1. Some considerations for running SQL Server in Amazon Web Services
SQL in AWS
Some considerations for running SQL Server in Amazon Web Services

2. Who Am I? Manager, DBA @ ChannelAdvisor Microsoft Certified Master
Eight years working with SQL Server
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SQL in AWS

3. Agenda Background Expectations AWS options Migration strategy
HA and DR
Monitoring
Licensing
Learnings
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SQL in AWS

4. Project Background Acquired EU based company
Legal requirement for data not to leave EU region
Good in-house AWS knowledge
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SQL in AWS

5. Session Expectations No pro/anti public cloud agenda
No AWS vs Azure dogma
Not a how-to guide for RDS/EC2
Make informed AWS decisions
Understand workload suitability
Help make SQL perform in AWS
Caveats
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SQL in AWS

6. Options for SQL Server in AWS
EC2 instances
Analogous to VMs in private cloud
Remember NOT your infrastructure
“Right-sizing” even more important than private cloud VMs
RDS instances
Analogous to VMs where someone else is sysadmin
Backups, patching and HA are managed for you
You still need to do everything else
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SQL in AWS

7. RDS Limitations 30 user databases Limited system database access
Maximum storage size of 4TB
Limited instance types and editions
2016 BYOL (M4 & T2 only)
2016 LI (R3 only)
Most server-level roles/permissions
No timezone changes or restores between timezones
Five minute interval restore granularity
Stretch, linked servers, BPE, Polybase, CDC, replication, AGs, server-level triggers, endpoints, FILESTREAM, audit, PBM, instant file-initialization, BULK ops, Database Mail, Maintenance Plans
SSAS, SSIS, SSRS, MDS etc.
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SQL in AWS

8. Good workload candidates for AWS
Experienced AWS team
Instance sizing makes sense
Instance capacity growth predictable
New or trial product
Data has geographic restrictions
ISV and other “half-managed” instances
“Bursty” or 8x5 type workloads
Running SQL Express (RDS)
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SQL in AWS

9. Poor workload candidates for AWS
Capacity growth highly variable
Could interfere with HA/DR
Instance sizes likely to be a problem
High cost sensitivity
Well-defined 24x7 workload
Liable to generate policy/compliance conflict
Enterprise Edition host-based licensing
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SQL in AWS

10. Elastic Block Store The SAN of the AWS world 99.999% availability
Multiple Availability Zones automatically
Snapshots
Access management
Encryption
Newest instances have large increases in throughput
Recommend striping multiple volumes for increased throughput
General Purpose or Provisioned IOPs
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SQL in AWS

11. AWS EC2 Instance Types Classes of hardware for hosting VMs
An I3 class can run
16 x I3.large
1 x I3.16xlarge
Choose the instance type that matches your workload
Size according to needs and budget
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SQL in AWS

12. AWS Instance Types * Not including P2, G2, D2, F1 instance types Class
Assumed
Usage
Minimum Size
Maximum Size
Cost (per annum)
Storage
Notes T2
Dev/Test
1 vCPU
512MB
8 vCPU
32GB
$72 - $3,837
EBS-only
Burstable use M4
General purpose
2 vCPU
8GB
64 vCPU
256GB
$1,778 - $56,686
Gb/s
Haswell or Broadwell M3
3.75GB
30GB
$1,139 - $9,075
4GB – 160GB
Local SSD
Ivy Bridge or Sandy Bridge C4
Compute heavy stuff
36 vCPU
60GB
$1,682 - $27,077
0.5 – 4Gb/s
Haswell C3
32 vCPU
$1,647- $26,350
32GB – 640GB SSD
Ivy Bridge
* Not including P2, G2, D2, F1 instance types
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SQL in AWS

13. AWS Instance Types Class Assumed Usage Minimum Size Maximum Size
Cost (per annum)
Storage
Notes X1
Serious stuff
64 vCPU
976GB
128 vCPU
1952GB
$84,210 - $168,420
1.92TB – 3.84TB SSD
Haswell
5 – 10Gb/s EBS R4
Database usage
2 vCPU
15.25GB
488GB
$1,971 - $63,072
EBS-only
~ Gb/s
Broadwell R3
32 vCPU
244GB
$2,549 - $30,660
32GB – 640GB
Local SSD
Ivy Bridge I2
4 vCPU
30.5GB
$8,523 – $68,170
800 – 6.4TB SSD I3
$2,172 - $69,519
475GB – 15.25TB NVMe SSD
Sandy bridge, ivy bridge, haswell, Broadwell
X1 with license included is $588,900 (perpetual licensing would run you $450k). X1 on Linux is $116k per year. Willing to pay $52k a year for windows OS?
I2 no longer available in a lot of regions
D2 pricing $6k (6TB) - $48,355 (48TB) (same sizing as i2)
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SQL in AWS

14. Dedicated hosts and instances
Dedicated instances
AWS guarantees that your instances will never share workload with a different customer
Useful for security/compliance
Dedicated hosts
Amazon gives you a whole host to run their instance types on
Useful for licensing (e.g. Windows OS BYOL)
VMWare on AWS
ESXi runs on bare metal (I3 class hardware)
Useful for management/instance sizing
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SQL in AWS

15. Migrating to AWS Understand your data and your workload
What are your highest wait types?
Decide your instance types
Cost
Performance
Flexibility
Know TPS, IOPs, storage latency and throughput expectations
Getting there is much like any “moving to a new CoLo” challenge
DBATools.io
AWS Schema Migration assistant
Azure SQL Database Migration Wizard (SQLAzureMW)
BCP
Log shipping, mirroring, availability groups etc.
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SQL in AWS

16. High Availability in AWS
RDS HA based on mirroring
AWS endpoint gets a new IP on failover
Set low DNS cache for client
EC2
No FCI or SAN-based replication
Availability Groups
Mirroring
Log shipping
Multi-AZ means multi-subnet clustering
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SQL in AWS

17. Disaster Recovery in AWS
RDS
Export backups to S3 (can replicate to any region)
Replicate snapshots to another region
Snapshot restore times depend on transaction log activity
EC2
Backup to local drive then export to S3
EBS volume snapshots may not be practical
Asynchronous AG to another region
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SQL in AWS

18. Monitoring SQL in AWS Use your own (may have RDS limitations)
Cloudwatch
Existing or custom metrics
Useful for RDS
Detailed monitoring (1 minute granularity)
CloudTrail
Log API calls to S3 for compliance, auditing
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SQL in AWS

19. Licensing SQL in AWS BYOL possible for RDS and EC2
Need to inform MS within 10 days
Needs SA for “license mobility”
Can use dedicated instances without SA
Host licensing available with dedicated hosts
License included options for RDS and EC2
For EC2 must use AWS AMI
RDS supports 2008 R2 through 2016
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SQL in AWS

20. Learnings Possible to allocate multiple private elastic IPs to adapter
If using EC2 instances leverage private AMIs
Windows Auth on RDS needs AWS Active Directory Service
Put SQL in it’s own VPC and security group
Be prepared for some AD “quirkiness”
New features are released frequently (usually right after you need them)
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SQL in AWS

21. Summary It is possible to run SQL successfully in AWS
Plan carefully follow guidelines and benchmark and baseline your workload
Remember you do not own the infrastructure
Leverage benefits of tooling, multiple DCs, multiple regions and have fun
* Elastic EBS volumes
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SQL in AWS

22. Questions?
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SQL in AWS