Download EMC VSPEX FOR VIRTUALIZED MICROSOFT SQL SERVER 2012 EMC VSPEX

DESIGN GUIDE
EMC VSPEX FOR VIRTUALIZED
MICROSOFT SQL SERVER 2012
EMC VSPEX
Abstract
This Design Guide describes how to design virtualized Microsoft SQL Server
resources on the appropriate EMC® VSPEX™ Private Cloud for Microsoft HyperV or VMware vSphere. The guide also illustrates how to size SQL Server 2012,
allocate resources following best practices, and use all the benefits that VSPEX
offers.
April 2013
Copyright © 2013 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Published in the USA.
Published April 2013
EMC believes the information in this publication is accurate 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.
EMC2, EMC, and the EMC logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of EMC
Corporation in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks used
herein are the property of their respective owners.
For the most up-to-date regulatory document for your product line, go to the technical
documentation and advisories section on the EMC online support website.
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
Part Number H11458.1
2
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
Contents
Chapter 1
Introduction ........................................................................ 11
Purpose of this guide .................................................................................. 12
Business value ............................................................................................ 12
Scope.......................................................................................................... 13
Audience ..................................................................................................... 13
Terminology ................................................................................................ 15
Chapter 2
Before You Start .................................................................. 17
Documentation workflow overview .............................................................. 18
Essential reading......................................................................................... 18
Solution Overviews .............................................................................................. 18
Implementation Guides for SQL Server ................................................................. 18
VSPEX Proven Infrastructure ................................................................................. 18
Chapter 3
Solution Overview ............................................................... 21
Overview ..................................................................................................... 22
Solution architecture ................................................................................... 22
Key components .......................................................................................... 23
Introduction ......................................................................................................... 23
Microsoft SQL Server 2012 ................................................................................... 24
EMC VSPEX Proven Infrastructure ......................................................................... 24
VMware vSphere 5.1 ............................................................................................ 26
Microsoft Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V ...................................................... 26
EMC VNX family .................................................................................................... 26
EMC Unisphere .................................................................................................... 28
EMC Virtual Storage Integrator for VMware vSphere ............................................. 28
VNX VMware vStorage API for Array Integration support ....................................... 29
EMC Storage Integrator ........................................................................................ 29
EMC XtremSW Cache ............................................................................................ 29
EMC Avamar ......................................................................................................... 30
EMC Data Domain ................................................................................................ 30
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
3
Contents
EMC PowerPath/VE .............................................................................................. 30
Chapter 4
Choosing a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure .............................. 33
Overview ..................................................................................................... 34
Step 1: Evaluate the customer use case ....................................................... 34
Step 2: Design the application architectures................................................ 35
VSPEX Sizing Tool ................................................................................................ 35
Step 3: Choose the right VSPEX Proven Infrastructure .................................. 38
Considerations..................................................................................................... 38
Examples ............................................................................................................. 39
Chapter 5
Solution Design Considerations And Best Practices ............. 47
Overview ..................................................................................................... 48
Network design considerations ................................................................... 48
Overview of network design considerations ......................................................... 48
Design best practices ........................................................................................... 48
Storage layout and design considerations ................................................... 49
Overview of storage layout and design considerations ......................................... 49
Storage design ..................................................................................................... 52
Component design best practices ........................................................................ 52
Storage layout examples ...................................................................................... 56
Virtualization design considerations............................................................ 59
Overview of virtualization design considerations ................................................. 59
Design best practices ........................................................................................... 59
Application design considerations............................................................... 60
Overview of application design considerations .................................................... 60
Design best practices ........................................................................................... 60
SQL Server 2012 licensing consideration ............................................................. 61
Backup and recovery design considerations ................................................ 63
Considerations..................................................................................................... 63
Minimum backup software and hardware requirements ....................................... 63
Chapter 6
Solution Verification Methodologies .................................... 67
Baseline hardware verification methodology ............................................... 68
Overview ..................................................................................................... 68
Application verification methodology .......................................................... 68
Understanding key metrics................................................................................... 69
Running tests, analyzing results, and optimization .............................................. 69
Backup and recovery verification methodology ............................................ 69
Overview of backup and recovery implementation ............................................... 69
4
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
Deploying backup software .................................................................................. 70
Chapter 7
References.......................................................................... 75
Product documentation ............................................................................... 76
Other documentation .................................................................................. 77
Links ........................................................................................................... 77
Appendix A
Qualification Worksheet ...................................................... 79
Qualification worksheet............................................................................... 80
Printing the worksheet for customer use .............................................................. 80
Appendix B
High-level SQL Server sizing logic and methodology............. 81
High-level SQL Server sizing logic and methodology .................................... 82
Overview .............................................................................................................. 82
Sufficient resource ............................................................................................... 82
Sizing considerations........................................................................................... 82
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
5
Contents
6
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
Figures
Figure 1.
Figure 2.
Figure 3.
Figure 4.
Figure 5.
Figure 6.
Figure 7.
Figure 8.
Figure 9.
Figure 10.
Figure 11.
Figure 12.
Architecture of the validated infrastructure ......................................... 23
VSPEX Proven Infrastructure ............................................................... 25
Storage layout and LUN design ........................................................... 41
SQL Server storage elements on VMware vSphere 5.1 platform .......... 50
SQL Server storage elements on Hyper-V platform .............................. 51
Storage layout example: SQL Server for the VNXe series ..................... 57
Storage layout example: SQL Server for VNX series ............................. 58
Manage All Datasets window .............................................................. 71
New Dataset window—Options ........................................................... 72
New Group window............................................................................. 73
Avamar Administrator Group backup .................................................. 73
Avamar Group backup success ........................................................... 74
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
7
Figures
8
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
Tables
Table 1.
Table 2.
Table 3.
Table 4.
Table 5.
Table 6.
Table 7.
Table 8.
Table 9.
Table 10.
Table 11.
Table 12.
Table 13.
Table 14.
Table 15.
Table 16.
Table 17.
Table 18.
Table 19.
Table 20.
Table 21.
Table 22.
Table 23.
Table 24.
Table 25.
Table 26.
Table 27.
Table 28.
Table 29.
Table 30.
Terminology........................................................................................ 15
VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for virtualized SQL Server 2012
deployment process ........................................................................... 18
Reference virtual machine—characteristics......................................... 26
VNX software suites ............................................................................ 27
VNXe software suites .......................................................................... 28
VNX software packs ............................................................................ 28
VSPEX Proven Infrastructure selection steps ....................................... 34
VSPEX for virtualized SQL Server 2012 qualification worksheet
questionnaire ..................................................................................... 35
VSPEX Sizing Tool output .................................................................... 36
VSPEX Proven Infrastructure: Selection steps ..................................... 38
Example qualification worksheet: Small-sized SQL Server
OLTP instance ..................................................................................... 39
Example of required resources: Small-sized SQL Server OLTP instance 40
Example of SQL Server details in VSPEX Sizing Tool ............................ 40
Example VSPEX qualification worksheet: Medium-sized SQL Server user
database ............................................................................................ 42
Example of required resources: Medium-sized SQL Server
OLTP instance ..................................................................................... 42
Example summary: Medium-sized SQL Server user database in VSPEX
Sizing Tool .......................................................................................... 43
Example user profiles: User databases requirement ........................... 44
Example qualification worksheet: SQL Server OLTP instance with
multiple user databases ..................................................................... 44
Example of required resources: SQL Server OLTP instance with multiple
user databases ................................................................................... 44
Example of SQL Server details in VSPEX Sizing Tool ............................ 45
SQL Server storage pools .................................................................... 50
Storage layout example on VNXe ........................................................ 56
Storage layout example on VNX .......................................................... 57
Recommended RAM for SQL Server ..................................................... 59
Hardware requirements for backup ..................................................... 63
Services and writers used by Avamar plug-in for SQL Server ............... 66
High-level steps for application verification ........................................ 68
Key metrics ......................................................................................... 69
Qualification worksheet for a SQL Server user database ..................... 80
An example of user input for multiple user databases ........................ 83
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
9
Chapter 1: Introduction
Table 31.
Table 32.
Table 33.
Table 34.
Table 35.
10
Reference virtual machine calculation results per database
requirement........................................................................................ 83
An example of user input for multiple user databases ........................ 85
Recommended drive and LUN configuration ....................................... 87
VSPEX storage model support matrix .................................................. 89
Storage system support matrix ........................................................... 90
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 1
Introduction
This chapter presents the following topics:
Purpose of this guide ................................................................................. 12
Business value .......................................................................................... 12
Scope ........................................................................................................ 13
Audience ................................................................................................... 13
Terminology............................................................................................... 15
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
11
Chapter 1: Introduction
Purpose of this guide
EMC® VSPEX™ Proven Infrastructures are optimized for virtualizing business-critical
applications. VSPEX provides partners with the ability to plan and design the
business-critical assets required to support Microsoft SQL Server 2012 in a
virtualized environment on VSPEX Private Cloud.
EMC VSPEX for virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012 architecture provides a
validated system, capable of hosting a virtualized SQL Server 2012 solution at a
consistent performance level. This solution is designed to be layered on a VSPEX
Private Cloud solution using either a VMware vSphere or Microsoft Hyper-V
virtualization layer, and leverages the highly available EMC VNX® family, which
provides the storage. EMC Avamar® and EMC Data Domain® enable partners to adopt
a purpose-built backup appliance for SQL Server. The compute and network
components, while vendor-definable, are designed to be redundant and are
sufficiently powerful to handle the processing and data needs of the virtual machine
environment.
This Design Guide describes how to design the virtual resources necessary to satisfy
the requirements for deploying Microsoft SQL Server 2012 on any VSPEX Private
Cloud.
Business value
Never before has access to mission-critical data been more important to businesses
competing in a rapidly changing global economy. Today, IT departments are
challenged with an explosion of corporate data along with stagnant or shrinking
budgets.
As the foundation of the cloud-ready information platform, SQL Server 2012 provides
great availability, breakthrough insight, credible, consistent data, and productive
development experience to customers. It can also quickly build solutions and extend
data across on-premises and public cloud backed by mission-critical confidence.
Data protection and backup are among the most complex aspects of administrating
SQL Server 2012 environments. DBAs and storage administrators need the backup
process to be less costly and require less administrative attention. Given the pressure
on backup, it is not surprising that more businesses are looking for advanced data
protection technologies for SQL Server 2012 environments. SQL Server 2012
introduces a new integrated high availability and disaster recovery solution, SQL
Server AlwaysOn. AlwaysOn provides the flexibility to support various high
availability configurations enabling you to maintain your service level agreements
(SLAs).
VSPEX enables customers to accelerate their IT transformation with faster
deployments, and simplified management, backup, and storage provisioning.
Customers can realize greater efficiency with higher application availability,
increased storage utilization, and faster, leaner backups. In addition, VSPEX provides
customers with flexibility of choices when selecting a hypervisor, server, and network
to address the requirements of their SQL Server 2012 environments.
12
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
Chapter 1: Introduction
The design methodology and best practices of EMC backup and recovery systems are
to:

Reduce the customer’s backup storage requirements and costs

Meet backup windows

Enable fast disk-based recovery
Scope
This Design Guide describes how to design an EMC VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for
Microsoft SQL Server 2012 environments running on a VMware vSphere or Microsoft
Hyper-V Proven Infrastructure. It assumes that a VSPEX Private Cloud already exists in
the customer environment.
The guide provides examples of deployments on both a VNX and an EMC VNXe®
storage array. Furthermore, it illustrates how to size SQL Server 2012 on the VSPEX
infrastructures, allocate resources following best practices, and use all the benefits
that VSPEX offers.
Audience
This guide is intended for internal EMC personnel and qualified EMC VSPEX Partners.
The guide assumes that VSPEX Partners who intend to deploy this VSPEX Proven
Infrastructure for virtualized SQL Server are:

Qualified by Microsoft to sell and implement SQL Server solutions

Certified in SQL Server, ideally with one or all of the following Microsoft
certifications:

Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate (MCSA)

Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert (MCSE)

Microsoft Certified Solutions Master (MCSM)

Qualified by EMC to sell, install, and configure the VNX family of storage
systems

Certified to sell VSPEX Proven Infrastructures

Qualified to sell, install, and configure the network and server products
required for VSPEX Proven Infrastructures
Readers must also have the necessary technical training and background to install
and configure:

EMC VNX and VNXe

VMware vSphere or Microsoft Hyper-V virtualization platforms

Microsoft Windows Server 2012

Microsoft SQL Server 2012

EMC next-generation backup, which includes Avamar and Data Domain
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
13
Chapter 1: Introduction
External references are provided where applicable and EMC recommends that readers
are familiar with these documents. For details, see Essential reading.
14
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
Chapter 1: Introduction
Terminology
Table 1 includes the terminology used in this guide.
Table 1.
Terminology
Term
Definition
AD
Active Directory
CIFS
Common Internet File System
CSV
Cluster-shared volume
DNS
Domain name system
DRS
Distributed Resource Scheduler
File group
SQL Server database objects and files group
FAST™
Cache
A feature on EMC CLARiiON, EMC Celerra unified, and EMC VNX series
storage systems that enables you to use the lower response time and better
IOPS of Flash drives for specific applications.
IOPS
Input/output operations per second
iSCSI
Internet Small Computer System
LACP
Link Aggregation Control Protocol
LSN
Log sequence number
NFS
Network File System
NIC
Network interface card
NL-SAS
Near-line serial-attached SCSI
NTFS
New Technology File System
NUMA
Non-Uniform Memory Architecture
OLTP
Online transaction processing. Typical applications of OLTP include data
entry and retrieval transaction processing.
PCIe
Peripheral Component Interconnect Express
Reference
virtual
machine
Represents a unit of measure for a single virtual machine to quantify the
compute resources in a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure
RTM
Release to manufacturing
tempdb
Tempdb refers to a system database used by Microsoft SQL Server as a
temporary working area during processing.
TPS
Transactions per second
VDI
Virtual Device Interface
VMDK
Virtual Machine Disk
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
15
Chapter 1: Introduction
16
Term
Definition
VMFS
Virtual Machine File System
VHDX
Hyper-V virtual hard disk format
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
Chapter 2
Before You Start
This chapter presents the following topics:
Documentation workflow overview ............................................................. 18
Essential reading ....................................................................................... 18
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
17
Chapter 2: Before You Start
Documentation workflow overview
EMC recommends that you refer to the process flow in Table 2 to design and
implement your VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for virtualized SQL Server 2012.
Table 2.
VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for virtualized SQL Server 2012 deployment
process
Step
Action
1
Use the VSPEX for virtualized SQL Server qualification worksheet to collect user
requirements. The one-page Qualification worksheet is in Appendix A of this
Design Guide.
2
Use the VSPEX Sizing Tool to determine the recommended VSPEX Proven
Infrastructure for virtualized SQL Server 2012 based on the user requirements
collected in step 1. For more information about the VSPEX Sizing Tool, refer to the
VSPEX Sizing Tool on the EMC Business Value Portal.
Note In the event that the VSPEX Sizing Tool is not available, you can manually
size the application using the sizing guidelines in Appendix B.
3
To determine your final design for the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for virtualized
SQL Server, refer to this Design Guide.
Note Ensure that all application requirements are considered, and not just this
particular application.
4
To select and order the right VSPEX Proven Infrastructure, refer to the VSPEX
Proven Infrastructure section.
5
To deploy and test your VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for virtualized SQL Server
2012, refer to the Implementation Guides for SQL Server section.
Essential reading
EMC recommends that you read the following documents, available from VSPEX
space in the EMC Community Network or from EMC.com or the VSPEX Proven
Infrastructure partner portal.
Solution
Overviews
18
Refer to the following VSPEX Solution Overview documents:

