1. SQL Server performance tuning on Azure IaaS
Marco Obinu
SQL Server performance tuning on Azure IaaS

2. Sponsor

3. Who am I Senior Technical Specialist @ Softjam S.p.A.
Microsoft Certified Professional for SQL Server and SharePoint
Geek to the bone 
@OmegaMadLab

4. Agenda Infrastructure as a Service: Why & When?
Microsoft best practices overview
Virtual machine sizing
Post-deployment optimization
Hints for automation

5. IaaS: Why & When?

6. IaaS: Why & When? Traditional IT IaaS PaaS SaaS APPLICATION HYPERVISOROS
RUNTIME
DATA
STORAGE
NETWORK
SERVERS
YOU MANAGE
Traditional IT
MANAGED BY VENDOR
APPLICATION
HYPERVISOR OS
RUNTIME
DATA
STORAGE
NETWORK
IaaS
YOU MANAGE
SERVERS
MANAGED BY VENDOR
APPLICATION
HYPERVISOR OS
RUNTIME
DATA
STORAGE
NETWORK
PaaS
YOU MANAGE
SERVERS
MANAGED BY VENDOR
APPLICATION
HYPERVISOR OS
RUNTIME
DATA
STORAGE
NETWORK
SaaS
SERVERS

7. IaaS: Why & When? SQL Server instance inside an Azure VM
Same SQL Server features available as on on-premises instances
You own full control over instance
Fast and agile deployment with templates
Pay-as-you-go or Bring Your Own License
Dev/Test
Lift and Shift
Disaster Recovery scenarios

8. Microsoft best practices

9. Overview

10. VM provisioning phase

11. Choose a storage type SSD - Premium Storage HDD - Standard Storage
Production environments – heavy workloads
99,9% SLA for a single VM if used on all disks
VM families DS, DSv2, ES, FS, GS, LS, etc.
Storage account limits:
50 Gbps bandwidth
35 TB for disks
10 TB for snapshots
Dev/test environments – light workloads
No SLA available for single VM
VM families VM A, Av2, D, Dv2, F, G, L, N, H, etc.
Storage account limits: KB
500 TB total capacity
Use Premium Storage Account with local replica (Premium LRS) deployed in the same datacenter used by the VM
Geo-replicated storage account (Standard GRS) partially supported  use SQL Server features to deploy geo- redundant solutions

12. Choose VM family – Azure Compute Unit
Single core performance, referred to an A-family core
SKU Family
ACU/Core
Standard_A0 50
Standard_A1-4, Standard_A5-7, Standard_A1-8v2, Standard_A2m-8mv2
100
A8-A11
225*
D1-14, DS1-14
160
D1-15v2, DS1-15v2 *
Dv3, DSv3, Ev3, ESv3
* **
F1-F16, F1s-F16s
F2Sv2-F72Sv2
* **
G1-5, GS1-5, L4s-L32s * H * M **
* use Intel® Turbo technology to increase CPU frequency and provide a performance boost. ** Hyper-Threaded hosts (1 physical core = 2 vCpu)

13. Choose VM family – VM Size
Premium Storage VMs
Standard Storage VMs
VM families: DS, DSv2, DSv3, ESv3, FS, GS, etc.
Choose a size considering:
# of vCPU
RAM needed
# of data disks
Max IOPS and disk bandwidth
NIC performance
VM families: DS, DSv2, DSv3, ESv3, FS, GS, etc.
Choose a size considering:
# of vCPU
RAM needed
# of data disks
NIC performance
Minimum recommended size:
DS2 (2 vCPU – 7 GB RAM) for SQL Server Standard Edition
DS3 (4 vCPU – 14 GB RAM) for SQL Server Enterprise Edition

14. Choose VM family – VM Size
Premium Storage VMs
Standard Storage VMs
Fixed size disks:
Recommended: at least one P30 disk for datafile and TempDB and at least on P30 disk for logfile
Cache settings:
Read-only for datafile e TempDB
None for logfile
Max 4 TB capacity for each disk
Max 500 IOPS for each disk
Max 60 MB/s for each disk
Cache set to “None” for each SQL disk
Use striped disks up to the VM capacity
Premium Disks Type
Size
IOPS
Throughput P4
32 GB
120
25 MB/s P6
64 GB
240
50 MB /s
P10
128 GB
500
100 MB/s
P15
256 GB
1100
125 MB/s
P20
512 GB
2300
150 MB/s
P30
1 TB
5000
200 MB/s
P40
2 TB
7500
250 MB/s
P50
4 TB
Stripe more disks with Storage Spaces
Columns = # of disks; interleave = 64KB (OLTP) or 256KB (DW)
Format volumes with 64 KB allocation unit size

15. VM provisioning phase - recap

16. Post deployment tasks

17. Post deployment – I/O optimizations
Avoid using OS disk to hosts databases, ERRORLOG and Default Trace  Move to additional data disks
Set default paths for databases and backups
Move MSDB, MODEL, TEMPDB:
ALTER DATABASE database_name MODIFY FILE ( NAME = logical_name , FILENAME = 'new_path\os_file_name' )
Move files on disks
Restart SQL Server instance
Move MASTER, SQL Server logs and Default Trace:
Stop SQL Server instance
Open SQL Configuration Manager and update startup parameters

18. Post deployment – I/O optimizations
Keep database size under control
Autogrowth = last chance   preallocate size
Disable Auto Shrink  causes huge I/O and increase index fragmentation
Assign privileges to SQL Server Service account
Perform volume maintenance tasks to enable Instant File Initialization  it works on data files only!!!
Lock Pages in Memory to limit SQL Server memory pagination to disk
Consider to enable Page Compression on tables and indexes
On SQL Server 2012 install at least SP1 CU10 or SP2 CU1 to fix IO issues

19. Post deployment – Backup to Azure
Consider to offload backups on a storage account

20. Post deployment tasks - recap

21. Post deployment tasks – additional tips 
Disable unwanted services (SSAS, SSRS)
Set max server memory to avoid memory contention with OS
Split TempDB into more data files
Consider using temporary disk for TempDB
Consider using specific trace flags if using SQL 2012/2014. Defaults:
-T1117 and -T1118 if you choose OLTP workload
-T1117 and -T610 if you choose DW workload

22. Automation

23. Automation Script PowerShell ARM Template
PowerShell Desired State Configuration

24. Useful info… Official docs GitHub Azure Quickstart Templates
GitHub Azure Quickstart Templates
Look for my social channels to get demo scripts in few days (or weeks )
@OmegaMadLab

25. Q&A