1© Copyright 2011 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. EMC STORAGE OPTIMIZATION AND HIGH AVAILABILITY FOR MICROSOFT SQL SERVER 2008 R2 EMC VNX5700, EMC FAST Suite, VMware vSphere 5 Strategic Solutions Engineering (SSE) EMC Solutions Group (ESG) Michael Morris David Ring

2© Copyright 2011 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Agenda EMC Proven Solutions Solution architecture Design considerations Back-end SAS port balancing Sizing exercise Testing methodology Test results Summary

3© Copyright 2011 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. End-to-end capabilities for Microsoft EMC Consulting Services Strategize Advise Architect Implement Manage Support EMC Solutions Group - Proven Solutions Help customers identify and overcome their business challenges Reduce risk and deliver faster implementations Address unique industry challenges Simplify management of complex application environments

4© Copyright 2011 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Proven Solutions approach Capture and define Test and validate DocumentPublish Singapore Shanghai, China Cork, Ireland Hopkinton, MA Santa Clara, CA Vienna, Austria Requirements …we champion the customers …and test the solutions you would like

5© Copyright 2011 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Storage Optimization for Microsoft SQL Server The Challenge Administrators asked to “do more with less” Optimizing storage without increasing data centre footprint In this solution we show how EMC FAST Suite: Boosts performance of the EMC VNX performance platform Optimizes investment in EMC Flash technology Eliminates redesign of storage as I/O patterns change Eliminates need for continual manual intervention “data in the right place at the right time”

6© Copyright 2011 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Virtualization for Microsoft SQL Server The Challenge Up to now virtualization of MS SQL Server limited to 8 vCPUs In this solution we show how VMware vSphere 5 presents: Ability to scale up to 32 vCPUs per virtual machine Additional features –VMFS-5 volumes –Hot add CPU –Storage DRS –Multi-NIC vMotion “increases the number of large-scale instances that can be virtualized ”

7© Copyright 2011 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. High Availability for Microsoft SQL Server The Challenge Whether to adopt a VMware HA or WSFC solution The decision should be based on these factors: Simplicity of design Are your applications cluster-aware Do you require maximum performance Do you require low Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) “The answer is...it depends!”

8© Copyright 2011 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Solution architecture WSFC FAST VP pool (40*SAS, 5*Flash drives) RDM volumes Standalone FAST VP pool (40*SAS, 5*Flash drives) VMFS-5 volumes 32 vCPU limit Hot add CPU Multi-NIC vMotion FAST Cache 12 * 100 GB (shared resource) EMC VSI

9© Copyright 2011 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Design considerations Back-end SAS port balancing Workload balancing Balancing through LUN ownership Balancing through LUN I/O Balancing through feature utilization: –Multiple pools –FAST VP –FAST Cache

10© Copyright 2011 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Back-end SAS port balancing If you are using only two back-end busses on a VNX5700, you should use ports 0 and 2, or 1 and 3 for the best performance. If you are using four or fewer back-end ports on a VNX7500, you should alternate ports on the SAS back- end I/O module for the best performance.

11© Copyright 2011 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. 20 Disks (0-19)5 Disk (20-24) SAS (Pool 1 -Tier 1) RG 4 T-Logs Disks (0-19)5 Disk (20-24) SAS (Pool 1 -Tier 1) RG 1 (4+1) OS Volumes 4+1 FLARE Drives FLASH DRIVES (Pool 1 – Tier 0) FAST Cache (3 Mirrors) 4+11mirror System DBs + Quorum FLASH DRIVES (Pool 2 – Tier 0) FAST Cache (3 Mirrors) 4+11mirror HS Empty 20 Disks (0-19)5 Disk (20-24) SAS (Pool 2 – Tier 1) RG2 TempD B 4+1 HSHS RG3 TempD B Disks (0-19)5 Disk (20-24) SAS (Pool 2 – Tier 1) 4+1 HSHS RG2 TempD B RG3 TempD B HSHS SAS Back end Bus 0 & 1 SAS Back endBus 2 & 3 SAS 10k rpm Flash Drives Legend HS -Hot Spare LUN % on SAS LUN % on SAS LUN % on SAS LUN % on SAS LUN % on Flash LUN % on Flash LUN % on SAS LUN % on SAS LUN % on SAS LUN % on SAS LUN % on SAS LUN % on SAS LUN % on SAS LUN % on SAS LUN % on Flash LUN % on Flash

12© Copyright 2011 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Sizing exercise: Rough order of magnitude Drive typeIOPS Flash drive3,500 SAS 15K rpm180 SAS 10K rpm150 NL-SAS 7.2K rpm90 FAST Cache Expected to service 69,00016,990 Expected Backend Disk IOPs = Host Read IOPs + 4 * Host Write IOPs Host IOPs 25,000Read / Write Ratio 9:1 RAID Type RAID 5 IOPs = (0.9 * 25,000) + 4 * ( 0.1 * 25,000) = 32,500 FAST VP Pool Expected to service 4523,500 Drive Type Flash Drives SAS 10k rpm No of Disks 5 40 Drive IOPs 17,500 6,000 66% Drive IOPs 11,550 3,960 15,510

