 18 Balancing back-end ports .............................................................................................................. 18 Thin provisioning ........................................................................................................................... 18 Enhancing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Performance and Protection Enabled by EMC VNX, EMC AppSync, and EMC Server-Based Flash Storage White Paper 3 Balancing data through FAST VP..................................................................................................... 19 Balancing data through FAST Cache ............................................................................................... 19 Storage design ................................................................................................................................... 20 Overview ........................................................................................................................................ 20 Disk layout ..................................................................................................................................... 20 Storage pool configuration ............................................................................................................. 21 FAST VP design .............................................................................................................................. 21 FAST Cache design ......................................................................................................................... 22 Data protection .............................................................................................................................. 22 VNX D@RE ..................................................................................................................................... 22 Hyper-V configuration ........................................................................................................................ 24 Overview ........................................................................................................................................ 24 Hyper-V virtual FC configuration .................................................................................................... 24 SQL Server AlwaysOn FCI configuration .......................................................................................... 25 Application design and configuration ................................................................................................. 27 Overview ........................................................................................................................................ 27 SQL Server 2014 design and configuration .................................................................................... 27 Design and requirements .......................................................................................................... 27 Database LUN configuration ...................................................................................................... 27 BPE design and configuration .................................................................................................... 29 AppSync design and configuration ................................................................................................. 31 Validation ........................................................................................................................................... 33 Overview ........................................................................................................................................ 33 Test objectives ............................................................................................................................... 33 Benchmark note ........................................................................................................................ 33 Test scenarios ................................................................................................................................ 34 Test procedures ............................................................................................................................. 34 Test results .................................................................................................................................... 35 Baseline and BPE testing results ............................................................................................... 35 Data protection testing .............................................................................................................. 42 Data encryption testing ............................................................................................................. 44 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................................... 47 Summary ....................................................................................................................................... 47 Findings ......................................................................................................................................... 47 References.......................................................................................................................................... 48 EMC documentation ....................................................................................................................... 48 Microsoft documentation ............................................................................................................... 48 Enhancing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Performance and Protection Enabled by EMC VNX, EMC AppSync, and EMC Server-Based Flash Storage White Paper 4 Executive summary Business case Modern IT organizational challenges include reaching availability goals, performance goals, total cost of ownership (TCO) goals, and capacity management goals. Corporate IT organizations are under increasing pressure to deliver greater performance, higher availability, and more data storage capacities while maintaining or reducing costs. Modern IT organizations frequently compete with public cloud computing vendors to deliver IT services at low cost to their internal business unit customers. Today's IT organizations need to provide infrastructure for business systems with widely varying requirements, such as: • Continuously available access to mission critical business support systems • Maintaining and updating code levels with application patching and operating system updates • Restoration of data states and data versions from previous points in time to address data integrity issues • Maximizing the speed of user-facing systems and decision-support systems to enable business units to make decisions faster • Repurposing of datasets for reporting functions, developers, and testing functions EMC provides unique and powerful tools, techniques, and products to dramatically reduce costs, increase performance of applications, and deliver higher levels of functionality and data management to support today's highly demanding business units and users. Providing specific capabilities that support SQL Server workloads, EMC creates substantial value for IT organizations that support business units and end-users relying on SQL Server. Microsoft SQL Server 2014 provides features that deliver faster performance, expand capabilities in the cloud, and provide powerful business insights. SQL Server enables enterprises to build mission-critical applications and big data solutions by using high-performance, in-memory technology, across online transaction processing (OLTP), data warehousing, business intelligence, and analytics workloads, without having to buy expensive add-ons or high-end appliances. Enterprises that rely on their SQL Server investment must use a proven infrastructure to meet continuous operational-performance and capacity-management challenges. Currently, they must consider systems that provide higher levels of performance while minimizing operational costs and complexity. Enhancing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Performance and Protection Enabled by EMC VNX, EMC AppSync, and EMC Server-Based Flash Storage White Paper 5 Solution overview This solution helps EMC customers and partners take advantage of their SQL Server investment with enhanced flash enabled storage technologies with a reference architecture that uses the powerful EMC® VNX5600™ array and EMC Fully Automated Storage Tiering (FAST®) Cache for latency-sensitive SQL Server workloads. This solution utilizes server and storage optimized flash technology and the latest Buffer Pool Extension (BPE) feature in SQL Server 2014. EMC also provides EMC AppSync®, which offers simple, service-level agreements (SLAs) driven by protection for mission critical SQL Server databases on both block and file VNX® storage. Key results The key results of this solution are: • The next-generation VNX series can easily service the SQL Server OLTP workloads with high performance demands by maximizing the efficiency and effectiveness of EMC FAST technology. • With EMC Fully Automated Storage Tiering (FAST) Suite, EMC PCIe flash card provides more than a 40 percent increase in transactional performance by leveraging the new SQL Server 2014 BPE feature. • EMC AppSync® with VNX Snapshots provides simple, fast, and self-service application protection with minimal performance impact to moderate SQL Server OLTP workloads. • AppSync enables safe and rapid data