EMC VSPEX Server Virtualization Solutions for Mid-market Businesses

EMC VSPEX Server Virtualization Solutions for Small and Medium Business
Implementation
Guides for SQL
Server
Refer to the following VSPEX Implementation Guides:
VSPEX Proven
Infrastructure
Refer to the following VSPEX Proven Infrastructures:

EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012 with Microsoft Hyper-V

EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012 with VMware vSphere

EMC VSPEX Private Cloud VMware vSphere 5.1 for up to 100 Virtual Machines

EMC VSPEX Private Cloud VMware vSphere 5.1 for up to 100 Virtual Machines
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
Chapter 2: Before You Start

EMC VSPEX Private Cloud VMware vSphere 5.1 for up to 500 Virtual Machines

EMC VSPEX Private Cloud Microsoft Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V for up
to 100 Virtual Machines

EMC VSPEX Private Cloud Microsoft Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V for up
to 500 Virtual Machines
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
19
Chapter 2: Before You Start
20
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
Chapter 3
Solution Overview
This chapter presents the following topic:
Overview ................................................................................................... 22
Solution architecture ................................................................................. 22
Key components ........................................................................................ 23
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
21
Chapter 3: Solution Overview
Overview
This chapter provides an overview of the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for virtualized
Microsoft SQL Server and the key technologies used in this solution. This VSPEX for
virtualized SQL Server Design Guide supports all VSPEX offerings on VMware vSphere
and Microsoft Hyper-V.
This VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for virtualized SQL Server solution was validated
using VSPEX Private Cloud running VMware or Hyper-V virtualized Windows on EMC
VNX family storage arrays to provide storage and server hardware consolidation.
The solution is layered on a VSPEX Private Cloud, which uses servers, storage,
network, backup and recovery (optional), and SQL Server components that focus on
small and midrange environments. The solution enables customers to quickly and
consistently deploy a small or medium virtualized SQL Server environment in a VSPEX
Private Cloud.
The VNX and VNXe family storage arrays are multiprotocol platforms that can support
the iSCSI, NFS, CIFS, FC, and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) protocols depending
on a customer’s specific needs. This solution was validated using NFS and iSCSI for
data storage.
This solution requires the presence of Active Directory (AD) and Domain Name System
(DNS). The implementation of these services is beyond the scope of this guide, but
the services are considered prerequisites for a successful deployment.
Solution architecture
Figure 1 shows the architecture that characterizes the validated VSPEX Proven
infrastructure for SQL Server 2012. SQL Server is deployed as virtual machines on
VMware vSphere 5.1 or Microsoft Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V.
We1 used the VSPEX Sizing Tool for each SQL Server instance to determine the
number of SQL Server virtual machines, the detailed compute resources, and the
recommended storage layout. This storage layout is in addition to the VSPEX private
cloud pool in the VNX or VNXe series. The optional backup and recovery components
of the solution provide data protection to the SQL Server OLTP-focused instance.
1
22
In this guide, "we" refers to the EMC Solutions engineering team that validated the solution.
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
Chapter 3: Solution Overview
Figure 1.
Architecture of the validated infrastructure
Key components
Introduction
This section provides an overview of the key technologies used in this solution:

Microsoft SQL Server 2012

EMC VSPEX Proven Infrastructure:

VSPEX Proven Infrastructure

Reference virtual machine

VMware vSphere 5.1

Microsoft Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V

EMC VNX family

EMC Unisphere

EMC Virtual Storage Integrator (VSI) for VMware vSphere

EMC VNX VMware vStorage API for Array Integration Support (VAAI)
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
23
Chapter 3: Solution Overview
Microsoft SQL
Server 2012

EMC Storage Integrator

EMC XtremSW™ Cache

EMC Avamar

EMC Data Domain

EMC PowerPath/VE
SQL Server 2012 is Microsoft’s database management and analysis system for
e-commerce, line-of-business, and data warehousing solutions. SQL Server is widely
used to store, retrieve, and manage application data. Because it is used with a range
of applications, and each application has different requirements for performance,
sizing, availability, recoverability, manageability, and so on, it is important to fully
understand these factors and plan accordingly when deploying SQL Server.
EMC VSPEX Proven EMC has joined forces with the industry’s leading providers of IT infrastructure to
create a complete virtualization solution that accelerates the deployment of private
Infrastructure
cloud. VSPEX enables faster deployment, greater simplicity and choice, higher
efficiency, and lower risk. Validation by EMC ensures predictable performance and
enables customers to select technology that uses their existing IT infrastructure while
eliminating planning, sizing, and configuration burdens. VSPEX provides a virtual
infrastructure for customers looking to gain the simplicity that is characteristic of truly
converged infrastructures, while at the same time gaining more choice in individual
stack components.
VSPEX solutions are proven by EMC and packaged and sold exclusively by EMC
channel partners. VSPEX provides channel partners with more opportunity, a faster
sales cycle, and end-to-end enablement. By working closely together, EMC and its
channel partners can now deliver infrastructure that accelerates the journey to the
cloud for even more customers.
VSPEX Proven Infrastructure
VSPEX Proven Infrastructure, as shown in Figure 2, is a modular, virtualized
infrastructure validated by EMC and delivered by EMC’s VSPEX partners. VSPEX
includes a virtualization layer, server, network, and storage, designed by EMC to
deliver reliable and predictable performance.
24
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
Chapter 3: Solution Overview
Figure 2.
VSPEX Proven Infrastructure
VSPEX provides the flexibility to choose network, server, and virtualization
technologies that fit a customer’s environment to create a complete virtualization
solution. VSPEX delivers faster deployment for EMC partner customers, with greater
simplicity and efficiency, more choice, and lower risk to a customer’s business.
For more information about VSPEX Proven Infrastructure, refer to the following
documents:

EMC VSPEX Private Cloud VMware vSphere 5.1 for up to 500 Virtual Machines

EMC VSPEX Private Cloud Microsoft Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V for up
to 500 Virtual Machines

EMC VSPEX Private Cloud VMware vSphere 5.1 for up to 100 Virtual Machines

EMC VSPEX Private Cloud Microsoft Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V for up
to 100 Virtual Machines
Reference virtual machine
To simplify the virtual infrastructure discussion, the VSPEX solution has defined a
reference virtual machine to represent a measure unit. By comparing your actual
customer usage to this reference workload, you can extrapolate which reference
architecture to choose.
For VSPEX solutions, the reference virtual machine defines a unit of measure for
compute resources in the VSPEX virtual infrastructure. This reference virtual machine
has the following characteristics, as shown in Table 3.
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
25
Chapter 3: Solution Overview
Table 3.
Reference virtual machine—characteristics
Characteristic
Value
Virtual processors per virtual machine
1
RAM per virtual machine
2 GB
Available storage capacity per virtual machine
100 GB
Input/output operations per second (IOPS) per virtual machine
25
I/O pattern
Random
I/O read:write ratio
2:1
For more information about a reference virtual machine and its characteristics, refer
to the relevant documents in the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure section.
VMware vSphere
5.1
VMware vSphere 5.1 transforms a computer’s physical resources by virtualizing the
CPU, RAM, hard disk, and network controller. This transformation creates fully
functional virtual machines that run isolated and encapsulated operating systems
and applications just like physical computers.
VMware High Availability (HA) provides easy-to-use, cost-effective high availability for
applications running in virtual machines. The VMware vSphere vMotion and VMware
vSphere Storage vMotion features of vSphere 5.1 enable the seamless migration of
virtual machines and stored files from one vSphere server to another, with minimal or
no performance impact. Coupled with VMware vSphere Distributed Resource
Scheduler (DRS) and VMware vSphere Storage DRS, virtual machines have access to
the appropriate resources at any point in time through load balancing of compute and
storage resources.
Microsoft Windows Microsoft Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V provides a complete virtualization
platform, which offers increased scalability and performance with a flexible solution
Server 2012 with
from the data center to the cloud. It makes it easier for organizations to realize the
Hyper-V
cost savings from virtualization and to optimize server hardware investments.
Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V high-availability options include incremental backup
support, enhancements in clustered environments to support virtual adapters within
the virtual machine, and inbox 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.
EMC VNX family
26
The EMC VNX family of storage arrays are optimized for virtual applications delivering
industry-leading innovation and enterprise capabilities for file, block, and object
storage in a scalable, easy-to-use solution. This next-generation storage platform
combines powerful and flexible hardware with advanced efficiency, management,
and protection software to meet the demanding needs of today’s enterprises.
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
Chapter 3: Solution Overview
The VNX series is powered by Intel Xeon processors, for intelligent storage that
automatically and efficiently scales in performance, while ensuring data integrity and
security.
The VNXe series is purpose-built for the IT manager in smaller environments. The VNX
series is designed to meet the high-performance, high-scalability requirements of
midsize and large enterprises.
VNX features
VNX supports the following features:

Next-generation unified storage, optimized for virtualized applications

Capacity optimization features including compression, deduplication, thin
provisioning, and application-centric copies

High availability, designed to deliver five 9s (99.999 percent) availability

Automated tiering with FAST VP (Fully Automated Storage Tiering for VSPEX
private cloud pools and FAST Cache that can be optimized for the highest
system performance and lowest storage cost simultaneously

Simplified management with EMC Unisphere™ for a single management
interface for all network-attached storage (NAS), storage area network (SAN),
and replication needs

Up to three times improvement in performance with the latest Intel Xeon
multicore processor technology, optimized for Flash
VNXe features
VNXe supports the following features:

Next-generation unified storage, optimized for virtualized applications

Capacity optimization features including compression, deduplication, thin
provisioning, and application-centric copies

High availability, designed to deliver five 9s availability

Multiprotocol support for file and block

Simplified management with Unisphere for a single management interface for
all NAS, SAN, and replication needs
VNX software suites available
Table 4 lists the software suites that are available with VNX:
Table 4.
VNX software suites
Component
Features
FAST Suite
Automatically optimizes for the highest system
performance and the lowest storage cost simultaneously
Local Protection Suite
Practices safe data protection and repurposing
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
27
Chapter 3: Solution Overview
Component
Features
Remote Protection Suite
Protects data against localized failures, outages, and
disasters
Application Protection Suite
Automates application copies and proves compliance
Security and Compliance Suite
Keeps data safe from changes, deletions, and malicious
activity
VNXe software suites available
Table 5 lists the software suites that are available with VNXe:
Table 5.
VNXe software suites
Component
Features
Local Protection Suite
Increases productivity with snapshots of production data
Remote Protection Suite
Protects data against localized failures, outages, and
disasters
Application Protection Suite
Automates application copies and proves compliance
Security and Compliance Suite
Keeps data safe from changes, deletions, and malicious
activity
VNX software suites available
Table 6 lists the software packs that are available with VNX:
Table 6.
28
VNX software packs
Component
Features
Total Efficiency Pack
Includes all five software suites
Total Protection Pack
Includes local, remote, and application protection suites
EMC Unisphere
EMC Unisphere is the next-generation unified storage management platform that
provides intuitive user interfaces for the newest range of unified platforms including
the EMC VNX and EMC VNXe series. Unisphere’s approach to storage management
fosters simplicity, flexibility, self-help, and automation—all key requirements for the
journey to the cloud. Unisphere can be customized to the needs of a midsize
company, a department within large enterprises, or a smaller remote office/branch
office type environment. With pluggable architecture, Unisphere is easily extensible
and continues its seamless support for additional EMC offerings, including
integration with data protection and security.
EMC Virtual
Storage Integrator
for VMware
vSphere
EMC Virtual Storage Integrator (VSI) for VMware vSphere is a plug-in for the vSphere
client that provides a single management interface, which is used for managing EMC
storage within the vSphere environment. Features can be added and removed from
VSI independently, which provides flexibility for customizing VSI user environments.
Features are managed by using the VSI Feature Manager. VSI provides a unified user
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
Chapter 3: Solution Overview
experience, which enables new features to be introduced rapidly in response to
changing customer requirements.
We used the following features during validation testing:

Storage Viewer (SV): Extends the vSphere client to facilitate the discovery and
identification of the VNX storage devices that are allocated to vSphere hosts
and virtual machines. SV presents the underlying storage details to the virtual
datacenter administrator, merging the data of several different storage
mapping tools into a few seamless vSphere client views.

