emc mission critical infrastructure for microsoft sql server 2012

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EMC MISSION CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE FOR MICROSOFT SQL SERVER 2012EMC Symmetrix VMAXe, EMC FAST VP, SQL Server AlwaysOn Availability Groups, VMware vSphere

Technical PresentationEMC Solutions Group


Agenda Solution Overview Architecture Design Test Results Findings and Recommendations Summary Q&A


Solution Overview


Solution Purpose SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn

– Characterize the performance and functionality of enterprise-class Microsoft SQL Server 2012 in a virtualized environment with AlwaysOn technology.

– Demonstrate the easy access to readable secondary replica with the new SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn transaction-level replication technology that has minimum impact on the primary databases.

EMC Symmetrix VMAXe FAST VP– Optimize database storage performance with FAST VP on the Symmetrix

VMAXe storage (Flash, FC, and SATA tiers).– Integrate simple self-tuning in an advanced enterprise-class storage system

cost-effectively. Virtualization integration

– Showcase Symmetrix VMAXe’s integration with VMware, which simplifies the array management and reduces total cost of ownership. With this integration, SQL Server 2012 can be easily virtualized with VMware vSphere.


Key Components Microsoft SQL Server 2012

– AlwaysOn feature set: Readable secondary replica on availability groups (AG)

EMC Symmetrix VMAXe storage array– EMC Fully Automated Storage Tiering for Virtual Pools (FAST

VP) VMware vSphere 5

– More manageable resources for virtual machines EMC Virtual Storage Integrator (VSI)

– Easy viewing and provisioning of Symmetrix LUN information to virtual machines

EMC Symmetrix Management Console (SMC) and Symmetrix Performance Analyzer (SPA)


Microsoft SQL Server 2012 AlwaysOn

Readable secondary replicas on Availability Groups

Primary replica– Primary role– One replica for each

availability group Secondary replica

– Secondary role– Up to four replicas– Readable secondary

replica (read-only secondary replica)


FAST VP Built-in automation and intelligence Optimized performance and reduced

cost Simplified management and increased

storage efficiency More granular movement of sub-LUN

data between tiers Support for two or three storage tiers


EMC Virtual Storage Integration with VMware• VMAXe integrated with

vSphere 5

• VSI is a vCenter plug-in• Built-in storage insight• Bi-directional “server-to-

storage” and “storage-to-server” capability

EMC Virtual Storage Integrator


EMC Symmetrix Management Console• Browser-based graphical interface• Windows/Linux server hosted • Web browser access • Light-weight architecture


EMC Symmetrix Performance Analyzer

Heat map Snapshot view Trend and forecast Real-time monitoring Diagnostics

• Automated monitoring and trending tool


Architecture Design


AlwaysOn Replication

Solution Architecture• Two vSphere ESXi hosts • Two SQL Server virtual

machines (one primary and one secondary)

• Symmetrix VMAXe served as the SAN storage.

• FAST VP has three tiers enabled to serve the storage needs of the environment.


Storage Design

Disk type Spindle number RAID type

SSD 200 GB 16 5

FC 450 GB 15k 112 1

SATA 2 TB 7.2k 56 6

FAST VP thin pools (on both primary and secondary replicas) are placed across all the following tiers:

These pools served the SQL Server OLTP database, log, tempDB, and log LUNs for each site of the availability group.

16 SATA disks of 2 TB served as the operating system volumes for SQL Server virtual machines and the operating system volumes of the testing client.


Microsoft SQL ServerDescription Details / MeasurementSQL Server virtual machines (instances) One production SQL Server instance

(primary replica) One read-only secondary SQL Server instance (secondary replica)

SQL Server primary replica virtual machine configuration

1 x 24 vCPUs / 64 GB memory

SQL Server secondary replica virtual machine configuration

1 x 16 vCPUs / 64 GB memory

SQL Server user databases – Production 4 user databases –1.8 TB in total1 x 50 GB (5,000 user)1 x 250 GB (25,000 user)1 x 500 GB (50,000 user)1 x 1 TB (100,000 user)

Read-only workload OLTP workload with read-only profileSymmetrix VMAX storage pools One primary/ secondary replica Backup staging area for availability group seeding

2 TB


Storage design for SQL Server


Hardware ProfileEquipment Quantity Configuration

Two-engine Symmetrix VMAXe array with FAST VP

Flash, FC, and SATA

1

VMAXe 4G 7.2K 2000 GB (DRV)—Quantity:64VMAXe 4G 15K 450 GB (DRV)—Quantity: 120VMAXe 4G Flash 200 GB (DRV)—Quantity: 20Engines: 2Cache: 96 GB (mirrored)Note: Drive counts above reflect what is available in the VMAXe array in this solution

32-core Intel Nehalem-EX Servers

2 Primary replica SQL Server virtual machine24-core 192 GB RAMSecondary replica SQL Server virtual machine16-core 64 GB RAM

Fibre Channel switches 2 8 GB FC switches

GigE network switch 1 Network switch–24 ports


Software ComponentsSoftware Quantity Version Configuration

Windows Server 2008 R2 4 2008 R2 x64 SP1

Source and target virtual machinesLoad virtual machinesDomain controllerVMware vCenter server