recovery. Performance tests with the AppSync server restored four databases in just a few minutes in both Recovery and NoRecovery mode. • VNX D@RE provides fast on-array data protection with minimal performance impact to SQL Server OLTP workloads. Enhancing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Performance and Protection Enabled by EMC VNX, EMC AppSync, and EMC Server-Based Flash Storage White Paper 6 Introduction Purpose This white paper showcases how the VNX5600 easily supports Microsoft SQL Server 2014 with BPE to increase transactional performance by utilizing EMC PCIe flash card. EMC Fully Automated Storage Tiering for Virtual Pools (FAST VP) and FAST Cache technologies provide significant performance improvements for Microsoft SQL Server in an automated, nondisruptive way. This white paper also describes how easy it is to configure AppSync server and VNX Snapshots, which provide data protection for SQL Server 2014 instances and measures the recovery time from the snapshots. This paper also shows how VNX D@RE technology encrypts all SQL Server data written to disks, which protect data access against unauthorized drive removal with minimal performance impact. Scope Audience The scope of this white paper is to: • Demonstrate how SQL Server 2014 with BPE uses VNX5600 to increase transaction performance • Demonstrate how SQL Server 2014 with BPE uses the EMC PCIe flash card to increase transaction performance • Demonstrate the easy configuration of AppSync with VNX Snapshots to provide protection of SQL Server 2014 • Measure the performance impact of VNX Snapshots on a running SQL Server OLTP workload • Measure the recovery time of SQL Server Databases from VNX Snapshots • Show how VNX D@RE technology encrypts all SQL data written to disks with minimal performance impact This white paper is intended for EMC employees, partners, and customers, including: IT planners, storage architects, SQL Server administrators, and EMC field personnel who are tasked with deploying such a solution in a customer environment. It is assumed that the reader is familiar with the various server components of the solution. Enhancing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Performance and Protection Enabled by EMC VNX, EMC AppSync, and EMC Server-Based Flash Storage White Paper 7 Terminology This white paper includes the terminology listed in Table 1. Table 1. Terminology Term Definition Recovery point objective (RPO) The maximum tolerable period in which data might be lost from an IT service due to a major incident Recovery time objective (RTO) The period of time within which systems, applications, or functions must be recovered after an outage; the amount of downtime that a business can endure Skew A percentage of overall capacity responsible for most I/O activities VHDX A Hyper-V virtual hard disk (VHD) format available in Windows Server 2012 that enables increased storage capacity and workload processing. Virtual Fiber Channel A feature supported by Hyper-V that enables reliable connections to existing storage arrays for virtualized workloads. Working set A set of pages in the virtual address space of a process that resides in physical memory. Responsible for most of the I/O activity as a percentage of the total utilized active capacity. Enhancing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Performance and Protection Enabled by EMC VNX, EMC AppSync, and EMC Server-Based Flash Storage White Paper 8 Technology overview Overview EMC VNX series The following components were used for this solution: • EMC VNX5600 • EMC FAST Suite • EMC AppSync • EMC PCIe flash card • EMC PowerPath®/VE • Microsoft SQL Server 2014 • Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 with Hyper-V The EMC VNX series is optimized for virtual applications to deliver innovation and enterprise capabilities for file, block, and object storage. The VNX series includes the following features: • More capacity with multicore optimization with EMC MCx™ • Greater efficiency with a flash-optimized hybrid array • Better protection by increasing application availability with active/active array service processors • Easier administration and deployment by increasing productivity with EMC Unisphere® Management Suite The VNX series is designed to deliver greater efficiency, performance, and scale than ever before. Multicore architecture The VNX architecture unleashes the power of MCx technology, as shown in Figure 1. The system is optimized to distribute all services, such as RAID, I/O, VNX FAST Cache, data, and management, evenly across the cores in a uniform manner. MCx delivers up to four times more performance than its predecessor. Figure 1. MCx improves resource use across CPU cores Enhancing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Performance and Protection Enabled by EMC VNX, EMC AppSync, and EMC Server-Based Flash Storage White Paper 9 This multicore design in VNX delivers flash at scale, with more capacity, with the latest Intel multicore technology and software to take advantage of the increased power. In addition to providing improved block performance, the VNX series with MCx has improved the file performance for transactional applications. It delivers three times the input/output operations per second (IOPS) with less read and write latency to critical business applications in environments with virtualization. Flash-optimized hybrid array VNX5600 is a flash-optimized hybrid array that provides automated tiering to deliver the utmost data performance by intelligently moving less frequently accessed data to lower-cost disks. This hybrid approach uses a small percentage of flash drives in the overall system to provide a high percentage of overall IOPS. The flash-optimized VNX takes full advantage of the low latency of flash and delivers progressively lower costs with atscale performance. The EMC FAST Cache and FAST VP tiers use both block and file data across heterogeneous drives to boost the most active data to cache, enabling customers to avoid having to make any cost or performance concessions. FAST Cache dynamically absorbs unpredicted spikes in system workloads. As that data ages and becomes less active over time, FAST VP automatically tiers the data across high-performance, high-capacity drives based on customer-defined policies. This functionality has four times better granularity with FAST VP solid-state drives (SSDs) that are based on enterprise multilevel cell (MLC) technology, which lowers costs per gigabyte. Active/active array service processors The VNX architecture provides active/active array service processors. As shown in Figure 2, active/active processors eliminate the application timeouts during path failovers because both paths are actively serving I/O. Figure 2. Active/active processors increase performance, resiliency, and efficiency Enhancing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Performance and Protection Enabled by EMC VNX, EMC AppSync, and EMC Server-Based Flash Storage White Paper 10 Load balancing is also improved and applications can achieve an improvement of up to two times in performance. Active/active for block is ideal for applications that require the highest levels of availability and performance, but does not require tiering or efficiency services like compression, deduplication, or snapshots. With VNX5600, EMC customers can use Virtual Data Movers (VDMs) and VNX Replicator to perform automated and high-speed file system migrations between systems. This process automatically migrates all snapshots and settings allowing clients to continue operations during data migrations. Unisphere Management Suite The VNX series includes a Unisphere Management Suite, as shown in Figure 3. Unisphere is an easy-to-use interface that provides a task-based integrated management experience for managing, reporting, and monitoring storage. It also offers greater insight into the utilization and workload patterns, enabling you to diagnose issues, and forecast and plan for future capacity needs. Figure 3. Unisphere Management Suite VNX D@RE The VNX D@RE feature uses a controller-based encryption method to encrypt all data. This encryption process protects against unauthorized data access and disk removal (lost or stolen drives). In some cases, D@RE can eliminate the need for data erasure services. D@RE encrypts all user data for the entire VNX array before the data is written to disk, irrespective of the application, the access protocol (file or block), or the VNX array model. D@RE supports all data services available in VNX, such as FAST, replication, snapshots, deduplication, and compression. EMC FAST Suite EMC FAST Suite is an advanced software feature providing greater flexibility to manage the increased performance and capacity requirements of the SQL Server environment. FAST Suite uses SSDs, SAS, and near-line SAS (NL-SAS) storage configuration to balance performance and storage needs. FAST Suite includes FAST VP and FAST Cache. EMC FAST VP FAST VP allows data to be automatically tiered in storage pools that include one or more drive types. Enhancing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Performance and Protection Enabled by EMC VNX, EMC AppSync, and EMC Server-Based Flash Storage White Paper 11 Storage tiering enables the economical provisioning of storage devices within a tier, instead of in an entire pool. The separate tiers are each provisioned with a different type of drive. Tiered storage creates separate domains within the pool, based on performance. FAST VP algorithmically promotes and demotes user data between the tiers