Unified Storage Management: Simplifies storage administration of the VNX
unified storage platform. It enables VMware administrators to provision new
network file system (NFS) and virtual machine file system (VMFS) data stores,
and raw device mapping (RDM) volumes seamlessly within vSphere client.
VNX VMware
vStorage API for
Array Integration
support
Hardware acceleration with VMware vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI) is a
storage enhancement in vSphere 5.1 that enables vSphere to offload specific storage
operations to compatible storage hardware such as the VNX series platforms. With
storage hardware assistance, vSphere performs these operations faster and
consumes less CPU, memory, and storage fabric bandwidth.
EMC Storage
Integrator
EMC Storage Integrator (ESI) is an agent-less, no-charge plug-in that enables
application-aware storage provisioning for Microsoft Windows server applications,
Hyper-V, VMware, and Xen Server environments. It provides the ability for
administrators to easily provision block and file storage for Windows or SQL Server
sites using wizards. ESI supports the following capabilities:
EMC XtremSW
Cache

Provisioning, formatting, and presenting drives to Windows servers

Provisioning new cluster disks and adding them to the cluster automatically

Provisioning shared CIFS storage and mounting it to Windows servers

Provisioning SQL Server storage, sites, and databases in a single wizard
EMC XtremSW Cache is a server Flash-caching solution that reduces latency and
increases throughput. By leveraging intelligent caching software and Peripheral
Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) Flash technology, XtremSW Cache
dramatically improves application performance.
XtremSW Cache software caches the most frequently used data on the server-based
PCIe card, thereby putting the data closer to the application.
The XtremSW Cache caching optimization automatically adapts to changing
workloads by determining which data is most frequently referenced and promoting it
to the server Flash cache. This means that the “hottest “(most active) data
automatically resides on the PCIe card of the server for faster access.
XtremSW Cache offloads the read traffic from the storage array, which allows it to
allocate greater processing power to other applications. While one application is
accelerated with XtremSW Cache, the array’s performance for other application is
maintained or even slightly enhanced.
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
29
Chapter 3: Solution Overview
EMC Avamar
If you decide to implement a backup solution, EMC recommends EMC Avamar.
Avamar deduplication backup software and system performs variable-length
deduplication at the client, so that backup data is reduced before it moves across
networks (LAN or WAN). Avamar identifies duplicate data segments and sends only
unique segments across the network to the backup appliance. This means shorter
backup windows, less backup storage consumed, and maximum use of available
bandwidth.
Avamar provides:
EMC Data Domain

Flexible deployment options. Avamar offers flexibility in solution deployments,
depending on the specific use case and recovery requirements. Avamar is a
turnkey backup and recovery solution that integrates with EMC-certified
hardware for streamlined deployment.

Scalability, high availability, and reliability. Avamar uses a scalable grid
architecture, which enables linear performance and storage scaling by simply
adding storage nodes.

Manageability and support. You can securely access Avamar systems through
existing network links and integrate them with management frameworks to use
SNMP for remote access.
If you use Avamar to implement a backup and recovery solution, you can choose to
direct backups to an EMC Data Domain system instead of to the Avamar server.
EMC Data Domain deduplication storage system deduplicates data inline so that the
data lands on disk already deduplicated, which requires less disk space than the
original dataset. With Data Domain, you can retain backup and archive data on site
longer to quickly and reliably restore data from disk.
The Data Domain software suite includes the following options:

EMC Data Domain Replication

Virtual Tape Library (VTL)

Data Domain Boost

Retention Lock

Encryption

Extended Retention
EMC PowerPath/VE EMC PowerPath® /VE provides intelligent, high-performance path management with
path failover and load balancing optimized for EMC and selected third-party storage
systems. PowerPath/VE supports multiple paths between a vSphere host and an
external storage device. Having multiple paths enables the vSphere host to access a
storage device, even if a specific path is unavailable. Multiple paths can also share
the I/O traffic to a storage device. 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 in the event of a path
failure (if another path is available).
30
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
Chapter 3: Solution Overview
PowerPath/VE works with VMware ESXi as a Multipath Plug-in (MPP) that provides
path management to hosts. It is installed as a kernel module on the vSphere host. It
plugs in to the vSphere I/O stack framework to bring the advanced multipathing
capabilities of PowerPath/VE including dynamic load balancing and automatic
failover, to the vSphere hosts.
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
31
Chapter 3: Solution Overview
32
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
Chapter 4
Choosing a VSPEX
Proven Infrastructure
This chapter presents the following topics:
Overview ................................................................................................... 34
Step 1: Evaluate the customer use case...................................................... 34
Step 2: Design the application architectures ............................................... 35
Step 3: Choose the right VSPEX Proven Infrastructure ................................. 38
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
33
Chapter 4: Choosing a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure
Overview
This chapter describes how to design the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for virtualized
SQL Server and how to choose the right VSPEX solution to meet your requirements.
Table 7 outlines the main steps you need to complete when selecting a VSPEX Proven
Infrastructure.
Table 7.
VSPEX Proven Infrastructure selection steps
Step
Action
1
Evaluate the customer SQL Server workload by using the VSPEX for virtualized
SQL Server qualification worksheet, based on the business requirement. See
Step 1: Evaluate the customer use case.
2
Determine the required infrastructure, SQL Server resources, and architecture
using the VSPEX Sizing Tool. See Step 2: Design the application architectures.
Note In the event that the VXPEX Sizing Tool is not available, you can manually
size the application using the sizing guidelines in Appendix B.
3
Choose the right VSPEX Proven Infrastructure, based on the recommendations
provided in step 2. See Step 3: Choose the right VSPEX Proven Infrastructure.
Step 1: Evaluate the customer use case
Before deploying VSPEX for virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012, it is important to
gather and understand the infrastructure requirements, limitations, and the
estimated workload, in order to design the SQL Server environment properly. To help
you to better understand the customer’s business requirements for the VSPEX
infrastructure design, EMC strongly recommends that you use the VSPEX for
virtualized SQL Server qualification worksheet when evaluating the workload
requirements for the VSPEX solution.
VSPEX for virtualized SQL Server qualification worksheet
The VSPEX for virtualized SQL Server qualification worksheet presents a list of simple
questions to help identify customer requirements, usage characteristics, and dataset.
For a one-page EMC qualification worksheet for the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for
virtualized SQL Server, see the Qualification worksheet in Appendix A. Table 8
provides a detailed explanation of the questionnaire and general guidance on how to
determine the input values.
34
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
Chapter 4: Choosing a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure
Table 8.
VSPEX for virtualized SQL Server 2012 qualification worksheet
questionnaire
Question
Description
Do you have an existing SQL Server database that you
would like to size for in the environment?
Choose Yes if the customer already has a SQL Server
database and understand its characteristics that are
going to migrate to VSPEX Private Cloud in the VSPEX
environment. Otherwise choose No.
How many databases to be deployed?
Enter the database number that the customer expects
to deploy in the VSPEX environment.
What is the size of user database?
Enter the database size that the customer expects to
have in the VSPEX environment.
What is the estimated annual growth rate (%)?
Future growth is a key characteristic of the VSPEX
solution. This value is the expected annual growth rate
of user database in three years. Enter a number that is
appropriate for customer’s environment.
Do you intend to use FAST Cache?
FAST Cache is best for small random I/O where data
has skew by using Flash drives as storage cache. That
means the higher the locality of the accessed data, the
better the FAST Cache benefits. When the application
has high skew with the I/O pattern that can be
beneficial from FAST Cache, customers can enable
FAST Cache for the decreases of latency and increase
of throughput.
What is the maximum number of IOPS the system
should support?
Understanding the maximum number of IOPS of SQL
databases can help to prevent potential storage
performance issues. If the customer can estimate the
IOPS at peak loads in their environment, enter that
number.
What is the expected transactions per second (TPS) at
peak loads (optional question)?
The TPS is a key characteristic of the user database. If
the customer can estimate the TPS at peak loads in
their environment, enter that number.
What is the required tempdb size (optional question)?
The required tempdb size for user to input. This is an
optional input and if the customer cannot estimate the
space requirement of tempdb, the question can be
skipped.
Step 2: Design the application architectures
VSPEX Sizing Tool
Principle and guidelines
In this VSPEX Proven Infrastructure solution, we defined a representative customer
reference workload to be sized. The VSPEX Proven Infrastructure reference
architectures create a pool of resources that are sufficient to host a target number of
reference virtual machines with the characteristics shown in Table 3. For more
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
35
Chapter 4: Choosing a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure
information about a reference virtual machine and its characteristics, refer to the
relevant documents in the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure section.
VSPEX Sizing Tool output: requirements and recommendations
The VSPEX Sizing Tool enables you to input a database configuration from the
customer’s answers in the qualification worksheet. After you complete the inputs to
the VSPEX Sizing Tool, the tool generates a series of recommendations, as listed in
Table 9.
Table 9.
VSPEX Sizing Tool output
Type
Description
Reference
vCPU
The number of vCPUs to configure for
each SQL Server virtual machine
Reference virtual
machine best practices
for SQL Server
Memory
The amount of memory suggested to
configure for each SQL Server virtual
machine
Reference virtual
machine best practices
for SQL Server
Storage layout for SQL
Server databases
Suggested user database pool
configuration on VNX or VNXe
Storage layout and
design considerations
Total reference virtual
machine
Total reference virtual machines
required in the virtual infrastructure
for all the SQL databases.
N/A
For more information, see the examples in Step 3: Choose the right VSPEX Proven
Infrastructure.
Reference virtual machine best practices for SQL Server
The VSPEX Sizing Tool provides detailed best practice recommendations for sizing the
reference virtual machine based on the following basic resource types for each SQL
Server:

vCPU resources

Memory resources

Operating system (OS) capacity resources

OS IOPS
This section describes the resource types, how they are used in the VSPEX Sizing
Tool, and key considerations and best practices for a customer environment.

vCPU resources best practices
The calculator provides the vCPU of the reference virtual machine measurement
unit consumed for each SQL Server instance from the virtual infrastructure. The
CPU type must meet or exceed the defined CPU or processor models as defined
in the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure. We validated this VSPEX for virtualized SQL
Server solution with a statically assigned processor, and no virtual-to-physical
CPU oversubscription.
In SQL Server deployments, EMC recommends the following:
36
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
Chapter 4: Choosing a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure

Enable Hardware Assisted Virtualization for CPU and Hardware Assisted
Virtualization for Memory Management Unit (MMU) at BIOS level if the
processors support those functions.

Maintain a 1:1 ratio of physical cores to vCPUs for business-critical or tier-1
workloads. Extend the Non-Uniform Memory Architecture (NUMA)
architecture to the guest OS while keeping the NUMA node size in mind
when sizing virtual machine, because SQL Server automatically detects
NUMA architecture.
The vCPU allocated to the SQL virtual machine should not be larger than the
number of cores in each physical NUMA node, so that all memory access will be
local to that NUMA node. This provides the lowest memory access latencies.

Memory resources best practices
The VSPEX Sizing Tool shows the recommended memory for the Reference
virtual machine measurement unit for each SQL Server instance. We validated
this VSPEX for virtualized SQL Server solution with statically assigned memory,
no over-commitment of memory resources, and memory swapping or
ballooning. The memory values provided in the tool are not hard limits but
represent the value that was tested in the VSPEX solution.
In most production SQL Server deployments, EMC recommends that you
allocate at least 8 GB of memory to SQL Server virtual machine and reserve at
least 2 GB for the OS.
To avoid accessing remote memory in a NUMA-aware environment, EMC
recommends you size a SQL Server virtual machine's memory with less than the
amount available per NUMA node.
For information about the SQL Server memory recommendations in this VSPEX
Proven Infrastructure, refer to the Virtualization design considerations section.

OS capacity resources best practices
The VSPEX Sizing Tool shows the recommended capacity of the reference
virtual machine measurement unit suggested for the operating system for each
SQL Server instance. EMC recommends that you put the OS volume into the
VSPEX private cloud pool, as described in the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure
documentation. For more information about the VSPEX private cloud pool, see
the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure section.
In small and medium-sized SQL Server deployments, EMC recommends that
you allocate 100 GB of disk space for the OS.

OS IOPS best practices
The calculator logic used in the VSPEX sizing tool recommends the estimated
IOPS of the reference virtual machine measurement unit suggested for each
SQL Server in the OS. EMC recommends that you put the OS volume into the
VSPEX private cloud pool.
For more information, see the examples in the section Step 3: Choose the right VSPEX
Proven Infrastructure.
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
37
Chapter 4: Choosing a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure
Additional considerations
After you obtain a recommended sizing guide from the VSPEX Sizing Tool, you may
need to consider the future data growth. It is important to plan for growth so that the
environment can continue to deliver an effective business solution. To maintain
performance targets and accommodate growth, the VSPEX Sizing Tool enables
customers to select from one to three years growth. The cost of over-investment in
hardware is usually far less than the cumulative expense of troubleshooting problems
caused by undersizing.
Step 3: Choose the right VSPEX Proven Infrastructure
Considerations
The VSPEX program has produced numerous solutions designed to simplify the
deployment of a consolidated virtual infrastructure using vSphere, Hyper-V, the VNX
and VNXe series of products, and EMC next-generation backup. When the application
architecture has been confirmed using the VSPEX Sizing Tool, you can choose the
right VSPEX Proven Infrastructure based on the calculated results.
Note
While this Design Guide is intended for SQL Server requirements, this may not
be the only application deployed on the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure. You
must carefully take into account the requirements for each application you
plan to deploy. If you are uncertain about the best VSPEX Proven
Infrastructure to deploy, consult EMC before making the decision.
Follow the steps shown in Table 10 when choosing a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure.
Table 10.
VSPEX Proven Infrastructure: Selection steps
Step
Action
1
Use the VSPEX Sizing Tool to get the total number of reference virtual
machines and any additional suggested storage layout for SQL Server.
2
Use the VSPEX Sizing Tool to design the resource requirements for other
applications, based on business needs. The VSPEX Sizing Tool calculates the
total number of required reference virtual machines and additional
recommended storage layouts for both SQL Server and other applications.
3
Discuss with your customers the maximum utilization of VSPEX Proven
Infrastructure that meets their business requirements—this is the maximum
utilization for both SQL Server and other applications. Input the maximum
utilization percentage of the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure in the VSPEX Sizing
Tool. The tool provides a minimum recommendation for the VSPEX Proven
Infrastructure offering.
4
Select your network vendor and hypervisor software vendor for the
recommended VSPEX Proven Infrastructure offering. For more information, visit
the EMC VSPEX website.
For more information about the required reference virtual machines, refer to the
relevant sizing section in VSPEX Proven Infrastructure.
38
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
Chapter 4: Choosing a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure
Examples
This section describes the following three examples:

A small-sized SQL Server 2012 OLTP instance with a single user database

A medium-sized SQL Server 2012 OLTP instance with a single user database

A medium-sized SQL Server 2012 OLTP instance with multiple user databases
It also demonstrates how you would select the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for each
one.
Example 1: Small-sized SQL Server OLTP instance with a single user database
In this scenario, a customer would like to create a small-sized SQL Server 2012 OLTP
instance on a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure. The customer has a 50 GB user database.
The expected number of transactions per second (TPS) on the database is 200, and
the expected IOPS is 525. Customers would like to use at most 75 percent of the
VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for combined applications.
After talking to the customer, complete the qualification worksheet for the production
SQL Server 2012 database, as shown in the example in Table 11.
Table 11.
Example qualification worksheet: Small-sized SQL Server OLTP instance
Question
Example answer
Do you have an existing SQL Server database that you would like to
size for in the environment?
Yes
How many databases do you want to deploy?
1
What is the size of user databases (GB)?
50
What is the annual growth rate (%)?
30
Do you intend to use FAST Cache?
No
What is the maximum number of IOPS?
525
What are the TPS at peak loads (optional question)?
200
What is the required tempdb size (optional question)?
N/A
After inputting the answers from the qualification worksheet into the VSPEX Sizing
Tool, the tool generates a series of recommendations for the resources needed from
the VSPEX private cloud pool, as shown in the example in Table 12.
In this case, therefore, implementing this small-sized SQL Server on a VSPEX private
cloud pool would consume the resources of four reference virtual machines, which is
the maximum of the required reference virtual machines for the compute resources.
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
39
Chapter 4: Choosing a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure
Table 12.
Example of required resources: Small-sized SQL Server OLTP instance
SQL Server
vCPU
Memory (GB)
OS volume
capacity (GB)
OS volume
IOPS
Total reference
virtual machines
SQL Server
2 vCPUs
8 GB
(4 reference
virtual
machines)
Less than 25
IOPS
4
(2 reference
virtual
machines)
Less than 100
GB
(1 reference
virtual
machine)
(1 reference
virtual machine)
Note
In this guide, we used the resources shown in Table 12 for the small-sized
SQL Server user database.
The values of individual resources (CPU, memory, capacity, and IOPS) are rounded up
to the closest whole number, to determine the equivalent reference virtual machines
required for each SQL Server instance.
For example, the SQL Server instance for the medium-sized user database requires
two vCPUs, 8 GB of memory, 100 GB of storage, and 25 IOPS. This translates to:

Two reference virtual machines for the CPU requirement

Four reference virtual machines for the memory requirement

One reference virtual machine for the capacity requirement

One reference virtual machine for the IOPS requirement
We should use the maximum reference virtual machines to support the performance
requirement, therefore the recommended reference virtual machine number should
be four for the designed SQL Server instance, multiplied by the number of virtual
machines needed (one in this example), which results in four reference virtual
machines in total.
For more details about how to determine the equivalent reference virtual machines,
refer to the appropriate document in Essential reading.
The VSPEX Sizing Tool also lists recommendations for the storage layout as shown in
Table 13.
Table 13.
Example of SQL Server details in VSPEX Sizing Tool
VSPEX configuration suggestions (total reference virtual machines)
4
Recommended additional storage layout for SQL databases
40
VXPEX private cloud pool name
RAID type
Disk type
Disk capacity
Disk no.
SQL Server user database datapool
RAID 5
SAS disks 15,000 rpm
300 GB
10
SQL Server OLTP database log and
tempdb pool
RAID 1/0
SAS disks 15,000 rpm
300 GB
6
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
Chapter 4: Choosing a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure
The suggested storage layout is in addition to the VSPEX VNXe private cloud pool as
shown in Figure 3. For more information, see the Principle and guidelines in the
VSPEX Sizing Tool section.
Figure 3.
Storage layout and LUN design
SQL Server is the only component planned for deployment on this VSPEX Proven
Infrastructure. EMC recommends that customers consider the following two VSPEX
infrastructures for the best fit with their requirements:

EMC VSPEX Private Cloud VMware vSphere 5.1 for up to 100 virtual machines

EMC VSPEX Private Cloud Microsoft Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V for up
to 100 virtual machines
Implementing this small-sized SQL Server OLTP instance on a pool for 50 reference
virtual machines consumes the resources of four reference virtual machines and
leaves resources for 46 reference virtual machines for other applications.
Note
This is not a hard limit; you can select larger VSPEX Proven Infrastructures if
requirements from multiple applications make it necessary. In the
Implementation Guide, we used Microsoft Hyper-V for 50 virtual machines as
a VSPEX solution example. For more information, refer to the VSPEX Proven
Infrastructure section.
Example 2: Medium-sized SQL Server OLTP instance with a single user database
In this scenario, a customer would like to create a medium-sized SQL Server 2012
OLTP instance on a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure. The customer has a 250 GB
database. The expected transactions per second is 500, while the expected IOPS is
2,000. The customer also planned for other applications such as Microsoft Exchange
and SharePoint Server, in the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure, with a total of 180
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
41
Chapter 4: Choosing a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure
reference virtual machines required for the combined applications—these
applications are outside the scope of this Design Guide. In addition, the customer
would like to use at most 75 percent of the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for combined
applications.
After talking to the customer, complete the VSPEX qualification worksheet for the
production SQL Server 2012 database, as in the example in Table 14.
Table 14.
Example VSPEX qualification worksheet: Medium-sized SQL Server user
database
Question
Example answer
Do you have an existing SQL Server database that you
would like to size for in the environment?
Yes
How many databases do you want to deploy?
1
What is the size of user databases (GB)?
250
What is the annual growth rate (%)?
10
Do you intend to use FAST Cache?
Yes
What is the maximum number of IOPS?
2,000
What are the TPS at peak loads (optional question)?
500
What is the required tempdb size (optional question)?
N/A
After inputting the answers from the qualification worksheet into the VSPEX Sizing
Tool, the tool generates a series of recommendations for the resources needed from
the VSPEX private cloud pool, as shown in the example in Table 15.
Table 15.
Example of required resources: Medium-sized SQL Server OLTP instance
SQL Server
vCPU
Memory (GB)
OS volume
capacity (GB)
OS volume IOPS
Total reference
virtual machine
SQL Server
4 vCPUs
16
Less than 100 GB
8
(4 reference
virtual
machines)
(8 reference
virtual
machines)
(1 reference virtual
machine)
Less than 25
IOPS
(1 reference
virtual machine)
The VSPEX Sizing Tool also lists recommendations for the storage layout, as shown in
Table 16. In this case, therefore, implementing this medium-sized SQL Server OLTP
instance on a VSPEX private cloud pool would consume the resources of eight
reference virtual machines.
The suggested storage layout is in addition to the VSPEX private cloud pool. For more
information, see the Principle and guidelines in the VSPEX Sizing Tool section.
42
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
Chapter 4: Choosing a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure
Table 16.
Example summary: Medium-sized SQL Server user database in VSPEX
Sizing Tool
VSPEX configuration recommendations (total reference virtual machines)
8
Recommended additional storage layout for SQL Server 2012
VSPEX private cloud pool name
RAID type
Disk type
Disk capacity
Disk no.
SQL Server OLTP database data pool
RAID 5
SAS disks 15,000 rpm
300 GB
5
SQL Server OLTP log and tempdb pool
RAID 1/0
SAS disks 15,000 rpm
300 GB
4
FAST Cache
RAID 1
Flash disks
100 GB
2
As SQL Server is not the only application that the customer needs to plan for in the
VSPEX Proven Infrastructure, EMC recommends using the VSPEX Sizing Tool to design
the combined applications workload that has the best fit with the VSPEX Proven
Infrastructure offering.
Because the total combined applications required 180 reference virtual machines
and the customer requested at most 75 percent utilization of the VSPEX Proven
Infrastructure, EMC recommends that customers consider the following two VSPEX
infrastructures for the best fit with their requirements:

EMC VSPEX Private Cloud VMware vSphere 5.1 for up to 500 Virtual Machines

EMC VSPEX Private Cloud Microsoft Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V for up
to 500 Virtual Machines
Implementing this medium-sized SQL Server OLTP instance on a pool for 180
reference virtual machines consumes the resources of eight reference virtual
machines and leaves resources for 172 reference virtual machines for other
applications.
The suggested storage layout is in addition to the VSPEX private cloud pool to store
the SQL Server database. For more information, see the Principle and guidelines in
the VSPEX Sizing Tool section.
Example 3: Medium-sized SQL Server OLTP instance with multiple databases
In this scenario, a customer would like to create several user databases on a SQL
Server 2012 OLTP instance on a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure. The customer has three
user databases. The database size and expected TPS and IOPS are listed in Table 17.
The customer also planned for other applications such as Microsoft Exchange and
SharePoint Server, in the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure, with a total of 250 reference
virtual machines required for the combined applications—these applications are
outside the scope of this Design Guide. In addition, the customer would like to use at
most 75 percent of the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for combined applications.
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
43
Chapter 4: Choosing a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure
Table 17.
Example user profiles: User databases requirement
Database
profile
Maximum DB size (GB)
Maximum IOPS
TPS at peak load (optional)
db1
500
1,500
500
db2
250
700
300
db3
250
100
30
After talking to the customer, complete the qualification worksheet for each
production SQL Server 2012 database, as shown in the example in Table 18.
Table 18.
Example qualification worksheet: SQL Server OLTP instance with
multiple user databases
Question
Example answer
Do you have an existing SQL Server database that you would like
to size for in the environment?
Yes
How many databases do you want to deploy?
3
What is the size of user databases (GB)?
500/250/250
What is the annual growth rate (%)?
30
Do you intend to use FAST Cache?
Yes
What is the maximum number of IOPS?
1,500/700/100
What are the TPS at peak loads (optional question)?
500/300/30
What is the required tempdb size (optional question)?
N/A
After inputting the answers from the qualification worksheet into the VSPEX Sizing
Tool, the tool generates a series of recommendations for the resources needed from
the resource pool, as shown in Table 19.
Table 19.
Example of required resources: SQL Server OLTP instance with multiple
user databases
SQL Server
vCPU
Memory (GB)
OS volume
capacity (GB)
OS volume
IOPS
Total reference
virtual machines
SQL Server
16 vCPU
64 GB
Less than 100 GB
32
(16
reference
virtual
machines)
(32 reference
virtual
machines)
(1 reference virtual
machine)
Less than 25
IOPS
(1 reference
virtual
machine)
The VSPEX Sizing Tool also lists recommendations for the storage layout, as shown in
Table 20. In this case, therefore, implementing this SQL Server on a VSPEX private
cloud pool would consume the resources of 32 reference virtual machines.
44
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
Chapter 4: Choosing a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure
The suggested storage layout is in addition to the VSPEX private cloud pool. For more
information, see the Principle and guidelines in the VSPEX Sizing Tool section.
Table 20.
Example of SQL Server details in VSPEX Sizing Tool
VSPEX configuration suggestions (total reference virtual machine)
32
Recommended additional storage layout for SQL databases
VSPEX private cloud pool name
RAID type
Disk type
Disk capacity
Disk no.
SQL Server OLTP database datapool
RAID 5
SAS disks 15,000 rpm
300 GB
10
SQL Server OLTP database log and
tempdb pool
RAID 1/0
SAS disks 15,000 rpm
300 GB
4
FAST Cache
RAID 1/0
Flash disks
100 GB
2
Combined applications are planned for deployment on this VSPEX Proven
Infrastructure. EMC recommends that customers consider the following two VSPEX
infrastructures for the best fit with their requirements:

EMC VSPEX Private Cloud VMware vSphere 5.1 for up to 500 virtual machines

EMC VSPEX Private Cloud Microsoft Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V for up
to 500 virtual machines
Implementing this SQL Server OLTP instance on a pool for 250 reference virtual
machines consumes the resources of 32 reference virtual machines and leaves
resources for 218 reference virtual machines for other applications.
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
45
Chapter 4: Choosing a VSPEX Proven Infrastructure
46
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
Chapter 5
Solution Design
Considerations And
Best Practices
This chapter presents the following topics:
Overview ................................................................................................... 48
Network design considerations .................................................................. 48
Storage layout and design considerations .................................................. 49
Virtualization design considerations .......................................................... 59
Application design considerations ............................................................. 60
Backup and recovery design considerations ............................................... 63
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
47
Chapter 5: Solution Design Considerations And Best Practices
Overview
This chapter provides best practices and considerations for the VSPEX Proven
Infrastructure for the virtualized SQL Server solution. We considered the following
aspects during the solution design:

Network design

Storage layout design

Virtualization design

Application design

Backup and recovery design
Network design considerations
Overview of
network design
considerations
Networking in the virtual world follows the same concepts as in the physical world,
but some of these concepts are applied in the software instead of using physical
cables and switches. Although many of the best practices that apply in the physical
world continue to apply in the virtual world, there are additional considerations for
traffic segmentation, availability and throughput.
The advanced networking features of the VNXe and VNX series provide protection
against network connection failures at the array. Meanwhile, each hypervisor host
has multiple connections to user and storage Ethernet networks to guard against link
failures. These connections should be spread across multiple Ethernet switches to
guard against component failure in the network.
The network connection for the boot volume of the VSPEX virtualized SQL Server can
be FC, FCoE, and iSCSI for NFS and CIFS on VNX, and iSCSI for CIFS and NFS on VNXe.
For more information, refer to the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure section.
To bring SQL Server into your VSPEX infrastructure on VNX or VNXe, you need to set up
additional iSCSI connections for the SQL Server database, log, and tempdb files to be
stored on the VNX iSCSI storage. For more information, refer to the VSPEX Proven
Infrastructure section.
Design best
practices
In this VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for virtualized SQL Server, EMC recommends that
you consider the following aspects for network design:

Separate different network traffic
Separate the virtual machine, storage, and vSphere vMotion or Microsoft
Windows Hyper-V Live Migration network traffic using VLAN segmentation.