13© Copyright 2011 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Testing methodology Performance testing –Baseline testing on 40 * SAS-only pool –Performance testing FAST VP-enabled pool (Flash and SAS) –Performance testing on a FAST VP pool with FAST Cache enabled –The following are the key metrics used: Throughput in IOPS (transfers/sec) Throughput in transactions per sec (TPS) Physical disk utilization (percent) Storage processor utilization (percent) Failover testing –Planned –Unplanned VMware vSphere 5 functionality –EMC VSI –Hot –add CPU –Storage DRS Performing Upgrades

14© Copyright 2011 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Performance test results

15© Copyright 2011 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. À Solution supported 50k+ IOPs VMware PVSCSI adapter (SA) outperformed LSI Logic SAS (WSFC) by 25% Performance Transfer/sec (IOPs) BaselineFAST VP relocationFast Cache 2 hour4 hours2 hours

16© Copyright 2011 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. À Transaction/sec (TPS) mirror s IOPs, VMware PVSCSI adapter (SA) outperformed LSI Logic SAS (WSFC) Performance Transactions/sec (TPS) BaselineFAST VP relocationFast Cache 2 hour4 hours2 hours

17© Copyright 2011 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. À Flash drives in FAST VP Pools alleviate pressure on SAS disks FAST Cache further helps by servicing I/O requirments from SAS disks Performance Physical Disk Utilization (%) BaselineFAST VP relocationFast Cache 2 hour4 hours2 hours

18© Copyright 2011 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. À Storage Processor Utilization balanced through Pool/LUN ownership Performance Storage Processor Utilization (%) BaselineFAST VP relocationFast Cache 2 hour4 hours2 hours Flash drives being added to pools

19© Copyright 2011 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Failover test results

20© Copyright 2011 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Failover test results Typical example of a calculation for vMotion with one NIC is: 61 GB or 62,464 MB / MB/s (920,000,000bytes/1024^2/8) = (569.55sec /60) = 9 minutes 49 seconds Scenario WSFCStandalone Planned manual failover (no load)48s 1 NIC: 9m 39s 2 NICs: 4m 44s 4 NICs: 2m 25s Planned manual failover (under load)49s 1 NIC: 23m 52s 2 NICs: 8m 21s 4 NICs: 3m 4s Unplanned failover - pulled power (no load) 1m 35s6m 10s

21© Copyright 2011 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Feature testing

22© Copyright 2011 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. EMC VSI provisioning new storage EMC Virtual Storage Integrator (VSI) is a vSphere client plug-in that provides a single interface to manage EMC storage

23© Copyright 2011 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. EMC VSI Storage View Select EMC VSI tab in vCenterView to see: –Datastores –Pools –LUNs

24© Copyright 2011 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. vSphere 5 Hot Add CPU functionality Test showed how the solution succeeded in adding CPUs on a running Microsoft SQL Server virtual machine by using hot add without interruption to the workload.

25© Copyright 2011 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. vSphere 5: Storage DRS - I/O load balancing Storage DRS monitoring user-set I/O latency threshold Relocations can be manual or automatic

26© Copyright 2011 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. vSphere 5: Storage DRS – Space load balancing Exceeding the user set threshold, Storage DRS will recommend migration of VMDKs to a datastore with sufficient space

27© Copyright 2011 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Performing upgrades

28© Copyright 2011 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Performing upgrades: WSFC OS and SQL Server rolling patch upgrade using WSFC Process flow –Patch passive node –Failover cluster –Patch active node –Failover cluster * The services must stop on one node, and then start on the other. Therefore, WSFC does not provide a nondisruptive upgrade

29© Copyright 2011 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Performing upgrades: VMware option OS and SQL Server rolling patch upgrade using standby virtual machine Process flow –Patch standby virtual machine –On primary virtual machine Stop client connections Detach SQL Server database(s) Remove virtual disk(s) –On standby virtual machine Attach virtual disk(s) to standby virtual machine Attach SQL Server database(s) Enable client connections to assume primary role –Patch old primary *The difference is the requirement to detach storage from one virtual machine and reattach to another, this can be scripted to complete automatically

30© Copyright 2011 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Summary The VNX5700 can easily service over 50,000 Microsoft SQL Server OLTP-like IOPS. The VMware native adapter with VMFS-5 volumes consistently outperforms the LSI adapter with physical RDMs in this configuration. The combination of FAST VP and FAST Cache as part of the FAST Suite, allows the VNX series storage arrays to optimize storage efficiency and service increased I/O. The solution compares the WSFC and VMware standalone virtual machine options, and highlights the performance and RTO benefits of each solution. The solution highlights the hot add functionality for adding CPU resources in vSphere 5. The solution also demonstrates vSphere Storage DRS functionality and its ability to balance storage resources through vMotion, based on I/O and capacity, either manually or automatically.

31© Copyright 2011 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. Q&A?

32© Copyright 2011 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved. THANK YOU