based on how frequently the data is accessed. More frequently accessed data is moved to higher performance tiers. Infrequently accessed data is moved to modestly performing high-capacity tiers as needed. Over time, the most frequently accessed data resides on the fastest storage devices, and infrequently accessed data resides on economical and modestly performing bulk storage. EMC FAST Cache The VNX series supports an optional performance-enhancing feature called EMC FAST Cache. FAST Cache increases the storage system cache by extending the functionality of dynamic random access memory (DRAM) cache, mapping frequently accessed data to SSDs. If the user application frequently accesses a particular chunk of data (64 KB), that chunk is automatically promoted into the FAST Cache by being copied from hard disk drives (HDDs) to flash drives. Subsequent access to the same chunk is serviced at flash-drive response time, boosting the performance of the storage system. FAST Cache is most suitable for I/O-intensive, random workloads with small working sets. A typical OLTP database with this kind of profile can greatly benefit from FAST Cache to improve performance and response time. EMC AppSync EMC AppSync is advanced, copy management software for EMC VMAX® and VNX storage arrays that offers a better way to manage the protection, replication, and cloning of critical applications and databases, including SQL Server 2014 with block and file storage. Designed for SQL Server, AppSync Snapshot management also provides simple database repurposing which serves many useful functions including test-dev, break-fix, data mining and reporting. After defining service plans, application owners can protect, recover, and clone their own data quickly by using available EMC replication technologies, such as VNX Snapshots, EMC SRDF®, EMC TimeFinder®, and EMC RecoverPoint®. EMC AppSync also provides an application protection monitoring and reporting service that generates alerts if service level agreements are not met or if a copy management job fails. Enhancing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Performance and Protection Enabled by EMC VNX, EMC AppSync, and EMC Server-Based Flash Storage White Paper 12 AppSync provides the following components: • AppSync server software resides on a supported Windows system. It controls the service plans and stores data about each copy it creates. The repository is stored in a SQL Server 2012 database on the AppSync server. • Host plug-in is lightweight plug-in software that is installed by AppSync on the production and mount hosts. AppSync pushes the plug-in software from the AppSync server to the host when the host is added as a resource. In an environment that prevents the AppSync server from accessing a host, the plug-in can be installed manually. • AppSync console is a web-based application that supports Google Chrome, Microsoft Internet Explorer, and Mozilla Firefox web browsers. The flash and Java Runtime Environment are required for this console. The EMC AppSync Support Matrix on EMC Online Support provides the complete list of supported software and hardware for AppSync. • REST interface for AppSync enables application programmers to access information controlled by AppSync. The API is described in the EMC AppSync REST API Reference, which is available on EMC Online Support. EMC PowerPath/VE EMC PowerPath Virtual Edition (VE) provides intelligent, high-performance path management with path failover and load balancing that is optimized for EMC and selected third-party storage systems. PowerPath/VE supports multiple paths between a VMware vSphere host and external storage. Having multiple paths enables the vSphere host to access storage, even if a specific path is unavailable. Multiple paths can also share the I/O traffic to storage. PowerPath/VE is particularly beneficial in highly available environments, because it can prevent operational interruptions and downtime. The PowerPath/VE path failover capability avoids host failure by maintaining uninterrupted application support on the host with a path failure, if another path is available. PowerPath/VE can be used for Microsoft Hyper-V with PowerPath Multipathing for Microsoft Windows to standardize on a single offering across evolving physical and virtual environments. It supports heterogeneous servers, operating systems, and storage, including EMC and qualified non-EMC storage arrays. Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Microsoft SQL Server 2014 is the next generation of Microsoft’s information platform, with new features that deliver faster performance, expand capabilities in the cloud, and provide powerful business insights. SQL Server 2014 offers organizations the opportunity to efficiently protect, unlock, and scale data across desktops, mobile devices, data centers, and a private, pubic, or hybrid cloud. SQL Server product groups made sizable investments to improve scalability and performance of the SQL Server Database Engine component. In-memory OLTP In-memory OLTP is considered one of the most important features included in SQL Server 2014. This new feature is fully integrated into the SQL Server Database Engine. Traditional database engines must constantly synchronize changes made in memory with the on-disk versions for heavily accessed tables and indexes. Enhancing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Performance and Protection Enabled by EMC VNX, EMC AppSync, and EMC Server-Based Flash Storage White Paper 13 With in-memory OLTP, you define a heavily accessed table as memory optimized. Memory-optimized tables are fully transactional and durable and are accessed by using Transact-SQL in the same way as disk-based tables. Memory-optimized tables still must persist on disk and be loaded into memory when the engine is restarted. Memory-optimized tables do not persist indexes, so depending on the number of indexes on your large tables, your on-disk footprint could change significantly when using in-memory OLTP. Buffer Pool Extension BPE in SQL Server 2014 enables the integration of a nonvolatile random-accessmemory extension with the Database Engine buffer pool to significantly improve I/O throughput. Solid-state drives (SSDs) provide nonvolatile random access memory that improves query performance for SQL Server. BPE benefits this solution in the following ways: • Increased random I/O throughput • Reduced I/O latency • Increased transaction throughput • Improved read performance with a larger buffer pool • A caching architecture to take advantage of present and future low-cost flash memory drives Microsoft Windows Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 with Hyper-V provides a complete virtualization platform, which offers increased scalability and performance with a flexible solution Server 2012 R2 from the data center to the cloud. It makes it easier for enterprises to realize the cost with Hyper-V savings of virtualization and to optimize server hardware investments. Hyper-V high-availability options include data protection support, enhancements in clustered environments to support virtual adapters within the virtual machines, and inbox network interface card (NIC) teaming. In Hyper-V, shared-nothing live migration enables the migration of a virtual machine from a server running Hyper-V to another one without the need for both of them to be in the same cluster or to share storage. Enhancing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Performance and Protection Enabled by EMC VNX, EMC AppSync, and EMC Server-Based Flash Storage White Paper 14 Solution architecture and configuration Overview The environment in this solution consists of a two-node SQL Server 2014 AlwaysOn failover cluster instance (FCI) and an AppSync mount host for database repurposing. Each node of the SQL Server 2014 FCI is hosted on a physical host running Windows Server 2012 R2 with Hyper-V environment and with the EMC PCIe flash card installed. Storage is provided on the VNX5600 array and the physical Windows Server hosts are connected to the storage through Fiber Channel (FC) connections, as shown in Figure 4. Solution architecture The following physical components are included in this solution: • Two Windows Server 2012 R2 hosts, each hosting a virtual machine for SQL Server 2014 AlwaysOn FCI • One mount host running Windows 2012 R2, which hosts a virtual machine with a SQL Server 2014 stand-alone instance • EMC PCIe flash card • EMC VNX5600 SAN storage Enhancing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Performance and Protection Enabled by EMC VNX, EMC AppSync, and EMC Server-Based Flash Storage White Paper 15 Figure 4. Hardware resources Solution architecture Table 2 details the hardware resources used in this solution. Table 2. Hardware resources Equipment Quant ity Configuration EMC VNX5600 1 • 30 x 10K 900 GB SAS disks • 5 x 200 GB SAS flash virtual pool disks • 5 x 100GB SAS flash disks • 10 x 7.2k 3 TB NL SAS disks • FAST Suite • VNX Snapshots enabled • VNX D@RE FC switches 2 8 Gb/s Servers 3 Two SQL Server FCI hosts each with: • Intel Xeon CPU E7-4870 @2.40 GHz • 4 sockets, 10 cores per socket • 384 GB of memory • 8Gb dual port FC: PCIe SFP HBA One mount host with: • Intel Xeon CPU E7-2870 @2.40GHz • 2 sockets, 10 cores per socket • 160 GB of memory • 8Gb dual port FC HBA Card EMC PCIe flash card 2 XtremSF700S model with 700 GB capacity Enhancing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Performance and Protection Enabled by EMC VNX, EMC AppSync, and EMC Server-Based Flash Storage White Paper 16 Software resources Table 3 