Set up network redundancy
A goal of redundant topologies is to eliminate network downtime caused by a
single point of failure. All networks need redundancy for enhanced reliability.
Network reliability is achieved through reliable equipment and network designs
that are tolerant to failures and faults. Networks should be designed to recover
rapidly so that the fault is bypassed. In this solution, we have two network
switches and all three networks have their own redundant links.
48
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
Chapter 5: Solution Design Considerations And Best Practices

Use network interface card (NIC) teaming
Aggregate multiple network connections in parallel to increase the throughput
beyond what a single connection can sustain, and to provide redundancy in
case one of the links fails. For example, in the VMware virtualization
environment, use two physical NICs per vSwitch and uplink the physical NICs to
separate physical switches.
When setting the NIC teaming settings, it is considered best practice to select
“no” for the NIC teaming failback option. If there is some intermittent behavior
in the network, this will prevent flip-flopping of the NIC cards being used.
When setting up VMware high availability (VMware HA), it is a good starting
point to also set the following ESX Server timeouts and settings under the ESX
Server advanced setting tab:

NFS.HeartbeatFrequency = 12

NFS.HeartbeatTimeout = 5

NFS.HeartbeatMaxFailures = 10
For more NIC teaming best practices for VMware vSphere, refer to Best Practices for
running VMware vSphere on Network Attached Storage.
For the NIC teaming configuration of Windows 2012 in a Hyper-V virtualized
environment, refer to the Microsoft TechNet topic NIC Teaming Overview.
For other best practices in network design for the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure, refer to
the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure guide.
Storage layout and design considerations
Overview of
storage layout and
design
considerations
The best practice and design considerations in this section provide guidelines for
effectively planning storage for various business requirements in SQL Server 2012
environments.
Figure 4 shows the high-level architecture of the SQL Server components and storage
elements validated in the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for virtualized SQL Server on a
vSphere virtualization platform. All the SQL Server volumes are stored in virtual
machine disk (VMDK) format in a VMware virtualized environment.
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
49
Chapter 5: Solution Design Considerations And Best Practices
Figure 4.
SQL Server storage elements on VMware vSphere 5.1 platform
In addition to the VSPEX private cloud pool for virtual machines, EMC recommends
that you use the three additional VSPEX private cloud pools to store SQL Server data
for different purposes. For more information, see Table 21.
Table 21.
SQL Server storage pools
Pool name
Purpose
RAID recommendation
VSPEX private cloud
pool
The private cloud pool where all the
virtual machines reside. For details,
refer to the appropriate VSPEX Proven
Infrastructure.
RAID 5 with SAS disks
SQL Server data pool
The VSPEX private cloud pool to serve
the data LUNs for user databases
RAID 5 with SAS disks
SQL Server log and
tempdb pool
The VSPEX private cloud pool to serve
the log and tempdb LUNs for user
databases
RAID 1/0 with SAS
disks
Figure 5 shows the high-level architecture of the SQL Server components and storage
elements validated in the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for SQL Server on a Microsoft
Window Server 2012 Hyper-V virtualization platform.
50
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
Chapter 5: Solution Design Considerations And Best Practices
Figure 5.
SQL Server storage elements on Hyper-V platform
All the SQL Server volumes are stored in the new Hyper-V virtual hard disk format
(VHDX) on the cluster-shared volume (CSV). For more information on additional
VSPEX private cloud pools to store SQL Server data, see Table 21.
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
51
Chapter 5: Solution Design Considerations And Best Practices
Storage design
EMC recommends implementing the following storage design best practices.
Application storage pool design
In this VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for virtualized SQL Server, consider the following
best practices for application storage layout and design:


SQL Server data pool:

Use RAID 5 for the SQL Server data pool, unless the user database has an
unusually high write ratio, which is over 30 percent). This pool consists of
all the SQL Server user databases.

Use SAS disks for a balance of performance and capacity. In our VSPEX
Sizing Tool, the number of disks in each pool is calculated to meet both
capacity and IOPS requirements.
SQL Server log and tempdb pool:

Use RAID 1/0 for the SQL Server log pool. This pool consists of all the log
and tempdb LUNs for the user databases.

Use SAS disks for both performance and capacity consideration. In our
VSPEX Sizing Tool, the disk number of each pool is calculated to meet both
capacity and IOPS requirements.
For more information about best practices for the tempdb database, see the SQL
Server database settings in the Application design considerations section.
OS storage design
In this solution, OS LUNs were created and provisioned by VSPEX Proven
Infrastructure. For best practices about OS storage design, refer to the VSPEX Proven
Infrastructure guide.
OS LUN format unit
Use 64 KB of the file allocation unit size (cluster size) for the SQL Server volumes.
Cluster size is determined when the partition is formatted by the OS or user. For the
best performance, EMC recommends using 64 KB for SQL databases. For more
information, refer to the topic Disk Partition Alignment Best Practices for SQL Server
in the MSDN Library.
Component design The usage patterns and workloads on SQL Server can vary greatly. While this guide
caters and designs for typical deployments, as described by Microsoft and
best practices
experienced by EMC, additional storage performance requirements may be
demanded by certain highly active SQL Server environments.
In such SQL Server environments, extreme performance demands are put on the
storage to meet or exceed customer-driven response time SLAs and to continue to
provide the best user experience.
As SQL Server has various application scenarios, it can be difficult to manually
analyze and provision storage designs, and to continue to meet those ever-changing
requirements.
52
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
Chapter 5: Solution Design Considerations And Best Practices
EMC provides the following optional components to accelerate the OLTP performance
dynamically and automatically:

FAST Suite (includes FAST Cache and FAST VP)

XtremSW Cache
This section introduces the best practices for these additional and optional
components.
FAST Suite (optional)
The EMC FAST Suite— FAST VP and FAST Cache—provides two key technologies,
available on the VNX series, that enable extreme performance in an automated
fashion, when and where needed. FAST technology is an available option in VSPEX
Proven Infrastructures. For more information on FAST Suite for VSPEX Proven
Infrastructures, see the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure section.
Enabling FAST Cache or FAST VP is a transparent operation to SQL Server and no
reconfiguration or downtime is necessary. To make the best use of either of the FAST
technologies, first enable FAST Cache on the SQL Server data storage pool. If FAST VP
is the enabled technology on the VNX system, you can use this instead of FAST Cache,
by adding additional Flash disks as an extreme performance tier into the SQL Server
data pool. When using FAST VP, set the FAST policy for the participating pool LUNs to
Start High then Auto-Tier (Recommended).
For further information, refer to the best practices in the white paper EMC FAST VP for
Unified Storage Systems.
If FAST technology is enabled on the SQL Server data pool, the data LUN latency and
tempdb LUN latencies will improve to aid the SQL Server user experience.
FAST Suite design best practices
Flash drives for FAST Cache
When using Flash drives as FAST Cache, consider the following best practices:

Place all Flash drives (up to eight drives) in enclosure 0_0. If you have more
than eight drives, consider the following:

Spread Flash drives across all available buses.

Mirror drives within one enclosure, to avoid mirroring across enclosure 0_0.
Flash drives for extreme performance FAST VP tier
When using Flash drives as a FAST VP tier, consider the following best practices:

Spread Flash drives across all available buses.

Avoid using enclosure 0_0.
For more information about FAST Suite design best practices, refer to EMC VNX
Unified Best Practices for Performance: Applied Best Practices Guide.
FAST Cache design considerations
FAST Cache is best for small random I/O where data has skew. (The workload skew
defines an asymmetry in data usage over time, which means that a small percentage
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
53
Chapter 5: Solution Design Considerations And Best Practices
of the data on the array may be servicing the majority of the workload on the array.)
The higher the locality is, the better the FAST Cache benefits. EMC recommends that
you use the available Flash drives first for FAST Cache, which can globally benefit all
LUNs in the storage system, and then supplement performance as needed with
additional Flash drives in the storage pool tiers.
Preferred application workloads for FAST Cache are listed as follows:

Small-block random I/O applications with high locality

High frequency of access to the same data

Systems where current performance is limited by HDD capability, not Storage
Processor (SP) capability
Avoid enabling FAST Cache for LUNs that are not expected to benefit, such as when:

The primary workload is sequential

The primary workload is large-block I/O
Avoid enabling FAST Cache for LUNs where the workload is small-block sequential,
including:

Database logs

Circular logs
Enabling FAST Cache on a running system
FAST Cache can improve overall system performance if the current bottleneck is driverelated. However, boosting the IOPS will result in an increase in CPU utilization on the
VNX SPs. Systems should be sized so that the maximum sustained utilization is 70
percent.
Use Unisphere to check the SP CPU utilization and then proceed as follows:

SP CPU utilization less than 60 percent—Enable groups of LUNs or one pool at a
time until they are equalized in the cache. Ensure that the SP CPU utilization is
still acceptable before turning on FAST Cache for more LUNs/pools.

SP CPU utilization of 60 to 80 percent—Scale in carefully. Enable FAST Cache on
one or two LUNs at a time, and verify that the SP CPU utilization does not go
above 80 percent.

SP CPU utilization greater than 80 percent—Do not activate FAST Cache.
Avoid enabling FAST Cache for a group of LUNs where the aggregate LUN capacity
exceeds 20 times the total FAST Cache capacity.
Enable FAST Cache on a subset of the LUNs first, and allow the LUNs to be equalized
before adding the other LUNs.
Note
54
For storage pools, FAST Cache is a pool-wide feature so you have to
enable/disable at the pool level (for all LUNs in the pool).
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
Chapter 5: Solution Design Considerations And Best Practices
FAST VP best practices
Pool capacity utilization

Maintain some unallocated capacity within the pool to help with relocation
schedules when using FAST VP.
Relocation will reclaim 10 percent free per tier. This space will be used to
optimize relocation operations but also helps when new LUNs are being
created that want to use the higher tiers.

This is not a mandatory requirement and does not result in lost capacity.
Relocation

Schedule relocations for off-hours, so that the primary workload does not
contend with the relocation activity.

Enable FAST VP on a pool, even if the pool has only 1 tier, to provide ongoing
load balancing of LUNs across available drives.
Considerations for VNX for file
By default, a VNX for file system-defined storage pool is created for every VNX for
block storage pool that contains LUNs available to file. (This is a mapped storage
pool.)
All LUNs in a given file storage pool should have the same FAST VP tiering policy.
Create a user-defined storage pool to separate the file LUNs from the same block
storage pools that have different tiering policies.
XtremSW Cache
XtremSW Cache can use a host-based PCIe card as the host-side storage cache. Along
with SAN storage, XtremSW Cache can dramatically reduce the I/O latency and
improve the OLTP performance, while keeping the advantage of SAN storage.
XtremSW Cache performance consideration and best practices
EMC XtremSW Cache is a server Flash solution that reduces latency and increases
throughput to dramatically improve application performance. XtremSW Cache can be
used as a server-side caching solution to accelerate block I/O reads. Combining with
the SAN storage, XtremSW Cache software can use a write-through cache to deliver
dynamic optimization for performance, intelligence, and protection in both physical
and virtual environments.
Consider the following best practices when deploying XtremSW Cache in a virtualized
environment:

XtremSW Cache is most effective for workloads with a 70 percent or higher
read-write ratio and small random I/O (8 KB is ideal).

By default, data larger than 64 KB is passed through to the disk and not
cached. This size is correct for most applications. For some applications,
however, caching will be more effective by enabling data up to 128 KB to be
cached. Use the vfcmt command line or GUI to set the maximum I/O size to be
cached by XtremSW Cache. For more information, refer to VFCache Installation
and Administration Guide 1.5.1.
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
55
Chapter 5: Solution Design Considerations And Best Practices
XtremSW Cache in Hyper-V
When installing XtremSW Cache in the Hyper-V environment, pay attention to the
following details:

The XtremSW Cache card and driver, as well as the XtremSW Cache software,
are installed on the Hyper-V host machine. As a result:

Virtual disks can be defined either before or after configuring the LUN as a
source device.

All virtual disks allocated on a LUN source device will be accelerated.

The installation procedure is identical to the procedure for Windows.

Microsoft CSV is not supported by the current released version of XtremSW
Cache (1.5.1). Therefore, the LUNs to be accelerated cannot be CSV LUNs in the
Hyper-V cluster, but the clustered volumes in Hyper-V can be supported.
For more information refer to EMC VFCache Installation and Administration Guide
1.5.1.
XtremSW Cache in VMware
When installing XtremSW Cache in the VMware environment, pay attention to the
following details:
Storage layout
examples

XtremSW Cache can be enabled to use disks for server-based storage. To
enable this split card functionality, you must disable the interrupt mapping on
your ESX host. For more information, refer to VFCache Installation Guide for
VMware 1.5.

Follow VFCache Installation Guide to configure the components in a VMware
environment. For detailed information, refer to VFCache Installation Guide for
VMware 1.5.
This section describes two example storage layouts in this VSPEX Proven
Infrastructure for virtualized SQL Server —one for VNXe, based on VSPEX private
cloud, and the other for VNX, based on VSPEX private cloud. Both of these examples
follow the best practice and design considerations previously discussed.
Table 22 shows an example of a storage layout dedicated for SQL Server database
pools. The configuration can support around 700 host IOPS.
Note
This is only an example for both the infrastructure pool and the SQL Server
pools. The disk number used in the example for the virtual infrastructure can
be variable.
Table 22.
56
Storage layout example on VNXe
SQL Server storage pool name
RAID type
Disk type
Disk
capacity
No. of
disks
SQL user database data pool
RAID 5
SAS disks 15,000 rpm
300 GB
10
SQL user database log and
tempdb pool
RAID 1/0
SAS disks 15,000 rpm
300 GB
6
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
Chapter 5: Solution Design Considerations And Best Practices
Figure 6 shows an example of the storage layout for the SQL Server on the VNXe
series.
Figure 6.
Storage layout example: SQL Server for the VNXe series
Table 23 shows an example of storage pools for SQL Server on VNX, in addition to the
VSPEX private cloud pool. The configuration can support around 2,000 host IOPS.
Table 23.
Storage layout example on VNX
Storage pool name
RAID type
Disk type
Disk capacity
No. of disks
SQL user database data pool
RAID 5
SAS disks 15,000 rpm
300 GB
5
SQL user database log and
tempdb pool
RAID 1/0
SAS disks 15,000 rpm
300 GB
4
FAST Cache
RAID 1
Flash disks
100 GB
2
Figure 7 shows an example of the storage layout for the SQL Server on the VNX series
with the virtual machine infrastructure.
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
57
Chapter 5: Solution Design Considerations And Best Practices
Figure 7.
Note
58
Storage layout example: SQL Server for VNX series
These are only two examples of a storage layout. To plan and design your own
storage layouts for SQL Server over a VSPEX stack, follow the guidance in the
VSPEX Sizing Tool and the best practices in the Storage layout and design
considerations section.
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
Chapter 5: Solution Design Considerations And Best Practices
Virtualization design considerations
Overview of
virtualization
design
considerations
SQL Server 2012 is fully supported when you deploy it in a virtual environment that is
supported by Microsoft Hyper-V or VMware vSphere. The following sections describe
the best practices and design considerations for SQL Server 2012 virtualization.
Design best
practices
In this VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for virtualized SQL Server, EMC recommends that
you consider the best practices described here for virtualization design.
Table 24 lists the recommended RAM for computers to run SQL Server, based on the
combined size of SQL Server user databases.
Table 24.
Recommended RAM for SQL Server
Combined size of SQL Server user databases
RAM recommended for
computers running SQL Server
Up to 50 GB
8 GB
50 GB to 250 GB
16 GB
250 GB to 500 GB
32 GB
Database size larger than 500 GB
Contact EMC for validation
Each SQL Server has its own data stores and virtual disks for its operating system. In
VMware virtualized environments, the SQL Server OS/boot LUNs use a VMDK on their
own data store, and in Hyper-V virtualized environments, the SQL Server OS/boot
LUNs use a VHDX on their own data store. All database LUNs use VMDK in VMware or
VHDX in Hyper-V.
Because SQL Server 2012 can automatically detect NUMA, and the SQL Server
processor and memory allocation can be optimized for NUMA, this solution
implemented the following design best practices:

Keep the number of physical cores and vCPUs in a 1:1 ratio. Ensure that there
are no overcommitted CPUs.