VMware ESXi 5 2 5.0.0 Two-node ESXi cluster to host virtual machines

VMware vCenter 5 1 5.0.0 Virtual center management serverSQL Server 2012 2 RC1 Database softwareEMC PowerPath 2 5.5 Advanced multipathing for SQL Server

production and secondary host HBAsEMC VSI 1 5.1 Provisioning and viewing storage

from vCenter to simplify storage management


Test Results


Test Results—FAST VP

After enabling FAST VP, the storage was in a

balanced state and the data was on three tiers

Before enabling FAST VP, the storage was bound to the FC tier


Test Result–FAST VP

• FAST VP sampling : 2 hours before analysis starts

• FAST VP analysis: 2 hours before initial data movement

• FAST VP data move stabilized: 4 hours

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 120

500

1,000

1,500

2,000

2,500

1,192 1,130 1,219 1,177 1,158

1,688

1,948

2,262 2,323 2,338 2,315 2,335

TPS before/after enabling FAST VP

FAST VP sampling Analysis Data movement ramp up Steady state


Test Results—Effects of Indirect Checkpoint

Indirect checkpoint without I/O spikes

Manual checkpoint with high I/O spikes

6:246:346:446:547:047:147:240

5,000

10,000

15,000

20,000

25,000

-0.0100000000000001-4.85722573273506E-170.009999999999999960.020.030.040.050.060.070.080.090.1

Indirect Checkpoint

Disk Transfers/sec Avg. Disk latency (ms)

18:3918:4618:5218:5919:0519:1119:1819:2419:3119:370

5,000

10,000

15,000

20,000

25,000

0.00.10.20.30.40.50.60.70.80.91.0

Manual Checkpoints

Disk Transfers/sec Avg. Disk latency(ms)


Test Results—Effects of AG Secondary Copy With the same load, upon making the same

database part of AG with the secondary replica in synchronization mode:

– Total IOPS decreased slightly– Transactions per second (TPS) for load clients

decreased slightly– Disk latency kept the same

Test IOPSDisk latency (ms)(Read/Write/Transfer)

Client TPS

Baseline 25,100 5/9/5 2,546

Baseline with availability group

23,800 5/9/5 2,335


Test Results—AG Readable Secondary Copy

AG baseline Baseline with Read-only load on primary

Baseline with Read-only load on secondary

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

24,500

25,500

26,500

27,500

28,500

29,500

30,500

5 5 5

9

13

9

5 5 527,090

27,800

30,300

Primary SQL Server Performance

read latency (ms)

write latency (ms)

transfer latency (ms)

Avg. IOPS

ms

IOPS


Test Results—AG Readable Secondary Copy (continued)

Baseline with AG AG with read-only load on Primary

AG with read-only load on Secondary

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

0

2,000

4,000

6,000

8,000

10,000

12,000

14,000

16,000

18,000

45%

75%

54%

3.30%

16.40%

35.00%

9,905

13,800

17,100

SQL Server Performance

PrimarysecondaryTotal SQL server TPS

CPU

util

izat

ion

TPS



AG ba

seline

Basel

ine w

ith Re

ad-on

ly loa

d on P

rimary

Basel

ine with

Read-o

nly lo

ad on

Secon

dary

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500 2,335

1,676

2,157

0

684

1,059

OLTP load Client TPSOLAP load client TPS

Tran

sact

ions

/sec



• Sixteen ports used with multipath load-balancing (PowerPath/VE); IOPS were evenly distributed

• Back end and front end showed no sign of stress

Symmetrix VMAXe Performance



With up to 30,000 host IOPS, the Symmetrix VMAXe front-end and back-end CPU utilization was under 70 percent.

Disk utilization was also under 50 percent, indicating the Symmetrix VMAXe system was capable of handling further load.

Symmetrix VMAXe Performance

Baseline Baseline with AG AG with read-only load on Primary

AG with read-only load on Secondary

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

0

5,000

10,000

15,000

20,000

25,000

30,000

35,000

47% 54%37%

44%

23% 26% 23%28%

61%

68% 59%

68%25,101

25,89026,283

30,200

disk UT% FE CPU UT% BE CPU UT% System IOPS

UT%



For the primary ESXi server, the CPU usage was approximately 55 percent; for the secondary ESXi server, it was approximately 25 percent.

VMware vSphere Performance

CPU usage for ESXi of primarySQL Server virtual machine

CPU usage for ESXi of secondarySQL Server virtual machine


Findings and RecommendationsRecommendations EMC Symmetrix VMAXe storage array:

– Factory pre-configured setting should be used for most setups– Virtualization integration makes it easy to provision storage for

virtual machines VMware paravirtual SCSI (PVSCSI) adapters are best suited for

SANs with high demands of I/O throughput. There is up to 25 percent improvement over legacy VMware virtual LSI Controllers.


Findings and Recommendations (cont’d)Findings By moving OLAP read-only workload from the primary replica

to the secondary, CPU usage was offloaded greatly. More TPS and IOPS for both OLTP and OLAP loads were achieved.

The process of creating availability groups requires enough storage to hold the compressed backups and completed within 6 hours.

Reducing HBA ports queuing for vSphere ESXi servers by changing the queue depth improved I/O performance by 30 percent.

Indirect checkpoints could be used to reduce the I/O spike Enabling availability groups in synchronous mode has very

little impact on the OLTP load.


Summary Symmetrix VMAXe can easily service over 30,000 OLTP

IOPS for SQL Server 2012 Availability Group with a readable secondary copy.

A readable secondary copy in SQL Server 2012 Availability Group can offload OLAP load from primary database with minimal impact on the system.

EMC FAST VP maximizes storage efficiency by auto-tiering of SQL Server database storage to the most suitable storage tier.

Symmetrix VMAXe’s integration with VMware simplifies provisioning, managing, and monitoring the virtualized SQL Server 2012 environment.


Q&A

emc mission critical infrastructure for microsoft sql server 2012

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