details the software resources used in this solution. Table 3. Workload profile Software resources Resource Quantity Version Purpose EMC VNX5600 block OE 1 5.33.000.5.074 VNX operating environment (OE) EMC PowerPath/VE 2 5.7 SP2 Advanced multipathing for host FC connections Microsoft Windows Server 3 2012 R2 Data Center Edition, x64 Server operating system and hypervisor Microsoft SQL Server 3 2014 Enterprise Edition Database servers for OLTP workload EMC AppSync 1 2.0 Data protection Table 4 details the SQL Server workload profile used in validating this solution. Table 4. Microsoft SQL Server 2012 workload profile Profile characteristic Quantity and size Microsoft SQL Server 2014 AlwaysOn FCI 100,000 users, 1 TB database 50,000 users, 500 GB database 25,000 users, 250 GB database 5,000 users, 50 GB database Workload type OLTP workload derived from the TPC-E Benchmark toolset with a 90:10 read/write ratio Note: The OLTP workload in this solution is derived from the TPC-E Benchmark toolset and is not comparable to published TPC-E benchmark results. Enhancing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Performance and Protection Enabled by EMC VNX, EMC AppSync, and EMC Server-Based Flash Storage White Paper 17 Storage considerations This section describes storage considerations for this solution. Balancing storage processors In this solution, a two-node SQL Server AlwaysOn FCI is running on separate Hyper-V hosts that share the same front-end ports on the VNX. The FC switches are redundant, with the second switch continuing to handle all the network traffic for a hardware failure on the primary FC switch. Figure 5 shows the network connections between the front-end ports and the hosts for SQL Server. Figure 5. Solution network connections In this solution, we configured pool LUNs for SQL Server by following the EMC best practice of balancing SP utilization to fully utilize the storage processing power by distributing the load and binding the LUN owner evenly to both SPs. Because the active/optimized paths are evenly distributed, workload is pushed to each SP evenly. Balancing backend ports Thin provisioning To achieve maximum performance, we balanced back-end ports through both physical and logical layers as follows: 1. Spread each drive type across all available buses by physically distributing or relocating drives between DPEs and DAEs. 2. Create pools to distribute the I/O evenly across the back-end ports. Thin LUNs maximize ease of use and capacity utilization, and take advantage of enabling data services such as VNX Snapshots, deduplication, and compression. Thin LUNs can provide moderate performance in most environments, typically having lower performance than thick LUNs because of the indirect addressing. Thin LUN metadata workload overhead adds cost. If thin LUN metadata cannot be satisfied by SP memory, you must add a flash tier to which thin LUN metadata is promoted to improve performance. Virtual Provisioning for the New VNX Series provides more information. Enhancing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Performance and Protection Enabled by EMC VNX, EMC AppSync, and EMC Server-Based Flash Storage White Paper 18 In this solution, we use thin LUNs to store SQL Server data to improve the storage efficiency and take advantage of VNX Snapshots. Balancing data through FAST VP To balance the best performance and TCO, we expanded the SAS-only pool storing SQL Server data with two flash drives and enabled FAST VP on the pool. With FAST VP enabled, the metadata of thin LUNs can be promoted to the flash tier, which improves overall performance. Balancing data through FAST Cache In earlier releases of VNX and EMC CLARiiON® arrays, FAST Cache is located above the SP cache. In MCx, the Multicore FAST Cache is below the Multicore Cache. MCx is quicker to acknowledge a host read/write than was possible with earlier arrays because Multicore Cache handles host I/O before searching the FAST Cache memory map. From a performance point of view, FAST Cache provides an immediate performance benefit to bursty data such as SQL Server checkpoint running. FAST Cache and FAST VP features can be used together to yield high performance and TCO from the storage system. From a TCO perspective, FAST Cache can service active data with fewer flash drives, while FAST VP optimizes disk utilization and efficiency for SAS and NL-SAS drives. In this solution, we configured four 100 GB SAS flash drives and enabled FAST Cache on the SQL Server FCI data pool to benefit burst data. Enhancing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Performance and Protection Enabled by EMC VNX, EMC AppSync, and EMC Server-Based Flash Storage White Paper 19 Storage design Overview This section shows the disk layout and storage configurations used in VNX5600. Design considerations involve many aspects. Always check the latest best practice and design considerations before building your solution. Disk layout Figure 6 shows the disk layout we designed for this solution with FAST VP and FAST Cache enabled. Figure 6. Solution disk layout Note: We enabled the default hot spare policy on the array, allowing for one hot spare drive per 30 drives for all three drive types. We had enough unused disks available on different buses to be used by Multicore RAID for hot spares. Enhancing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Performance and Protection Enabled by EMC VNX, EMC AppSync, and EMC Server-Based Flash Storage White Paper 20 Storage pool configuration Table 5 details the VNX storage pool configuration for the solution. We separated the storage pools according to the I/O pattern and SQL Server best practices. Table 5. EMC VNX5600 storage pool configuration Pool RAID type Disk configuration Purpose SQL Server FCI data pool RAID 5 (4+1) 20 x 900 GB, 10K SAS Performance tier for SQL Server OLTP database RAID 10 (4+4) 2 x 200 GB, SAS Flash VP Extreme performance tier for SQL Server OLTP database SQL Server FCI tempdb and log pool RAID 10 (4+4) 8 x 900 GB, 10K SAS SQL Server tempdb database and logs for SQL Server OLTP database Virtual machines OS pool RAID 10 (4+4) 8 x 3 TB, NL-SAS Virtual machine OS pool including SQL Server virtual machine, AppSync server, and Domain Controller; also for SQL Server system databases FAST VP design After completing the baseline test, we expanded the storage pool with two 200 GB SAS flash virtual pool drives. We set the tiering policy for the data LUNs inside the storage pool to Start High then Auto-Tier, which is the default and recommended setting. For more about FAST VP design methods for SQL Server on VNX series, refer to Microsoft SQL Server Best Practices and Design Guidelines for EMC Storage. During the FAST VP testing, to ensure that the hot data was moved to the highest tier as soon as possible, we manually started the data relocation with the relocation rate set to Medium, as shown in Figure 7. Figure 7. FAST VP data relocation setting Enhancing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Performance and Protection Enabled by EMC VNX, EMC AppSync, and EMC Server-Based Flash Storage White Paper 21 FAST Cache design As shown in Figure 8, we configured four 100 GB SAS flash drives and enabled FAST Cache on the SQL Server FCI data pool. Figure 8. Data protection FAST Cache enabled on SQL Server FCI data pool To protect SQL Server OLTP databases, we took advantage of AppSync and VNX Snapshots. VNX Snapshots uses Redirect on Write (ROW) technology. ROW redirects new writes destined for the primary LUN to a new location in the storage pool. Because VNX Snapshots require pool space, we designed the pool capacity with the calculated space required for the snapshots, which we based on the data changes of the running OLTP workloads and the number of snapshots we wanted to keep. To control snapshot growth, we enabled VNX Snapshot Auto-Delete, which prevents the snapshots from taking usable space away from pool LUNs. EMC VNX Snapshots White Paper provides more details about VNX Snapshot Auto-Delete. VNX D@RE VNX introduced D@RE to protect data against theft or loss. It uses a controller based encryption method to encrypt all data written to disk, protecting data access against unauthorized drive removal. It encrypts at the array level and at the drive level. Every drive has its own unique encryption key that is managed through an embedded encryption key manager. This function supports all VNX data services, such as FAST, replication, snapshots, deduplication, and compression. Enhancing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Performance and Protection Enabled by EMC VNX, EMC AppSync, and EMC Server-Based Flash Storage White Paper 22 To activate the D@RE feature in Unisphere, select System and, from the list under Wizards, select Data At Rest Encryption Activation Wizard. The activation wizard directs you through the steps to activate encryption and to back up the generated key store file to an external location. The key storage file that is generated to store the encryption keys resides on a managed LUN in a private space on the system. You can view the encryption status after enabling D@RE on the VNX array, as shown in Figure 9. Figure 9. View D@RE status on VNX Enhancing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Performance and Protection Enabled by EMC VNX, EMC AppSync, and EMC Server-Based Flash Storage White Paper 23 Hyper-V configuration Overview In this solution, we deployed two virtual machines for SQL Server 2014 FCI cluster in Windows Server 2012 R2 with Hyper-V environment. Hyper-V virtual FC configuration We