Consider the NUMA node size when sizing virtual machines. To avoid accessing
remote memory in a NUMA-aware environment, size a SQL virtual machine's
memory so it is less than the amount available per NUMA node.

Fully reserve the RAM for the SQL Server virtual machines.

In VMware, enable the VMware HA, DRS, and vMotion functions.
If you select vSphere as your hypervisor, enable the VMware HA, DRS, and
vMotion functions on the ESXi servers to provide basic availability and
scalability for multiple SQL Server deployments.
The VMware DRS function can automatically balance the workload between the
hosts by using the vMotion function. When SQL Server workloads increase, DRS
automatically moves a bottlenecked virtual machine to another host with more
available resources, without downtime.
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
59
Chapter 5: Solution Design Considerations And Best Practices
When you want to enable DRS function, ensure that the automatic rebalancing
is not too aggressive as this can cause performance issues with constant
VMotion.
After you enable the DRS function, consider using DRS affinity and anti-affinity
rules. EMC recommends that you use DRS affinity and anti-affinity rules for
specific groups of virtual machines (for example, a group of web servers) that
should never reside on the same host. DRS also enables the grouping of virtual
machines by a common name and restricting their execution to a specific
subset of hosts.
For detailed steps on how to configure DRS, refer to the Implementation Guides
for SQL Server section.

In Hyper-V, enable the Hyper-V high availability and Live Migration functions.
Hyper-V with System Center and integrating with System Center Operations
Manager can provide the monitoring of resource utilization of the Hyper-V hosts
and virtual machines, and can automatically balance resource utilization by
using Live Migration to move VMs with no downtime.
When you want to enable the DRS function, ensure that the automatic
rebalancing is not too aggressive as this can cause performance issues with
constant Live Migration.
Monitor the performance of your whole VSPEX Proven infrastructure regularly.
Monitoring performance not only happens at the virtual machine level, but also
at the hypervisor level. For example, when the hypervisor is ESXi, you can use
performance monitoring inside the SQL Server virtual machine to ensure virtual
machine or SQL Server performance. Meanwhile, at the hypervisor level, you
can use esxtop to monitor host performance. For detailed information on the
performance monitoring tool, refer to the Implementation Guides for SQL Server
section.
Application design considerations
Overview of
application design
considerations
Design considerations for SQL Server 2012 involve many aspects. The best practice
and design considerations in this section provide guidelines for the most common
and important ones to follow.
Design best
practices
In this VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for virtualized SQL Server, EMC recommends that
you consider the following best practices for the SQL Server 2012 design.
SQL Server instance settings
60

The Lock Pages in Memory privilege is granted to the SQL Server startup
account. This privilege is designed to prevent the process working set
(committed memory) from being paged out or trimmed by the operating system.
For more information, refer to the Microsoft Support article How to enable the
"locked pages" feature in SQL Server 2012.
Note
After enabling the Lock Pages in Memory privilege, set the maximum server
memory of the SQL Server instance to prevent the instance from reserving all
memory from OS.
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
Chapter 5: Solution Design Considerations And Best Practices

The Enable Instant File Initialization privilege is granted to achieve better
performance for database operations such as CREATE DATABASE, ALTER
DATABASE, RESTORE, and AUTOGROW. It can significantly shorten the time to
create or expand a datafile. For more information, refer to the Microsoft Technet
topic Database File Initialization.
SQL Server database settings
Consider the following best practices for user databases settings:

Use multiple datafiles for large databases.

Use the full recovery model to enable administrators to back up the transaction
logs incrementally. This model enables recovery of the SQL Server database
from a specific point in time from the log backup, even if the datafiles of the
content databases are corrupt. EMC recommends that you take log backups
regularly for the full recovery model.
In this VSPEX Proven Infrastructure, EMC recommends that you use the following
setting s for tempdb:

Pre-allocate space and add a single datafile per LUN. Ensure that all files are of
the same size.

Assign the temp log files to one of the LUNs dedicated to log files.

Enable the autogrow option. Set the database autogrow value to approximately
10 percent of the initial file size as a reasonable starting point.
EMC recommends that you use the following configuration for the transaction logs:

Create a single transaction log file per database on one of the LUNs assigned to
the transaction log space. Spread log files for different databases across
available LUNs or use multiple log files for log growth as required.

Enable the autogrow option for log files.
For detailed configuration steps, refer to the Implementation Guides for SQL Server
section.
SQL Server 2012
licensing
consideration
In this VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for virtualized SQL Server, EMC recommends that
you consider the SQL Server licensing models to achieve better cost savings.
With SQL Server 2012, customers have various licensing options, including the
Server+CAL licensing model, which provides low-cost access to incremental SQL
Server deployments, and core-based licensing, a new computing-power-based
license model, which shifted from physical processors to cores.
Under the core-based licensing model, customers count the total number of physical
cores for each processor in the server, and multiply the number of cores by an
appropriate core factor to determine the number of licenses required for each
processor.
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
61
Chapter 5: Solution Design Considerations And Best Practices
The core-based licensing model is appropriate when:

Deploying the SQL Server 2012 Enterprise Edition.

Implementing centralized deployments that span a large number of direct
and/or indirect users/devices.

The total licensing costs are lower than that of using the Server+CAL licensing
model.
Under the Server+CAL licensing model, EMC customers purchase a server license for
each server and a client access license (CAL) for each device and/or user-accessing
SQL Server.
The Server+CAL licensing model is appropriate when:

Deploying the SQL Server 2012 Business Intelligence Edition.

Deploying the SQL Server Standard Edition in scenarios where you can easily
count users/devices and the total licensing costs are lower than that of using
the core-based licensing model.

Planning to scale out use of SQL Server by adding new servers over time.
In this VSPEX Proven Infrastructure, to license the virtualized SQL Server, customers
can choose either to license individual virtual machines or, for maximum
virtualization in a highly virtualized private cloud, to license the entire physical server
with Enterprise Edition core licenses.
To choose an appropriate licensing model for SQL Server 2012 in various
environments, refer to the SQL Server 2012 Licensing Quick Reference Guide on the
Microsoft website.
62
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
Chapter 5: Solution Design Considerations And Best Practices
Backup and recovery design considerations
Considerations
The Avamar plug-ins support backup and recovery of the SQL Server, ranging from the
entire instance or databases to various supported in-place or out-of-place recoveries.
Additional flexibility includes support for file group recoveries in SQL Server 2012.
The remaining components in the SQL Server environment should be backed up with
the Avamar Client for Windows. Using both clients’ respective coverage enables
recovery for not only the SQL Server instances and databases, but also the objects on
the related SQL servers and their host operating systems.
If VMware vSphere is being protected by Avamar virtual machine image protection,
users can restore those virtual machines without installing an Avamar client on those
hosts. Users need to restore those hosts from SQL Server backups if they have
instances or databases.
For disaster-level recovery, virtual machine image recovery enables OS-level recovery.
The SQL Server-level recovery is applied after those resources are restored. The
implementation of vSphere image-level protection is beyond the scope of this guide,
but is a viable option to restore base operating systems.
Note
Minimum backup
software and
hardware
requirements
Using EMC Data Domain as the backup target for Avamar is also a support
option. The Avamar client and plug-ins are installed in the same way as when
using Avamar as the backup target. If you use Data Domain, the only
difference is a checkbox in the dataset definition. This is described in the
implementation steps. Additionally, both Avamar and Data Domain support
multiple streams.
Hardware requirements
Table 25 lists the hardware requirements.
Table 25.
Hardware requirements for backup
Requirement
Minimum
Memory (RAM)
512 MB (2 GB recommended)
File system
New Technology File System (NTFS)
2 GB permanent hard drive space for Avamar Windows client and
SQL agent software installation.
The Avamar Plug-in for SQL Server also requires an additional 12
MB of permanent hard drive space for each 64 MB of physical
RAM. This space is used for local cache files.
Note You must convert FAT 16 and 32 systems to NTFS
Network
10BaseT minimum; 100BaseT or higher recommended,
configured with latest drivers for the platform
Avamar plug-in for SQL: Software requirements
The Avamar Plug-in for SQL places additional demands on computer hardware and
resources beyond the base requirements for the Avamar plug-in for Windows. The
following topics describe the requirements for the Avamar plug-in for SQL Server.
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
63
Chapter 5: Solution Design Considerations And Best Practices
Database size
Although SQL Server supports databases up to 524,272 TB in size, this translates to a
practical limit of the maximum Avamar grid size. Even with a considerable
deduplication factor, this Avamar grid capacity ceiling is well below SQL’s maximum.
In turn, Avamar’s maximum grid size is dependent on the number and type of storage
nodes plus the commonality factor of all the data types on that grid and their
respective retention periods.
The maximum database sizes recommended by Microsoft for rapid backup and
recovery range from 200 GB for SQL Server 2008 to 300 GB for SQL Server 2012.
For more information about sizing databases for best performance, refer to the
Microsoft TechNet articles Capacity Management for SQL Server 2012 and Capacity
Management for SQL Server 2008.
Multistreaming Avamar configuration requirements
When you specify multistreaming options for a backup, specify a maximum of one
backup stream for each disk in the backup set. For example:

If you back up two databases with each database on its own disk, you can
specify a maximum of two streams.

If you back up two databases with each database and its logs residing on two
additional disks (for a total of four disks), you can specify a maximum of four
streams.

The general best practice is to match the number of disks to a maximum
number of supported streams (six).
Database requirements
The Avamar plug-in for SQL supports the last two versions of SQL Server, namely SQL
Server 2008 and SQL Server 2012. This is inclusive of service packs.
Notes
 SQL Server 2012 Always On/Availability Group (AO/AG): Native support for
this mode was introduced in Avamar 6.1. Although Avamar has a policy of
supporting the last two versions of an application for functionality, there is
a discrete functionality gap worth noting here. In this instance, you need to
deploy the Avamar 6.1 Server first, and then use the Avamar 6.1 client to
use the SQL Server 2012 AO/AG functionality.
 Avamar -2 Exception: This functionality is an exception to the +/-2 client
version interoperability. The gaps are called out in the SQL Release Notes
and the Compatibility Matrix.
 Specific +/-2 recovery scenarios are covered in this guide, including the
co-existence of the Avamar 6.0 and 6.1 SQL plug-in catalogs and various
upgrade scenarios. These permutations are beyond the scope of this
Design Guide.
 For more information about using the Avamar plug-in for SQL Server 2012
Always On Availability Group (AO/AG) database backups, refer to Avamar
Plug-in for SQL Server P/N 300-013-357.
64
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
Chapter 5: Solution Design Considerations And Best Practices
 .NET 4.0 Dependency: Avamar 6.1 requires .NET 4.0 to use the Avamar 6.1
client plug-ins. For the v6.1 SQL plug-in, .NET 4.0 supports the underlying
APIs that are required for browsing the SQL environment, for example,
enumerating the instances and databases. Additionally, for the SQL plugin, the new .NET 4.0 version was driven by the need to support SQL 2012
in Avamar 6.1. Due to Microsoft constraints, Avamar cannot support
running the v6.1 SQL plug-in on a SQL client without the .NET 4.0
framework.
 .NET 4.0 Reboot Requirement: The requirement to reboot when installing
.NET 4.0 or upgrading to .NET 4.0 is highly dependent upon which
packages are already installed, including the operating system itself and a
number of other variables that can force a reboot. These other variables
include files in use, and so on. All the combinations to determine a reboot
are very difficult to quality and then verify.
 .NET 4.0 Additional Background: For further information, Microsoft details
.NET 4.0 upgrade procedures very well. There is also a flag available for
use, “/norestart”, which signals the installer not to force a reboot after the
installation. This allows the customer to reboot when it is convenient for
them (late at night, during a scheduled maintenance, and so on).
 .NET 4.0 Best Practices: It is recommended that you run the .NET 4.0
installer before attempting to upgrade Avamar Client or SQL packages,
which enables customer to handle the reboot case asynchronously with
worst case where a reboot is required. After .NET 4.0 is installed, and the
system is rebooted (if required), the SQL plug-in and the Avamar Client can
be upgraded since this mandated prerequisite will have been addressed.
 User/System Databases: You can use the Avamar plug-in for SQL Server to
back up all user databases in the environment, including system
databases. The recovery of system databases versus their user database
counterparts has a number of scenarios varying from which system
database requires recovery first to how corrupt that system database is.
These restore considerations are beyond the scope of this document, but
are thoroughly documented for each version, that is, SQL Server 2008 and
SQL Server 2012. Do not use a 2008 procedure for 2012 or a 2012
procedure for 2008—each procedure is version-specific with a different
dependency order for system dbase restore among model, master, msdb,
and so on.
 Recovery Models: The Avamar plug-in for SQL supports a range of recovery
models ranging from the Simple Recovery Model for system databases and
user databases where no log truncation is necessary. For the balance,
namely very large databases, a Full Recovery Model is supported that
leverages Microsoft’s Virtual Device Interface (VDI) streams to truncate
logs to their actual log sequence number (LSN). Additional temporal
truncations required for point-in-time recoveries are also supported.
Required account privileges
You must have domain-level administrator access for account privileges. Typically,
the Administrator account you used when installing and configuring the SQL Server is
also a member of the Administrators group on each server.
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
65
Chapter 5: Solution Design Considerations And Best Practices
If you use a different administrator account other than the one you used to install SQL
Server, you must do both of the following:

Add the SQL Server Administrator account to the Domain Administrators group.

