Recent trends in virtualized converged infrastructures, coupled with rapidly decreasing costs of solid state storage (SSD), pose new challenges for DBAs and developers alike. Learn answers to to pressing questions like: • If my array uses compression, are there benefits to using database compression? • How should I arrange my data files on an SSD array? • If I have limited SSD space, how should I use it? • On a hybrid array (spinning disk and SSD) how should I structure policies? • What changes from physical servers to VMs?

1. VMs, SSDs and SQL
Server—Oh, My!

2. Joey D’Antoni
» Joey has over 15 years of experience with a wide variety of data
platforms, in both Fortune 50 companies as well as smaller organizations
» Principal Consultant, Denny Cherry and Associates
» He is a frequent speaker on database administration, big data, and
career management
» He is the co-president of the Philadelphia SQL Server User’s Group
» He wants you to make sure you can restore your data
Joeydantoni.com

3. AGENDA
How SSDs
Change the
Game
Being a DBA
in a Virtual
Environment
Managing
Your SSD
Environment
Storage
Policy for
Databases
Maximize
Your Benefits
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V M s , S S Ds And S Q L S e r v e r, O h M y
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4. SPINNING DISK DRIVES
Hard Drives can only spin at 15,000 RPM.
Hard Drive Performance has improved approximately
10x (1988-2008)
Have grown many fold in capacity
During the performance improvement CPU speed
increase 10000x

5. WHY IS STORAGE THE BOTTLENECK?

6. MEMORY VERSUS HARD DRIVES

7. SOLID STATE DRIVES
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8. WHY ARE SSDs SO MUCH FASTER?
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THE LAW S O F P HY S I CS
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9. SAN TERMS
Disk Array—The physical array behind your SAN (a bunch of
hard drives)
LUN—Logical Unit Number, but in practical terms, what your
SAN admin will call a disk that he presents to your server
Fibre Channel—Cable connection to SAN
IOPs—I/O Operations Per Second—the way your SAN admin
measures performance

10. HOW DOES THIS WORK IN A SAN?
Add Spindles to Add IO
Performance
Performance of ONE PCI-E SSD
card
• 235,000 8k Random IOPS
20µs latency
You’d Need 3500 15k RPM
Spinning Disks in RAID 10 to
achieve that level of performance
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11. SO HOW DO I BENEFIT THE MOST?
Treat SSDs as limited
resource
• Use Data Compression where
possible
Where does SQL Server
bottleneck on IO?
• TempDB—SQL Server uses
TempDB for EVERYTHING
• Hot Datafiles—what is your
busiest database?
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12. ALL FLASH ARRAYS
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Not just pure speed
Software benefits
Write leveling (randomization)
Compression
Caching
Oh, and Pure Speed Peugeot 905, 24 Hours of LeMans
1993, 391 kph/242 mph, Mulsanne
Straight

13. MODERN STORAGE ARRAY ARCHITECTURE
Stripes all data across all devices in array (768 kb
– 1 MB)
Minimizes impact of any hot spotting
Increases overall performance of array
Makes data file placement far less important
than in the past
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14. OLD ARCHITECTURE
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Data Files
TempDB
Transaction
Logs

15. MODERN ARCHITECTURE
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All data is striped across
all devices in the array

16. HYBRID ARRAYS
Mix Performance and Price
• Common config
• SSD Tier
• Fast Spinning Tier
• Dense Spinning Tier
Rely on striping for
performance gains
Your storage admin can’t
tell you where data is
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17. DATA FILE LAYOUT
It depends
If using all flash
configuration:
• Consider Hot Spots
• Most arrays are
smart enough to
distribute workload
• If on smart array,
there’s no real
reason to layout
data files
If using hybrid
array—see next
slide
Always protect
your data
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18. HYBRID ARRAY POLICY
SSD SSD SSD
15K Fibre Channel 15k Fibre Channel 15k Fibre Channel
10K SATA 10K SATA 10K SATA
Log
Data
Temp
DB
Temp
DB (2)

19. HYBRID ARRAYS FILE LAYOUT
•TempDB Performance
•TempDB Normal
•Transaction Logs
•Data Files Performance
•Data Files Normal
Separate
Volumes
by SAN
Policy
19 |

20. ALL FLASH LAYOUT
It doesn’t matter!
Software eliminates
sequential write
performance issues
Data is striped across entire
array for protection
20 |

21. ARRAY BASED
COMPRESSION
21 |
W HAT DO E S THI S M E AN FO R DATABAS E S ?

22. ARRAY BASED COMPRESSION
Needs more research
Early consensus from two storage
vendors is positive
Keep using Data Compression
Keep using Columnstore
Not just IO benefits, but memory
improvements
22 |

23. What is the Impact of Virtual
Machine Performance?
23 |

24. DATASTORES
It can be easy to overwhelm
storage if not enough storage
devices are presented
Datastores will correspond to
SAN policy groups
VMs Love Fast IO

25. DRIVERS AND STORAGE CONFIG
Avoid Lazy Zeroing
on Drive Volumes
• Thick Provision Eager
Zeroed
Group VMDK files of
each storage type
(TempDB, Logs, Data)
in storage pools
Use ParaVirtual iSCSI
drivers for optimal
performance
25 |

26. VIRTUALIZING SQL SERVER
Reserve memory for production workloads
Also reserve memory in Hypervisor for Prod
Servers
Configure storage and data files based on SAN
policy
Baseline IO performance

27. VIRTUALIZING SQL SERVER
Think carefully about using lock pages
in memory*
Enable optimize for ad-hoc workloads
DON’T OVERALLOCATE CPUs

28. DPA WITH VM OPTION
» See correlations
between SQL
Server performance
and VM resources,
the physical host,
storage and the
network
» Identify root cause
of issues impacting
end user response
time
28 |

29. SUMMARY
Understand impact of storage to your SQL Server
Solid State Drives are FAST!!!!
Gain understanding of the type of array that you are working on
Design your SQL Server architecture to take advantage of that
Understand your virtualization environment of how this all works
together
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30. QUESTIONS?
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31. FREE TRIAL
• Try Database Performance Analyzer with VM Option FREE for 14
days
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• See historical trends over days, months, and years
• Understand impact of VMware® performance
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RE S O LV E P E RFO RM ANCE I S S UE S Q UI CKLY
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www.solarwinds.com/dpa-download/

32. THANK YOU
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