provisioned LUNs from the storage side for the SQL Server 2014 AlwaysOn FCI by using Hyper-V virtual FC technology, enabling virtualized workloads to connect directly and reliably to storage arrays. Windows Server 2012 R2 with Hyper-V provides FC ports within the guest operating system (OS), enabling direct FC connections from within the virtual machines. Virtual FC for Hyper-V provides the guest OS with unmediated access to a SAN by using a standard World Wide Name (WWN) associated with a virtual machine. Virtual FC enables users to use FC SANs to virtualize workloads that require direct access to SAN LUNs. By using virtual FC, this solution also enables Windows features, such as Windows Failover Clustering on block storage, which require direct-disk access to enforce SCSI disk persistent reservations in ownership and arbitration of clustered disks. Figure 10 shows a virtual FC Adapter configured for one virtual SAN as the SQL Server 2014 AlwaysOn FCI. Implement Hyper-V Virtual Fiber Channel provides instructions on configuring Hyper-V virtual FC. Figure 10. FC Adapter for AlwaysOn FCI Enhancing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Performance and Protection Enabled by EMC VNX, EMC AppSync, and EMC Server-Based Flash Storage White Paper 24 When deploying SQL Server 2014 AlwaysOn FCI on Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V hosts, refer to the Microsoft best practices related to CPU, memory, and storage to achieve optimal database performance. We deployed two virtual machines as SQL Server 2014 FCI clusters, as shown in Table 6. SQL Server AlwaysOn FCI configuration Table 6. Virtual machine SQL Server 2014 FCI Node 1 SQL Server 2014 FCI Node 2 SQL Server AlwaysOn FCI virtual machine configuration CPU Memory Local disks Cluster disks 24 32 GB 100 GB VHDX with fixed size for OS and paging files 1,500 GB disk for data files of 1.2 TB SQL Server database 400 GB VHDX with fixed size created from PCIe flash card volume on physical host 1 800 GB disk for data files of 500 GB SQL Server database 24 32 GB 100 GB VHDX with fixed size for OS and paging files 400 GB VHDX with fixed size created from PCIe flash card volume on physical host 2 300 GB disk for log files of 1.2 TB SQL Server database 100 GB disk for log files of 500 GB SQL Server database 400 GB disk for data files of 250 GB SQL Server database 100 GB disk for log files of 250 GB SQL Server database 100 GB disk for data files of 50 GB SQL Server database 100 GB disk for log files of 50 GB SQL Server database 100 GB disks for SQL Server system database files Note: In this test environment, we enabled Intel Hyper-Threading Technology on both HyperV hosts running SQL Server FCIs. This enabled the hosts to use the processor resources more efficiently and enabled multiple threads to run on each core. In this solution, the SQL Server 2014 FCI primary node and standby node are deployed on two different virtual machines that are hosted on two physical servers. The live migration setting for both SQL Server virtual machines must be disabled so they are pinned to the same physical host and the PCIe flash card. The local disks of the two cluster nodes include 100 GB VHDX for OS and paging files, and 400 GB VHDX for SQL Server buffer pool extension that is created from the flash card. The disks used for SQL Server, user database, and logs are designed as cluster disks. In Windows Failover Cluster Manager, you need to manually assign these disks to the SQL Server role, as shown in Figure 11. If SQL Server failover happens on the primary node, all the SQL Server cluster disks will also failover to the standby node to ensure business continuity. Enhancing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Performance and Protection Enabled by EMC VNX, EMC AppSync, and EMC Server-Based Flash Storage White Paper 25 Figure 11. SQL Server failover cluster disk configuration In this solution, to associate all the cluster disks to the clustered SQL Server role, you need to set up the dependencies property for all the cluster disks, as shown in Figure 12. Figure 12. Cluster disk dependencies configuration Enhancing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Performance and Protection Enabled by EMC VNX, EMC AppSync, and EMC Server-Based Flash Storage White Paper 26 Application design and configuration Overview This section provides the design and configuration guidelines for SQL Server 2014 and AppSync server to protect the SQL Server instances. SQL Server 2014 design and configuration Design and requirements The following list shows the Windows Server 2012 R2 and SQL Server 2014 configuration of each SQL FCI Server. Default values were used for all other settings: • Use Large Pages for the SQL Server instance by enabling the 834 startup parameters. • Use Lock Pages in Memory for the SQL Server service account. • Use the 64K allocation unit size when formatting all data and log LUNs. • Set Max Server Memory to limit SQL Server available memory, so some reserve memory is available for OS operations. • Pre-allocate data and log files for both SQL Server OLTP and tempdb databases to avoid auto-growth during peak times, and enable instant file initialization for the SQL Server startup service account to accelerate the process of initializing database files. • Make SQL Server data files of equal size within the same database. • Set Autoshrink to Off for data and log files. • Use multiple files for data and tempdb. • Place the tempdb data files and log files on separate LUNs from a RAID 1/0 SAS storage pool. Configure tempdb data files and log files on unshared disk partitions for SQL Server 2014 FCI cluster whenever possible to reduce cost and bandwidth. Note: Instant file initialization is available only if the SQL Server (MSSQLSERVER) service account has been granted an SE_MANAGE_VOLUME_NAME. Members of the Windows Administrator group have this right and can grant it to other users by adding them to the Perform Volume Maintenance Tasks security policy. The Microsoft SQL Server Best Practices topic on Microsoft TechNet provides more information about best practices for your SQL Server configuration. Database LUN configuration The SQL Server 2014 AlwaysOn FCI hosts four OLTP TPC-E-like workload databases, 1.2 TB, 500 GB, 250 GB, and 50 GB in capacity. We ran a heavy OLTP workload with a read/write ratio of approximately 90:10 against the databases with a total user count of 200,000. Note: The read/write ratio is determined by the OLTP workload tool. Enhancing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Performance and Protection Enabled by EMC VNX, EMC AppSync, and EMC Server-Based Flash Storage White Paper 27 We configured the VNX5600 storage pool enabled by FAST VP to host SQL Server database LUNs. The LUNs hosted virtual machine OS files, and SQL Server data, log, and tempdb files, for SQL Server 2014 AlwaysOn FCI, as shown in Table 7. Table 7. SQL Server database LUN configuration on VNX5600 for AlwaysOn FCI Component Storage pool LUN capacity (GB) tempdb LUN 1 SQL Server tempdb and log pool 200 tempdb LUN 2 SQL Server tempdb and log pool 200 tempdb LUN 3 SQL Server tempdb and log pool 200 tempdb LUN 4 SQL Server tempdb and log pool 200 tempdb log LUN SQL Server tempdb and log pool 100 1 TB OLTP database data LUN SQL Server FCI data pool 1,500 500 GB OLTP database data LUN SQL Server FCI data pool 800 250 GB OLTP database data LUN SQL Server FCI data pool 400 50 GB OLTP database data LUN SQL Server FCI data pool 100 1 TB OLTP database log LUN SQL Server FCI log pool 300 500 GB OLTP database log LUN SQL Server FCI log pool 100 250 GB OLTP database log LUN SQL Server FCI log pool 100 50 GB OLTP database log LUN SQL Server FCI log pool 100 Virtual machine operating system LUN for primary node Virtual machines OS pool 100 Virtual machine operating system LUN for standby node Virtual machines OS pool 100 SQL Server FCI system database files Virtual machines OS pool 100 FAST VP policy Not recommended Start high then auto-tier Not recommended Not recommended Enhancing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Performance and Protection Enabled by EMC VNX, EMC AppSync, and EMC Server-Based Flash Storage White Paper 28 BPE design and configuration SQL Server 2014 BPE provides a seamless integration of a solid-state drive extension to the Database Engine buffer pool to significantly improve I/O throughput. In this solution, we used the PCIe flash card with BPE with SQL Server 2014, which we configured as a PCIe device to the physical host. Figure 13 shows the multilevel caching hierarchy with SQL Server 2014 and the PCIe flash card. With traditional DRAM configured as level 1 cache for SQL Server 2014, a specific caching file is created from the flash card with BPE as level 2 cache. BPE only accepts clean pages to maintain data integrity. SQL Server handles the clean page movement between levels 1 and 2 cache. With this caching hierarchy, the SQL Server 2014 buffer pool can manage a much larger database working set. The paging of I/O operations is maintained within levels 1 and 2 cache, rather than database files on HDDs, which dramatically improves OLTP performance. Figure 13. Multilevel caching hierarchy of SQL Server 2014 with BPE and the flash card In this solution, the PCIe flash card is attached as a local virtual hard disk (VHDX) for both virtual machines with the virtualized SQL Server AlwaysOn FCI. To configure the flash card for SQL Server BPE, a VHDX must be created from the flash card volume in the virtual machine settings, as shown in Figure 