Assign the Log on as a service right to the SQL Server Administrator account on
each server that runs any of the SQL Server services. This setting is specified in
Local Computer Policy > Computer Configuration > Windows Settings > Security
Settings > Local Policies > User Rights Assignment > Log on as a service.
Avamar Backup Agent service runs as LocalSystem
The Avamar Backup Agent service must be running as LocalSystem on all machines.
Services and writers
Table 26 lists the services and writers required for Avamar plug-in for SQL Server
plug-in operations. Each of these is located on the same server. This list may be
useful for troubleshooting backup or recovery failures.
Table 26.
Services and writers used by Avamar plug-in for SQL Server
Microsoft application
Service or writer name
SQL Server
66
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide

SQLServer(MSSQLSERVER)

SQLServerVSSWriter(SQLWriter)
Chapter 6
Solution Verification
Methodologies
This chapter presents the following topics:
Baseline hardware verification methodology .............................................. 68
Application verification methodology ......................................................... 68
Backup and recovery verification methodology ........................................... 69
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
67
Chapter 6: Solution Verification Methodologies
Baseline hardware verification methodology
Overview
The purpose of this chapter is to provide the verification methodologies from
hardware, application, and backup and recovery aspects of the solution. Through the
verification methodologies, you can ensure that the configuration supports the
availability and performance requirements.
Hardware consists of the computer's physical resources such as processors, memory,
and storage. Hardware also includes physical network components such as network
interface cards (NICs), cables, switches, routers, and hardware load balancers. You
can avoid many performance and capacity issues by using the correct hardware for
the VSPEX for virtualized SQL Server solution. Conversely, a single misapplication of a
hardware resource, such as insufficient memory on a server, can affect performance
of the SQL Server.
For detailed steps on verifying the redundancy of the solution components, refer to
the Implementation Guides for SQL Server section.
Application verification methodology
After you verify the hardware and redundancy of the solution components, the next
stage is SQL Server application testing and optimization, which is also a critical step
of the VSPEX for virtualized SQL Server solution. Test the new VSPEX Proven
Infrastructure before deploying it to production to ensure the architectures you
designed achieve the required performance and capacity targets. This enables you to
identify and optimize potential bottlenecks before they impact users in a live
deployment.
Before you start verifying your SQL Server performance on the VSPEX Proven
Infrastructure, make sure you have deployed SQL Server 2012 in your VSPEX Proven
Infrastructure, based on the Implementation Guides for SQL Server . Table 27
describes the high-level steps to complete before you put the SQL Server
environment into production.
Table 27.
68
High-level steps for application verification
Step
Description
Reference
1
Understand the key metrics for your SQL Server
environment to achieve the performance and capacity
that meet your business requirements.
Understanding key
metrics
2
Use the VSPEX Sizing Tool for SQL Server to determine
the architecture and resources of your VSPEX Proven
Infrastructure.
EMC VSPEX website
3
Design and build the SQL Server solution on VSPEX
Proven Infrastructure.
Implementation
Guides for SQL
Server
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
Chapter 6: Solution Verification Methodologies
Step
Description
Reference
4
Run the tests, analyze the results, and optimize your
VSPEX architecture.
Running tests,
analyzing results,
and optimization
Understanding key In addition to the test scenario, it is important to know the goal of the SQL Server
testing. This makes it easier to decide which metrics to capture and what thresholds
metrics
must be met for each metric when running the SQL Server validation tests. To validate
the VSPEX for virtualized SQL Server solution, we considered the key metrics as
shown in Table 28.
Table 28.
Key metrics
Metrics
Thresholds
Average CPU utilization (%)
Less than 70%
The average disk latency
Less than 15 milliseconds
The VSPEX Sizing Tool helps you to understand the basic metrics and thresholds to
meet your customer’s business requirement.
Running tests,
analyzing results,
and optimization
After the database environment is created, it is very important to run test applications
to verify the performance of SQL Server 2012. In this solution, we ran the tests using
a TPC-E-like application to validate the SQL Server performance. The TPC-E-like
application is the server performance benchmark, which emulates the brokerage
market transactions flow between market, customer, and broker. The benchmark
cannot represent the real application in the customer environment. In the real
customer environment, we highly recommend that customers:

Evaluate the TPC-E-like workload and I/O pattern. If it is acceptable and the real
workload is similar, you can use the test results as a reference. However,
customers need to consider the potential risks.

Build a test environment first, and then copy and restore the production
database to test the real workload themselves and to verify the SQL Server
performance, if the real application workload types are different from what we
validated in our test environment.
For detailed configuration information, refer to the Implementation Guides for SQL
Server section.
Backup and recovery verification methodology
Overview of
backup and
recovery
implementation
Avamar solves the challenges associated with traditional backup, enabling fast,
reliable backup and recovery for remote offices, data center LANs, and Exchange
environments. Avamar is a backup and recovery software that uses patented global
data deduplication technology to identify redundant sub-file data segments at the
source, reducing daily backup data up to 500 times before it is transferred across the
network and stored to disks. This enables companies to perform daily full backups
even across congested networks and limited WAN links.
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
69
Chapter 6: Solution Verification Methodologies
This guide is not intended to replace the core documentation for planning,
implementation, or a step-by-step installation. You can refer to this guide as a best
practice for those activities.
Deploying backup
software
Installing the Avamar Client for Windows
For installation instructions, the EMC Avamar 6.1 for SQL Server User Guide
referenced earlier provides step-by-step considerations for an initial deployment. This
guide also covers the following factors:

Enabling user access controls

Assigning user rights

Where to obtain the client installer packages
The purpose of this guide is to point out best practices where applicable and not
replace a step-by-step installation document.
Creating a dataset
The Avamar dataset is the core part of a policy definition. The dataset controls what is
backed up and where the backups are to be stored (Avamar or Data Domain). In this
backup storage context, users select either Avamar or Data Domain to store the SQL
instance or database data. Currently, EMC does not provide mixed support for both
Avamar and Data Domain.
To capture operating system state and mission-critical file system data and metadata,
use the Avamar Windows client (file system) plug-in for System-State-level protection.
Users can include these plug-in or dataset elements in the same dataset where the
SQL plug-in is defined or define and manage the plug-ins or dataset elements using a
separate dataset.
Note
For the Windows file system dataset, add an exclude wildcard for database
and log file types. For details regarding the use of wildcards, refer to the
Avamar Administration Guide.
To create a dataset for scheduled backups, select Tools > Manage Datasets in Avamar
Administrator.
The Manage All Datasets window appears, as shown in Figure 8.
For step-by-step instructions, refer to the EMC Avamar 6.1 for SQL Server User Guide.
70
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
Chapter 6: Solution Verification Methodologies
Figure 8.
Manage All Datasets window
To store the backups for this dataset on a Data Domain system instead of the Avamar
server (the default), select Store backup on the Data Domain system and then select
Store backup on Data Domain system from the list as shown in the middle of Figure
9. The Data Domain target is assumed to have already been added to the Avamar
system as part of the core installation for reference in this document.
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
71
Chapter 6: Solution Verification Methodologies
Figure 9.
New Dataset window—Options
Creating a group
Figure 10 shows the New Group window. For step-by-step instructions, refer to the
EMC Avamar SQL Server Guide.
72
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
Chapter 6: Solution Verification Methodologies
Figure 10.
New Group window
The Group policy encompasses all elements of a backup, including the dataset,
schedule, retention policy, and the clients that are included in this policy. This group
policy owns and controls all of these elements. For the SQL Server context, add the
SQL instances or databases requiring data protection.
Enabling scheduled backups
In Avamar Administrator, click the Policy launcher button. The Policy window opens,
as shown in Figure 11.
Figure 11.
Avamar Administrator Group backup
Complete the following high-level steps to ensure that the group is enabled for
scheduled backups:
1.
Select Groups under Policy Management.
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
73
Chapter 6: Solution Verification Methodologies
2.
Select the group that you created previously as detailed in the Creating a
group section.
3.
Select Actions > Group > Disable Group. This clears Disable Group on the
Actions > Group menu. A confirmation message appears.
4.
Click Yes to enable this group.
5.
To launch the backup immediately, right click the policy name and select
Backup Now.
A successful backup of SQL Server is shown in Figure 12. In this example, a Group
Backup has been successfully executed.
Figure 12.
Avamar Group backup success
Restoring data
To restore data in a SQL Server environment using the Avamar plug-in for SQL, refer to
the restore details in Chapter 4 in the EMC Avamar 6.1 for SQL Server User Guide. The
User Guide covers all of the supported recovery models, including the following:



74
Simple recovery model:

No transaction log management required

Avamar supports the mixing of simple and full recovery models with the
ability to skip or promote simple recoveries, thereby avoiding errors or
warnings that typically occur when mixing both recovery models
Full recovery model:

Transaction log truncation, including point-in-time recoveries

Avamar’s support for VDI leverages SQL Server’s LSN wherein every record
is uniquely identified to provide a temporal order for each transaction
File group recoveries: Avamar 6.1 automatically backs up all secondary
databases(file groups)
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
Chapter 7: References
Chapter 7
References
This appendix presents the following topics:
Product documentation ............................................................................. 76
Other documentation ................................................................................. 77
Links ......................................................................................................... 77
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
75
Chapter 7: References
Product documentation
The following documents, available from EMC Online Support or EMC.com, provide
additional and relevant information. If you do not have access to a document, contact
your EMC representative.
76

EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012 with Microsoft Hyper-V

EMC VSPEX for Virtualized SQL Server with VMware vSphere

EMC VSPEX Server Virtualization Solutions for Mid-market Businesses

EMC VSPEX Server Virtualization Solutions for Small and Medium Business

EMC Unisphere Remote: Next-Generation Storage Monitoring - A Detailed
Review

VNX FAST Cache – A Detailed Review

EMC FAST VP for Unified Storage Systems

EMC VNXe Series Using a VNXe System with Microsoft Windows Hyper-V

EMC VNXe series Using a VNXe System with NFS Shared Folders

EMC VNX Unified Best Practices for Performance - Applied Best Practices Guide

EMC VNXe series Configuration Worksheet

EMC VNX series Configuration Worksheet

VNXe3100/3150: How to Monitor System Health

EMC VSI for VMware vSphere: Storage Viewer - Product Guide

EMC VSI for VMware vSphere: Unified Storage Management - Product Guide

EMC VNX Host Connectivity Guide for VMware ESX Server

VNX Operating Environment for File Release Notes Version

EMC Avamar 6.1 for SQL Server VSS User Guide

EMC Avamar 6.1 Administration Guide

EMC Avamar 6.1 for Hyper-V User Guide

EMC Avamar 6.1 for VMware User Guide

EMC Avamar Compatibility and Interoperability Matrix

EMC VSPEX Private Cloud VMware vSphere 5.1 for up to 500 Virtual Machines

EMC VSPEX Private Cloud Microsoft Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V for up
to 500 Virtual Machines

EMC VSPEX Private Cloud VMware vSphere 5.1 for up to 100 Virtual Machines

EMC VSPEX Private Cloud Microsoft Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V for up
to 100 Virtual Machines

VFCache Installation and Administration Guide 1.5.1
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
Chapter 7: References
Other documentation
For information on Microsoft SQL Server, see the documents listed below:

Microsoft SQL Server 2012 on VMware Best Practices Guide

Microsoft SQL Server 2012 on VMware Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Microsoft SQL Server 2012 on VMware Availability and Recovery Options

Best Practices for running VMware vSphere on Network Attached Storage

SQL Server 2012 Licensing Quick Reference Guide
For documentation on Microsoft Hyper-V and Microsoft SQL Server, refer to the
Microsoft website at http://www.microsoft.com.
For documentation on SQL Server 2012 on VMware, refer to the VMware website at
http://www.vmware.com.
Links
MSDN Library
Refer to the following topics in the MSDN Library:

Books Online for SQL Server 2012

Disk Partition Alignment Best Practices for SQL Server

Optimizing tempdb Performance
TechNet Library

Capacity Management for SQL Server 2012 and Capacity Management for SQL
Server 2008

NIC Teaming Overview
Note
The links provided were working correctly at the time of publication.
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
77
Chapter 7: References
78
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
Appendix A
Qualification
Worksheet
This appendix presents the following topics:
Qualification worksheet ............................................................................. 80
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
79
Appendix A:Qualification Worksheet
Qualification worksheet
Before you start sizing the VSPEX for virtualized SQL Server solution, gather
information about the customer’s business requirements by using the qualification
worksheet. Table 29 provides a qualification worksheet for a SQL Server user
database.
Table 29.
Qualification worksheet for a SQL Server user database
Question
Answer
Do you have an existing SQL Server database
that you would like to size for in the
environment?
Yes or No
How many databases do you want to deploy?
What is the size of user database (GB)?
What is the annual growth rate (%)?
Do you intend to use FAST Cache?
Yes or No
What is the maximum number of IOPS?
What is the TPS at peak loads? (optional
question)
What is the required tempdb size? (optional
question)
Printing the
worksheet for
customer use
80
A stand-alone copy of the VSPEX for virtualized SQL Server qualification worksheet is
attached to this PDF. Click the paper clip icon in the left-hand pane of Adobe Reader
to reveal the attachment. Double-click the file to open the qualification worksheet
and print it from your browser.
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
Appendix B
High-level SQL
Server sizing logic
and methodology
This appendix presents the following topics:
High-level SQL Server sizing logic and methodology ................................... 82
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
81
Appendix B:High-level SQL Server sizing logic and methodology
High-level SQL Server sizing logic and methodology
Overview
It is critical that the infrastructure supporting OLTP–vCPU, memory, storage layout for
SQL server databases, total reference virtual machine provides a robust, powerful,
and flexible solution. Sizing SQL Server depends on multiple factors, such as disk
type, protection type, and cache. The sufficient resource defined as follows should be
part of the SQL Server sizing method.
Note
These manual sizing instructions may be used to provide an approximate
single application sizing, if the VSPEX Sizing Tool is not available. The VSPEX
Sizing Tool, with its multi-application, multi-instance capability is
recommended as the preferred sizing approach.
Sufficient resource To satisfy the performance requirement of SQL Server databases, sufficient resource
including the compute and disk subsystem should be ensured. This section defines
the sufficient for SQL Server as an OLTP DBMS in a virtualized environment to provide
predictable performance.

Sufficient disk utilization: Design the sizing tool to sufficiently use the disk
resource and leave room for any possible peak disk activities.

Reference virtual machine sufficiency:

Sizing
considerations

Sufficient memory utilization: Building blocks should be designed with
sufficient system memory to support the designed workload with
anticipated peak load activities.

Sufficient processor utilization: Building blocks are designed to have
sufficient vCPU to support the designed workload and any anticipated peak
load activities.
Sufficient tempdb and log: Consider sufficient capacity and performance for
tempdb for each instance, and log for each user database to support the query
workload when sizing the SQL Server instances.
This section provides detailed sizing method and recommendations for sizing each
SQL Server instance:

Reference virtual machine recommendation for SQL Server

vCPU resources

Memory resources

Disk type and number for SQL Server

OS capacity resources

OS IOPS

Select the right VSPEX Proven Infrastructure
Reference virtual machine recommendation for SQL Server
Reference virtual machine number will be recommended. The reference virtual
machine calculation bases on the following methods.
82
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
Appendix B:High-level SQL Server sizing logic and methodology

Minimum SQL Server requirement basis (MSSRB)
Minimum SQL Server requirement basis is two virtual CPUs and eight-gigabyte
RAMs. Aligning to the reference virtual machine definition (one reference virtual
machine = one virtual CPU and two-gigabyte RAMs), the minimum SQL Server
requirement basis equals four reference virtual machines). Consider the
minimum request for the small and medium-sized SQL Server instances when
sizing the SQL Server instances. For example, if the user database is less than
50 GB, use one MSSRB or four reference virtual machines. If a user’s request is
CPU-intensive that needs to support a large quantity of IOPS, the reference
virtual machine calculation should be considered and more than one MSSRBs
is recommended.