14. Enhancing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Performance and Protection Enabled by EMC VNX, EMC AppSync, and EMC Server-Based Flash Storage White Paper 29 Figure 14. PCIe flash card configuration for SQL Server virtual machine You must mount the VHDX that is created from the flash card’s volume in the SQL Server virtual machine. In SQL Server Management Studio, you can manually enable the BPE with Transact-SQL scripts by using the following command lines. • To manually enable BPE: ALTER SERVER CONFIGURATION SET BUFFER POOL EXTENSION ON (FILENAME='Z:\XtremSF.bpe', SIZE = 256 GB); • To manually disable BPE: ALTER SERVER CONFIGURATION SET BUFFER POOL EXTENSION OFF; The BPE size can be up to 32 times larger than the value of the SQL Server max_server_memory. The Buffer Pool Extension Configuration Best Practices topic on MSDN Library has more details about recommended buffer pool extension sizes. We created a 256 GB BPE file on the PCIe flash card for the SQL Server OLTP workload. After the script ran to enable the SQL Server BPE, a BPE file was created on the virtual machine disk volume from the flash card, as shown in Figure 15. Figure 15. Create a BPE file from the PCIe flash card Enhancing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Performance and Protection Enabled by EMC VNX, EMC AppSync, and EMC Server-Based Flash Storage White Paper 30 AppSync design and configuration EMC AppSync provides simple, self-service application protection with tiered protection options and proven recoverability. It facilitates and automates creation of disk-based copies of SQL Server 2014 databases for VNX, which can be used for recovery and repurposing. Figure 16 shows the implementation of AppSync in this solution. Figure 16. AppSync for SQL Server 2014 failover cluster Before you start protection for databases with AppSync, confirm your environment meets the following SQL Server prerequisites: • The SQL Server database and its transaction logs must be located on disks in the same storage array. • The SQL Server database must be online during the AppSync replication operation. • The mount host must have SQL Server installed if you want to recover databases from the mounted copy. • Use the same version of SQL Server on the production and mount hosts. • AppSync does not truncate transaction logs; you must create a database maintenance plan to coexist with scheduled replications. Refer to Microsoft SQL Server documentation for information about creating a database maintenance plan. Enhancing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Performance and Protection Enabled by EMC VNX, EMC AppSync, and EMC Server-Based Flash Storage White Paper 31 • In Hyper-V environments, AppSync requires the storage for SQL Server database and log files to be on NPIV fiber devices, iSCSI direct attached devices, or SCSI pass-through devices. SCSI Command Descriptor Block (CDB) filtering must be turned off in the parent partition. CDB is turned on by default. For SQL Server cluster, AppSync requires storage to be on NPIV fiber devices or iSCSI direct attached devices. For more AppSync installation and configuration details, refer to EMC AppSync 2.0.0 Installation and Configuration Guide and EMC AppSync 2.0.0 User and Administration Guide. After you create copies for your SQL Server databases with AppSync, you can restore them in a simple way. AppSync supports three recovery types from copies, as shown in Table 8. In this solution, we restored the database with Recovery and NoRecovery modes to the mount host. Table 8. AppSync restore types Recovery type Purpose Recovery Recovers the database after restoring. Additional backups cannot be restored post recovery. Standby Leaves the database in standby state, in which the database is available for limited read-only access. This restore type rolls back uncommitted transactions, but saves the undo actions in a standby file so that recovery effects can be reverted. NoRecovery Leaves the database in the restoring state and does not roll back the uncommitted transactions. This restore type enables you to restore transaction log backups in the current recovery path. Enhancing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Performance and Protection Enabled by EMC VNX, EMC AppSync, and EMC Server-Based Flash Storage White Paper 32 Validation Overview This solution validates the performance and functionality of an enterprise-class SQL Server FCI in a virtualized Hyper-V environment on a next generation VNX array by using EMC server-based flash storage and SQL Server. Test objectives The testing of this solution validated the ability of the VNX storage arrays, with FAST Suite enabled to boost performance for OLTP databases. Tests involved: • Enabling FAST Suite on SQL Server data pool for the baseline test • Configuring the EMC PCIe flash card as the SQL Server BPE to boost performance • Using AppSync with VNX Snapshot technology to enhance data protection of SQL Server OLTP databases • Validating minimal performance impact of VNX D@RE protection on OLTP databases Benchmark note Benchmark results are highly dependent on workload, specific application requirements, design, and implementation. Relative system performance will vary because of these and other factors. So do not use this workload as a substitute for a specific customer application benchmark for critical capacity planning and product evaluation decisions. All performance data contained in this report was obtained in a rigorously controlled environment. Results obtained in other operating environments might vary. EMC Corporation does not warrant or represent that a user can or will achieve similar performance expressed in transactions per minute. Enhancing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Performance and Protection Enabled by EMC VNX, EMC AppSync, and EMC Server-Based Flash Storage White Paper 33 Test scenarios Multiple test scenarios were validated for this configuration, as shown in Table 9. Table 9. Test No. 1 2 3 Test procedures Test scenarios Scenario Description Baseline test with FAST Suite Baseline testing on an SAS-only pool with both FAST Cache and FAST VP enabled. Ran multiple OLTP workloads on the four OLTP databases. BPE test with FAST Suite Configured the EMC PCIe flash card as the SQL Server BPE and repeated the same baseline performance test on the four OLTP databases to compare the performance before and after enabling BPE. The test duration was 12 hours. Snapshot protection test with FAST Suite Ran the baseline performance test on the SASonly pool, with both FAST Cache and FAST VP enabled, and created snapshots through AppSync and VNX Snapshots after the baseline test went into steady state to compare the performance differences. VNX Snapshots were taken every hour and the total test duration was 12 hours. AppSync restoring test Restored the snapshots on the mount host for repurposing databases through AppSync and VNX Snapshots to measure the RTO. Data encryption test with FAST Suite Ran the baseline performance tests on the SASonly pool with D@RE enabled on the VNX array to compare the performance before and after enabling D@RE. The test duration for D@RE was 12 hours. We conducted a series of tests by running concurrent TPC-E-like (OLTP) workloads against the target databases on the SQL Server FCI. The test procedures were as follows: 1. Ran the baseline performance test with FAST Suite enabled, reached a steady state, and then measured and recorded the performance. 2. Configured the PCIe flash card as a SQL Server BPE. Applied the same baseline test workload with FAST Suite enabled, measured and recorded the performance boost throughout the test. 3. Performed the baseline test again with a moderate SQL Server OLTP workload and reached a steady state. Started AppSync services plan to enable VNX Snapshot protection for OLTP databases. Measured and recorded the performance during the Snapshot period. 4. Performed the baseline test again and reached a steady state. Enabled D@RE on the VNX array, and measured and recorded the performance after D@RE. Our metrics used a combination of the SQL Server performance counters, Unisphere NAR files, and AppSync test output. Enhancing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Performance and Protection Enabled by EMC VNX, EMC AppSync, and EMC Server-Based Flash Storage White Paper 34 Test results This section describes the test results for the following: • Baseline testing and BPE testing with FAST Suite enabled • Protection testing that measured the performance impact after VNX Snapshots were enabled and the recovery time during the restore testing • Data encryption testing that measured the performance impact after the VNX D@RE feature was enabled Baseline and BPE testing results During the BPE testing, we first conducted baseline tests on the storage pool with FAST Suite enabled, and then we created a 256 GB BPE on the PCIe flash card. Next, we enabled the SQL Server BPE to monitor the performance boost. Table 10 shows the detailed CPU and memory configuration for this test. Table 10. CPU and memory configuration for BPE testing Item Baseline BPE CPU Reservation 24 24 Memory Reservation 32 GB for virtual machine, reserve 16 GB for SQL Server FCI 32 GB for virtual machine, reserve 8 GB for SQL Server FCI The following are the key metrics for testing BPE: • SQL Server performance metrics • Throughput in IOPS (transfers per second) • Throughput in TPS (transactions per second) • SQL Server batch request count (batch requests per second) • SQL Server FCI virtual machine processor time (percent) • Host latency (average disk seconds per transfer) • Physical disk utilization (percent) SQL Server 2014 performance metrics We monitored the SQL Server performance before and after enabling BPE by using Perfmon SQL Server > Buffer Manager and SQL Server > Memory Manager counters. Figure 17 shows the database cache memory test metrics. The total SQL Server reserved memory size was only 8 GB throughout the test. After enabling BPE, the database cache size increased as data was read into BPE (L2 cache, as shown in Figure 13 on page 29). The tests show the database cache memory utilization reached a maximum of 216 GB and BPE utilization was approximately 85 percent. Enhancing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Performance and Protection Enabled by EMC VNX, EMC AppSync, and EMC Server-Based Flash Storage White Paper 35 Figure 17. Database cache memory utilization test results for BPE As the database cache memory size increased, BPE became the primary source for database page reads during our tests. Figure 18 shows a comparison of page reads between SQL Server buffer pool and BPE. After enabling BPE, page reads in the buffer pool decreased to 8,100 IOPS after entering steady state. As more page reads used BPE, extension page reads increased to about 42,000+ IOPS after an eight-hour warm up, which was roughly five times more page reads than the buffer pool. The larger number of page reads on BPE helped to achieve higher TPS and batch request throughput for SQL Server, which showed a substantial improvement in overall SQL Server OLTP performance. Enhancing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Performance and Protection Enabled by EMC VNX, EMC AppSync, and EMC Server-Based Flash Storage White Paper 36 Figure 18. Database disk read IOPS test results for BPE Throughput in IOPS and TPS Storage side throughput was measured using the Perfmon LogicalDisk—Disk Reads/sec counters. Figure 19 shows the IOPS results before and after enabling the BPE. We adopted the TPC-E Benchmark toolset to generate typical OLTP workloads with a 90:10 read to write ratio. During the baseline tests with four databases, we achieved 18,880 IOPS reads to disks in the SQL Server data pool with FAST Suite enabled. After BPE was enabled, disk read IOPS decreased to 7,930, which was offloaded by about 58 percent. BPE provided over 42,000 more IOPS as page reads, indicating that database pages are more likely to be read from BPE rather than directly from disks. The test results show that BPE significantly helped to offload database disk IOPS, especially IOPS reads on VNX storage, to improve overall OLTP performance. Enhancing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Performance and Protection Enabled by EMC VNX, EMC AppSync, and EMC Server-Based Flash Storage White Paper 37 Figure 19. IOPS throughput test results for BPE Table 11 shows the IOPS for each SQL Server FCI data LUN before and after enabling BPE. The results prove that BPE on the PCIe flash card can offload reads on data LUNs. Table 11. IOPS page-read throughput test-results for BPE Data LUN Baseline IOPS Reads (TPS) BPE IOPS Reads (TPS) Offload percentage 1.2 TB database 1,039 390 62.5% 500 GB database 5,740 2,745 52.2% 250 GB database 11,087 4,908 55.7% 50 GB database 1,014 157 84.5% SQL Server OLTP throughput was measured using the Perfmon Databases— Transactions/sec counter. We also measured the performance of SQL Server FCI using Perfmon SQL Statistics—Batch Requests/sec and Processor Information—% Processor Time counters. Figure 20 shows the TPS and batch request test results for before and after enabling BPE. We achieved 1,846 TPS in the baseline test. After BPE, TPS increased about 1.4 times, up to 2,598. The batch requests also increased from 2,563 to 3,607, which was a gain of more than 1.4 times more throughput for SQL statements in SQL Server after enabling BPE Enhancing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Performance and Protection Enabled by EMC VNX, EMC AppSync, and EMC Server-Based Flash Storage White Paper 38 on the PCIe flash card. The results show that BPE enables SQL Server to manage more SQL queries and busier workloads. The CPU usage for the SQL Server FCI primary node increased from 31 percent to 75 percent after enabling BPE. This reflects that BPE on PCIe flash card can manage even more OLTP database workloads, when necessary. Figure 20. TPS and batch request throughput test results for BPE Figure 21 shows the increase in database transaction log throughput after enabling BPE. We use the Microsoft Perfmon counters of LogicalDisk—Disk Bytes/sec to monitor database log performance. From the chart we can see the transaction log throughput increased by 35 percent, demonstrating that SQL Server 2014 can generate more transactions under the same workload after BPE. Enhancing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Performance and Protection Enabled by EMC VNX, EMC AppSync, and EMC Server-Based Flash Storage White Paper 39 Figure 21. Trasaction log throughput test results for BPE Host latency We measured host latency for the SQL Server FCI primary node by using the Perfmon LogicalDisk—Avg. Disk sec/Transfer counter. Figure 22 shows the host latency results for BPE. During the baseline test, we drove workloads on the four databases and kept the host latency of all data LUNs less than 20 ms. Figure 22 shows that the 500 GB databases most improved the host latency after enabling BPE. In baseline tests, host latency was 17 ms. After enabling BPE, the host latency decreased to 6 ms, because more read hits on the database occurred in the BPE rather than directly reading from the HDD disks. The host latency for 1.2 TB and 250 GB database also decreased to 6 ms and 4 ms respectively. For 50 GB database, the host latency went up by only 1 ms, which was caused by FAST VP data relocation after BPE. Overall, the host latency for each database was kept within a relatively low level after BPE was enabled, demonstrating that BPE can further enhance OLTP performance with FAST Suite enabled. The host latency for the flash card remained below 1 ms during these tests, proving that BPE also greatly improves the host latency of SQL Server OLTP databases with BPE configured on the PCIe flash card. Enhancing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Performance and Protection Enabled by EMC VNX, EMC AppSync, and EMC Server-Based Flash Storage White Paper 40 Figure 22. Host latency test results for BPE Physical disk utilization We measured the physical disk utilization after analyzing the Unisphere NAR files. Figure 23 shows the physical disk utilization results for the BPE tests. Figure 23. Disk utilization test results for BPE Enhancing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Performance and Protection Enabled by EMC VNX, EMC AppSync, and EMC Server-Based Flash Storage White Paper 41 After enabling BPE, the utilization of the two flash vitural pool (VP) disks decreased significantly, and the SAS disks also encountered a slight decrease in disk utilization. Since hot data was loaded to the BPE, more hot pages are hit in the SQL Server buffer pool with the help of the BPE. As a result, less reads from disks occurred. The disk utilization of both flash VP disks was reduced. In addition, as the SAS tier managed less hot data, the decrease of disk utilization was less than the flash tier. After 12 hours of data throughput for the BPE test, the disk utilization of the first flash VP disk in the SQL Server FCI data pool decreased from 85.5 percent to 49 percent . The second flash VP disk utilization decreased from 76.9 percent to 31.9 percent. The average utilization of the 20 SAS disks on the SQL Server FCI data pool decreased from 90.1 percent to 81.4 percent. The results show that the IOPS pressure on both flash VP disks and SAS performance disks were offloaded from the storage side to the BPE on the PCIe flash card. Data protection testing We ran a moderate OLTP workload in the baseline testing on the four databases in the SQL Server FCI data pool with FAST Suite enabled. When the baseline test entered the steady state, we enabled an AppSync service plan that activated the VNX Snapshots to create hourly snapshots on those LUNs storing the database, and set the maximum number of snapshots to eight. We measured the performance throughout the testing. The AppSync Service plan configuration is shown in Table 12. Table 12. Service plan settings Service plan settings Value RPO 8 hours SQL Server Backup Type Full Storage Ordered Preference Snapshot Expiration Always keep 8 copies Next, the restore tests were performed from the created snapshots with the supported AppSync required recovery time measured in the following ways: • Restored all four databases in Recovery mode and measured the consumed time • Restored all four databases in NoRecovery mode and measured the consumed time Performance testing with snapshots We measured the performance impact as follows: • Throughput in IOPS (transfers per second) • Throughput in TPS (transactions per second) • Host latency (average disk seconds per transfer) Enhancing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Performance and Protection Enabled by EMC VNX, EMC AppSync, and EMC Server-Based Flash Storage White Paper 42 As shown in Figure 24, the protection tests resulted in 8,765 IOPS and 775 TPS for the baseline with a moderate OLTP workload. After the AppSync service plan was started, the VNX Snapshots were created every hour. Because we always kept eight snapshots for AppSync protection, for the first eight snapshots, the throughput in both IOPS and TPS was stable with no performance drop. After the ninth snapshot, a snapshot deletion operation of the first snapshot on the VNX array occurred, causing a merge operation on subsequent snapshots. The fragments created by this snapshot deletion operation can possibly downgrade the overall OLTP performance. While running the same moderate OLTP workload on all four databases, we monitored the performance decrease for snapshot deletions. In Figure 25, IOPS decreased no more than 10.8 percent, from 8,765 to 7,818, as compared to baseline tests. TPS decreased no more than 6.2 percent, from 775 to 727. The performance decreases might vary if a higher OLTP workload was adopted during the period with snapshot deletion. 