Multiple databases/instances consolidation
Consolidate multiple database calculation results for reference virtual
machines. Under SQL Server instance management, one instance may have
multiple user databases. The VSPEX sizing tool will support one instance with
up to 10 user databases. For SQL applications on VSPEX infrastructure with
small IOPS requirements, we recommend that you share the data, log, and
tempdb files on one pool. For multiple databases, we recommend that you
consolidate the IOPS and capacity results.
Table 30 shows an example of three user databases and user input. Instead of
matching each database calculation result to the closest reference virtual
machine, consider if the summation of the IOPS and the database size can
match the closest number of the reference virtual machine.
Table 30.
An example of user input for multiple user databases
Database profile
Maximum database size (GB)
Maximum database performance
(IOPS)
database 1
50
700
database 2
200
500
database 3
250
1,500
From each database calculation perspective, the reference virtual machine
requirement is total 10 vCPU and 40 GB RAM as shown in Table 31.
Table 31.
Reference virtual machine calculation results per database requirement
Database profile
Reference virtual machine -vCPU
Reference virtual machine -RAM
database 1
2
8
database 2
4
16
database 3
4
16
Total requirement
10
40
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
83
Appendix B:High-level SQL Server sizing logic and methodology
Using consolidation calculation method, the calculation will be consolidated to
calculate the IOPS and database size summation, and the total requirement will be
eight vCPU and 32 GB RAM; thus two vCPU and 8 GB RAM can be saved, while the
VSPEX infrastructure can still support the IOPS and capacity requirement.
Disk type and number for SQL Server instance
Use the following design methods to size SQL servers in the VSPEX Proven
Infrastructure.

Design for the IOPS first, then the size of the database on the disk layout. You
will need to consolidate the calculation results of the IOPS and the database
capacity size.
Basically IOPS-based calculation has higher request of spindles including the
higher speed of spindles and larger quantity of spindles comparing with
capacity-based calculation in a generic OLTP application. For example, a 100
GB OLTP database may have more than 1,500 IOPS, which needs tens of 15 K
rpm SAS or FC spindles to support the IOPS request. But from capacity-based
calculation, two 300 GB mirrored SAS/SATA/FC spindle can satisfy the capacity
request completely. Under this circumstance, we will recommend use tens of
SAS/FC spindles.


Sizing calculation includes additional disk requirements:

Annual growth rate

Log will consume 20 percent of the total user database

tempdb will consolidate the user input, which is optional, and the 20
percent of the total user database
Set the IOPS basis for three disk types based on actual test results (not the disk
type limit).
Consider the ideal maximum IOPS of different disks and the real run test
values. For example, the ideal maximum IOPS of Flash disk can be 3,000, but
considering the actual usage, the real supported IOPS might be much less than
this value:

84

When using Flash disk as FAST Cache or FAST VP (upper tier), the usable
space for an application is limited. For example, the most frequently
accessed data generally is larger than the usable space in Flash (for an
instance, using 3 x 100 GB FAST Cache to serve 500 GB OLTP user database
with 400 GB most frequently accessed data). To keep the utilization of
other disks, such as SAS/FC/SATA storing the less frequently accessed data
or used as the lower tier in FAST VP, the actual supported IOPS of Flash disk
may be less than 1,000.

The real test will keep each component of the storage array running at
reasonable values. For example, we keep the storage processor utilization
running at less than 70 percent and keep the LUN utilization less than 70
percent.
Consider both advanced storage features (such as FAST Suite) and support
matrix.
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
Appendix B:High-level SQL Server sizing logic and methodology
FAST Suite disk calculation has higher priority. For example, we recommend
using total backend IOPS minus FAST Cache supported IOPS, then calculate
disk number of SAS/FC.
IOPS calculation
Calculate the disk number based on the follow formula:
Disk number = required backend IOPS / IOPS per disk
Table 32 shows an example input for one SQL Server instance, supposing customers
know the maximum database performance (IOPS).
Table 32.
An example of user input for multiple user databases
Database profile
Maximum database size (GB)
Maximum database performance
(IOPS)
database 1
50
500
database 2
100
300
database 3
300
2,000

For three user databases = 2,800 IOPS.

Calculate the backend I/O for datafiles, supposing the read:write ratio is 90:10.
Total I/O for RAID 5 = (2800 *0.9) + 4* (2800 *0.1) = 3640

Suppose log and tempdb serve five percent of the total user database I/Os in a
RAID 1/0 configuration, and considering most of the I/Os on tempdb and log
are write.
Total I/O for RAID 1/0 2800* 4 * 0.05 = 560 IOPS

Total backend I/O = 4,200.

Suppose the maximum acceptable supported IOPS for Flash, SAS/FC is as
follows:

Flash: 3,500

SAS/FC 15k: 180

SAS/FC 10k: 130

When calculating for performance with FAST Cache selected, the Flash tier
needs to serve the maximum number of I/Os; therefore, it has higher
calculation priority. The calculation should be on VNX only.

Performance calculation on a different drive is:


Flash as FAST Cache = 3,640/3,500 =~4 aligned to 4 disks (RAID 1)

SAS 15 K for datafiles = 0/180 = 0 aligned to 5 disks (RAID 5)

SAS 15 K for log/tempdb files =560/100 =~ 6 aligned to 8 disks (RAID 1/0)
From an I/O sizing perspective, using the above mentioned calculation
methods, the following disks would be required for the environment:
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
85
Appendix B:High-level SQL Server sizing logic and methodology

5 x 15, 300 GB SAS/FC drives for datafiles

8 x 15, 300 GB SAS/FC drives for log/tempdb files

4 x 100 GB Flash drives
Capacity calculation
 User Database size:


Database 1: 50 GB

Database 2: 100 GB

Database 3: 300 GB
Calculate the database LUN size based on the user database sizes:
Database LUN size = <Database size> + Annual growth rate (30
percent, and 3 years growth, by default)


Database 1 LUN size = 50 x (1+0.3)3 = 110 GB

Database 2 LUN size = 100 x (1+0.3)3 = 220 GB

Database 3 LUN size = 300 x (1+0.3)3 = 659 GB

Total database LUN size = 989 GB
Calculate the tempdb and log LUN sizes for each of the databases. The log and
tempdb sizes are calculated as 20 percent the size of the database, if no
tempdb capacity is input by customers.

Log and tempdb size

Database 1: 20 percent of 50 = 10 GB

Database 2: 20 percent of 100 = 20 GB

Database 3 : 20 percent of 300 = 60 GB
The user database log and the tempdb files are laid out on a separate LUN for
each database. Based on this, the log LUNs were sized at 90 GB.
86

Total database data size = Sum of the sizes of all the databases = 989 GB

Total database log/tempdb size = Sum of the sizes of all the databases =
90 GB

Usable capacity available per 600 GB 15 K SAS drive = 537 GB

Usable capacity available per 300 GB 15 K FC drive = 268 GB

Spindle requirement = <Total capacity> / <Usable capacity>

Capacity on different SAS drives is:

SAS 600 GB for datafiles = 989/537 = ~2 aligned to 5 disks (RAID 5)

SAS 600 GB for log/tempdb files =90/537 =~ 1 aligned to 2 disks (RAID
1/0)

SAS 300 GB for datafiles = 989/268 = ~4 aligned to 5 disks (RAID 5)
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
Appendix B:High-level SQL Server sizing logic and methodology
SAS 300 GB for log/tempdb files= 90/268 =~ 1 aligned to 2 disks (RAID
1/0)

Note
When calculating for capacity, the FAST Cache capacity will not be included.
From a capacity sizing perspective, using the above mentioned policy settings and
also considering using a small-sized drive as the cost-effective solution, the following
disks would be required for the environment:

5 x 300 GB SAS 15, drives for datafiles

2 x 300 GB SAS 15, drives for log/tempdb files
Table 33 lists the recommended configuration based on both I/O and capacity
requirements.
Table 33.
Recommended drive and LUN configuration
One SQL Server instance ( 50 GB, 100 GB, 300 GB) SQL Server database
Number of spindles required to
satisfy both I/O and capacity
5 x 15, 300 GB SAS/FC drives for datafiles
8 x 15,300 GB SAS/FC drives for log/tempdb files
4 x 100 GB FLASH drives
Thin LUN size (data)
989 GB
Thin LUN size (log/tempdb)
90 GB
OS capacity resources
One SQL Server instance has one OS volume, and the capacity is fixed to 100 GB per
instance. For more information, refer to the following Virtualization Infrastructure
documents.

EMC VSPEX Private Cloud VMware vSphere 5.1 for up to 500 Virtual Machines

EMC VSPEX Private Cloud Microsoft Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V for up
to 500 Virtual Machines

EMC VSPEX Private Cloud VMware vSphere 5.1 for up to 100 Virtual Machines

EMC VSPEX Private Cloud Microsoft Windows Server 2012 with Hyper-V for up
to 100 Virtual Machines
OS IOPS
The OS IOPS is fixed to 25 IOPS for each one OS volume. For more information, refer
to the Virtualization Infrastructure documents listed above.
Select the right VSPEX Proven Infrastructure
Once you have completed the application sizing and obtained the numbers of
reference virtual machines and suggested disk storage layouts, use the following
steps to choose the right VSPEX Proven Infrastructure, based on the calculated
results.
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
87
Appendix B:High-level SQL Server sizing logic and methodology
1.
Use the manual sizing logic and methodology to get the total number of
reference virtual machines and any additional suggested storage layouts for
application.
For example:
[SQL Server reference virtual machine] = Total reference
virtual machines required for SQL Server 2012 = 12
reference virtual machines
[SQL disks] = Total disk numbers suggested for SQL Server
2012 = 7 disks
2.
If customers want to deploy the other applications in the same VSPEX
Proven Infrastructure, refer to the appropriate VSPEX design guide for
applications and size the total number of reference virtual machines and
storage layouts with the combined workload. For example:
Customers would also like to deploy Exchange 2010 and Oracle 11g in the
same VSPEX Proven Infrastructure. Based on the discussion with customers,
refer to EMC VSPEX for virtualized Microsoft Exchange 2010–Design Guide
to size Exchange 2010 manually and EMC VSPEX for virtualized Oracle 11g–
Design Guide to size Oracle 11g in the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure. You get
the following results:
[Exchange reference virtual machines] = Total reference
virtual machines required for Exchange 2010 = 12 reference
virtual machines
[Exchange disks]= Total disk numbers suggested for Exchange
2010 = 18 disks
[Oracle reference virtual machines] = Total reference
virtual machine required for [Oracle 11g]= 16 reference
virtual machines
[Oracle disks] = Total disk numbers suggested for Oracle
11g= 55 disks
3.
Aggregate the total number of reference virtual machines and total disk
numbers for all applications. For example:
Total reference virtual machines for applications = SQL
reference virtual machines + Exchange reference virtual
machines + Oracle reference virtual machines = 12 reference
virtual machines + 12 reference virtual machines + 16
reference virtual machines = 40 reference virtual machines
Total disks for applications = SQL disks + Exchange disks +
Oracle disks = 7 disks + 18 disks + 55 disks = 80 disks
4.
Discuss with your customers the maximum utilization of the VSPEX Proven
Infrastructure for application and virtualization solution they want to use to
meet their business requirements. Calculate the total disks that reference
virtual machines suggested for the combined applications.
For example: Since Oracle will be also deployed in the VSPEX Proven
Infrastructure, EMC recommends that customers use VMware as the
virtualization solution enabled by VNX. If customers want a maximum 75
percent utilization for all the combined applications, the calculation would
be:
88
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
Appendix B:High-level SQL Server sizing logic and methodology
Total reference virtual machines needed for applications =
Total reference virtual machines for applications / Maximum
utilization = 40 reference virtual machines / 75% = 54
reference virtual machines
Total disks needed for applications= Total disks for
applications / Maximum utilization = 80 disks/ 75% = 107
disks
5.
Use Table 34 and the total number of reference virtual machines to select
the minimum recommended VSPEX Proven Infrastructure.
In this example, because Oracle is also deployed in the same VSPEX Proven
Infrastructure, EMC recommends customers to use VMware as the
virtualization solution enabled by VNX. In this example, EMC recommends
you to select VSPEX VMware private cloud solution for up to 125 reference
virtual machines as the minimum VSPEX Proven Infrastructure for the
combined workload.
Table 34.
VSPEX storage model support matrix
VSPEX Proven Infrastructure
models*
Maximum supported
reference virtual machine
Supported storage
array
Up to 50 virtual machines
50
VNXe3150
Up to 100 virtual machines
100
VNXe3300
Up to 125 virtual machines
125
VNX5300
Up to 250 virtual machines
250
VNX5500
Up to 500 virtual machines
500
VNX5700
*Includes the following VSPEX models:

VSPEX Private Cloud for Microsoft

VSPEX Private Cloud for VMware
6.
Refer to the appropriate EMC VSPEX Proven Infrastructure and calculate the
disk number required for VSPEX private cloud pool by using the virtual
infrastructure building block methodology. For example:
In this example, EMC suggests you select a VSPEX VMware private cloud
solution for up to 125 reference virtual machines as the minimum VSPEX
Proven Infrastructure. After referring to the building block of VSPEX private
cloud pool, you will get the total disk number required:
Total disks for private cloud = 5 SAS disks + 2 SSD disks =
7 disks
7.
Aggregate the total disk number required including the disk number of
combined applications, VSPEX private cloud pool and hot spare.
Total disks = Total disks needed for applications + Total
disks for private cloud + Hot Spare = 107 disks + 7 disks +
4 disks = 118 disks
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide
89
Appendix B:High-level SQL Server sizing logic and methodology
8.
Compare the values in Table 35 with Table 34 to make sure the VSPEX
Proven Infrastructure supported array could support the total disk numbers
that required for combined applications and private cloud. If not, you may
need to upgrade to the next model of VSPEX Proven Infrastructure.
In this example, EMC suggests the VSPEX VMware private cloud solution for
up to 125 reference virtual machine as the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure and
VNX5300 as the storage array. VNX5300 can support maximum 125 disks in
total, which can fit the requirement of 118 disks that you may need for the
combined workload. As a result, EMC recommends you to consider the
VSPEX VMware private cloud solution for up to 125 reference virtual
machines for customers to deploy proven infrastructure.
Table 35.
90
Storage system support matrix
Storage system
Maximum number of drives storage system
VNXe3150
100
VNXe3300
150
VNX5300
125
VNX5500
250
VNX5700
500
EMC VSPEX for Virtualized Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Design Guide