775 10,000 8,765 785 8,981 812 9,256 802 801 799 802 802 9,337 9,307 9,265 9,370 9,337 900 800 734 727 800 733 9,227 8,546 8,000 IOPS 767 700 7,989 7,818 7,889 600 500 6,000 400 TPS 12,000 300 4,000 200 2,000 100 0 0 Baseline Snap 1 Snap 2 Snap 3 Snap 4 Snap 5 Snap 6 Snap 7 Snap 8 Snap 9 Snap 10 Snap 11 Snap 12 Total IOPS Total TPS Figure 24. Performance test results for AppSync Figure 25 shows the host latency results for the performance tests with AppSync protection. During the first eight snapshots, host latency did not change much as compared to baseline tests. However, when the ninth snapshot caused a deletion operation on the first snapshot, which in turn caused a series of snapshot merge operations, the latency increased 1 to 2 ms. The overall host latency remained within 5 ms for the moderate SQL OLTP workload throughout the tests. Enhancing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Performance and Protection Enabled by EMC VNX, EMC AppSync, and EMC Server-Based Flash Storage White Paper 43 Figure 25. Host latency test results for data protectiony We also measured the creation time for each snapshot. For the first eight snapshots, the average creation time was 4 minutes and 27 seconds. With the ninth snapshot, the snapshot creation time increased to 5 minutes and 23 seconds. The incoming snapshot deletion and merge operations consumed additional time for new snapshot creation. Recovery testing The recovery testing on the four databases with the first snapshot set had the largest data changes. We measured the performance impact of restoring snapshots to a mount host for database repurposing by using the RTO key metrics. Table 13 shows the test results when restoring snapshots for the four SQL OLTP databases with the two recovery types. Table 13. Test results for restoring snapshots Recover type Recovery time Total database size Data changes Recovery mode 9 min. 51 sec. 2 TB 56.5 GB NoRecovery mode 9 min. 54 sec. For both recovery types, the VNX Snapshots were mounted and repurposed to the AppSync mount host with a stand-alone SQL Server instance installed. These results prove AppSync can restore the four databases, with 56.5 data changes and 2 TB in total size presented to the mount host, in less than 10 minutes. With Recovery mode, the restore only took 9 minutes and 51 seconds, which recovered the database after the restoring process finished. With No Recovery mode, the restore only took 9 minutes and 54 seconds, which left the database in the restoring state. Data encryption testing For data encryption testing, we applied OLTP workload to drive maximum IOPS on the four SQL Server data LUNs with a maximum host latency below 20 ms, and set the performance results as a baseline. Then we enabled VNX D@RE and applied the same baseline workload to monitor the performance impact. Enhancing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Performance and Protection Enabled by EMC VNX, EMC AppSync, and EMC Server-Based Flash Storage White Paper 44 Performance testing with D@RE enabled The following are the key metrics for data encryption testing: • Throughput in IOPS (transfers per second) • Throughput in TPS • Host latency (average disk seconds per transfer) Throughput was measured using the Perfmon LogicalDisk—Disk Transfers/sec and Databases—Transactions/sec counters. Figure 26 shows the throughput results for the D@RE encryption tests. Figure 26. Throughput test results for D@RE encryption We ran the D@RE encryption test for 12 hours. After enabling D@RE, the results showed a minimal performance impact on the OLTP workload. The total IOPS for the four data LUNs decreased by less than 0.2 percent, from 17,293 to 17,268. The total TPS for the four databases only decreased by 4.1 percent, from 1,461 to 1,401. The host latency was monitored with the Perfmon LogicalDisk—Disk Reads/sec, LogicalDisk—Disk Writes/sec, and LogicalDisk—Avg. Disk sec/Transfer counters. Table 14 shows the host latency before and after enabling D@RE. The disk transfer latency of the data LUNs with 1.2 TB databases, 500 GB databases, 250 GB databases, and 50 GB databases are 4 ms, 17 ms, 14 ms, and 2 ms, respectively. Enhancing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Performance and Protection Enabled by EMC VNX, EMC AppSync, and EMC Server-Based Flash Storage White Paper 45 Table 14. Host latency for D@RE encryption testing Item Read (ms) Write (ms) Transfer (ms) Baseline 1.2 TB database 4 5 4 D@RE 1.2 TB database 3 5 4 Baseline 500 GB database 18 17 17 D@RE 500 GB database 17 17 17 Baseline 250 GB database 14 13 14 D@RE 250 GB database 14 13 14 Baseline 50 GB database 1 4 2 D@RE 50 GB database 1 3 2 The latency for both baseline and D@RE tests were almost the same, with no significant increases or decreases. The data encryption test results show that D@RE has minimal performance impact on SQL Server OLTP workloads. Enhancing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Performance and Protection Enabled by EMC VNX, EMC AppSync, and EMC Server-Based Flash Storage White Paper 46 Conclusion Summary This solution helps you take advantage of your SQL Server 2014 investment with a design that uses EMC’s powerful VNX arrays and EMC FAST technology for latencysensitive Microsoft SQL Server workloads. With the EMC PCIe flash card and FAST technology, business transaction performance increases by more than 1.4 times with BPE enabled in SQL Server 2014. The flash card can significantly offload storage IOPS and improve host latency, enabling SQL Server to more easily manage larger OLTP workloads. EMC AppSync with VNX Snapshots easily provides protection to SQL Server OLTP databases. Enabling snapshots has little impact on production SQL Server workloads and provides rapid data replication and recovery of SQL Server data. VNX D@RE provides close to zero performance impact on SQL Server OLTP workloads. This feature uses a controller-based encryption for all data and drives and supports all VNX functionality. D@RE protects data against theft or loss and ensures nondisruptive operations. D@RE introduces minimal performance impact on OLTP workloads. Findings The key findings of this solution are: • VNX5600 easily services the high performance demands of SQL Server 2014 OLTP workloads by maximizing the efficiency and effectiveness of EMC FAST technology. • EMC PCIe flash card with FAST Suite and the SQL Server BPE feature further improves the OLTP performance of transactional workloads by 1.4 times and the transaction log throughput by 35 percent. • EMC PCIe flash card can significantly offload read IOPS from storage to SQL Server BPE for OLTP databases, enabling the system to easily manage an even larger and busier OLTP workload. • AppSync streamlines SQL Server data replication for protection and repurposing scenarios with VNX Snapshots. • VNX Snapshots have little impact on SQL Server transaction workloads derived from TPC-E Benchmark. The performance of a moderate workload after snapshot deletion decreased no more than 10.8 percent for IOPS and 6.2 percent for TPS. • AppSync with VNX Snapshots enables fast recovery of SQL OLTP databases. Tests showed a less than 10-minute recovery for four databases of a total size of 2 TB, carrying 56.5 GB of data changes. • D@RE technology has minimal performance impact on OLTP workloads while enabling data security protection of VNX storage. Enhancing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Performance and Protection Enabled by EMC VNX, EMC AppSync, and EMC Server-Based Flash Storage White Paper 47 References EMC documentation Microsoft documentation The following are located on the EMC Online Support or EMC.com websites and provide additional and relevant information. Access to the following depends on your login credentials. If you do not have access to a document, contact your EMC representative. • Protect Your Information With VNX Data-At-Rest Encryption Handout • EMC VNX FAST VP—VNX5200, VNX5400, VNX5600, VNX5800, VNX7600, and VNX8000: A Detailed Review White Paper • EMC VNX Unified Best Practices For Performance Applied Best Practices Guide • EMC AppSync Support Matrix • EMC AppSync 2.0.0 Installation and Configuration Guide • EMC AppSync 2.0.0 User and Administration Guide • EMC AppSync Solution for Managing Protection of Microsoft SQL Server White Paper • Microsoft SQL Server Best Practices and Design Guidelines for EMC Storage White Paper • EMC VNX Series Security Configuration Guide Refer to the following topics on the Microsoft TechNet website: • Explore Windows Server 2012 R2 • Explore SQL Server 2014 • Implement Hyper-V Virtual Fiber Channel Refer to the following topic on the MSDN Library: • Microsoft SQL Server Best Practices Enhancing Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Performance and Protection Enabled by EMC VNX, EMC AppSync, and EMC Server-Based Flash Storage White Paper 48
