Dell PowerEdge R820 User Manual

Vinod Kumar

Dell™ | Database Solutions Engineering

Dell Virtualization Solution for

Microsoft SQL Server 2012 using

PowerEdge R820

This white paper discusses the SQL server workload consolidation capabilities of Dell PowerEdge R820 using Virtualization.

Dell Virtualization Solution for Microsoft SQL Server 2012 using PowerEdge R820

This document is for informational purposes only and may contain typographical errors and technical inaccuracies. The content is provided as is, without express or implied warranties of any kind.

© 2011 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Dell and its affiliates cannot be responsible for errors or omissions in typography or photography. Dell, the Dell logo, and PowerEdge are trademarks of Dell Inc. Intel and Xeon are registered trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and other countries. Microsoft, Windows, and Windows Server are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Other trademarks and trade names may be used in this document to refer to either the entities claiming the marks and names or their products. Dell disclaims proprietary interest in the marks and names of others.

July 2012| Rev 1.0

Dell Virtualization Solution for Microsoft SQL Server 2012 using PowerEdge R820

Contents

Executive summary ..................................................................................................... 4

Introduction ............................................................................................................. 4

Objectives................................................................................................................ 4

Microsoft Hyper-V Overview .......................................................................................... 5

System Center Virtual Machine Manager......................................................................... 5

SQL Server 2012 Virtualization overview ........................................................................... 6

SQL Server 2012 Licensing .......................................................................................... 6

Why Dell™ Server & Storage Hardware ............................................................................. 7

Dell PowerEdge R820 as a Virtualization Platform ............................................................. 7

Dell SQL Server 2012 Reference architecture using PowerEdge R820 ......................................... 7

Single Server Reference Architecture ............................................................................ 7

Highly Available Reference Architecture ........................................................................ 8

Performance and Scalability of Virtual Machines achieved ..................................................... 9

Test Methodology .................................................................................................. 10

Results and Analysis ............................................................................................... 12

Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 15

Appendix A ............................................................................................................. 17

Tables

Table 1. Test Configuration Details .............................................................................. 10

Table 2. Virtual Server Configuration Details .................................................................. 11

Table 3. Observed Consolidation Capability of R820 for the specific OLTP workload .................. 16

Table 4. Hyper-V performance counters(Medium VMs) ....................................................... 17

Table 5. Hyper-V performance counters(Large VMs).......................................................... 17

Figures

Figure 1. SVCMM ........................................................................................................ 5

Figure 2. Single Server Reference Architecture .................................................................. 8

Figure 3. HA Reference Architecture ............................................................................... 9

Figure 4. SQL Server Storage Layout.............................................................................. 12

Figure 5. Database Transactions per Second .................................................................... 13

Figure 6. Database Batch Requests per Sec ..................................................................... 13

Figure 7. PowerEdge R820 CPU Utilization ...................................................................... 14

Figure 8. Impact of Hyper-threading on Large VMs ............................................................ 15

iii

Dell Virtualization Solution for Microsoft SQL Server 2012 using PowerEdge R820

Executive summary

Dell PowerEdge 12th generation servers provide the robustness and reliability for a highly efficient database consolidation platform. You should choose Dell PowerEdge R820—a powerful four socket enterprise server—as an optimal platform for database consolidation because of its robustness, reliability, and performance characteristics.

This white paper describes the advantages of consolidating Microsoft® SQL Server® database application workloads to a virtualization environment using Microsoft Windows® Server® 2008 R2 Hyper-V™ and Microsoft SQL Server 2012 on dell PowerEdge R820. It demonstrates that Dell PowerEdge R820 is capable of delivering the performance, consolidation, and scalability needed to run SQL Server workloads in a virtualized environment.

Introduction

One of the major challenges organizations face is the challenge of ensuring the operating efficiency of the data center. With the emergence of powerful servers, there is a large possibility of not optimally utilizing the hardware capability for a specific workload. In such cases, it is expensive to run workloads on a standalone machine. In addition to the inefficient operation, it leads to several other challenges like over power consumption, manageability, increased data center space usage etc., which becomes even more challenging in scenarios when increasing data growth slows down the system performance and requires physical expansion of the configuration.

Organizations are looking for deploying virtual servers to reduce IT cost and increase data center performance. Microsoft SQL Server is a popular database product that is widely used by business applications. Consolidating servers through virtualization helps us utilize the resources appropriately; eases deployment, maintenance, power saving, reliability, and availability.

The adoption of virtualization in enterprise has increased flexibility in deployment and life cycle management of applications. IT professionals deploy and use virtualization to consolidate workloads and reduce server sprawl. Additionally, they deploy virtualization with clustering technologies to provide a robust IT infrastructure with high availability and quick disaster recovery.

This paper outlines how Dell PowerEdge R820 and Microsoft Hyper-V may be used to deploy multiple SQL Server 2012 databases on a virtualized environment without compromising on the performance.

Objectives

The objectives of this technical paper include:

 Understanding Dell PowerEdge R820 server capabilities to run SQL workload in a virtualized

environment.

 Testing to see how many medium and large SQL VM’s can be consolidated using R820.  Using best practices to run SQL server workload on a virtualized environment.

Dell Virtualization Solution for Microsoft SQL Server 2012 using PowerEdge R820

Hyper-V Server 1

Hyper-V Server 2

SCVMM

Network Switch

Virtual Macines

Virtual Machines

Microsoft Hyper-V Overview

Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Hyper-V builds on the architecture and functionality of Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V by adding multiple new features that enhance product flexibility.

Some of the key features that are available in Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2 SP1 include:

 Dynamic memory—takes all memory of the Hyper-V host and distributes it across all the Virtual

Machines.

 Live migration—allows you to move running virtual machine from one Hyper-V host to another

Hyper-V host within the same failover cluster without a perceived downtime.

 Cluster shared volume support—all the nodes that are part of the failover cluster., can access

cluster shared volumes (CSV). Different nodes that are part of failover cluster can host a virtual machine on the same volume.

One of the main highlights of Microsoft Hyper-V is the integration that it provides to the Microsoft System Center Group of products, which brings ease and flexibility of managing the virtual environments.

System Center Virtual Machine Manager

Microsoft System Center is a comprehensive IT infrastructure, virtualization, and cloud management platform. With System Center, you can more easily and efficiently manage your applications and services across multiple hypervisors as well as across public and private cloud infrastructures to deliver flexible and cost-effective IT services for your business.

Figure 1.

SVCMM

Dell Virtualization Solution for Microsoft SQL Server 2012 using PowerEdge R820

As shown in figure 1, SCVMM is installed on a dedicated server to manage two hypervisor hosts. In this experiment, we have used SCVMM to deploy a fully configured SQL virtual machine to hyper-v host.

System Center Virtual Machine Manager makes the deploying of SQL virtual machines a very simple process. SCVMM creates the template from a fully configured SQL VM; the created template is stored in its library. This template can be deployed multiple times and anywhere in the network. We have seen deploying fully configured virtual machine in less than 20 minutes.

SQL Server 2012 Virtualization overview

Microsoft SQL Server 2012 builds on the capabilities that were offered in sql server 2008. It is Microsoft’s first cloud-ready information platform that will help organizations unlock breakthrough insights across the organization and quickly build solutions to extend data across on-premises and public cloud, backed by mission critical confidence.

SQL Server 2012 added new features, which include the following:

 High availability with AlwaysOn feature  Improved query performance with ColumnStore Index  Rapid data discovery via Power View and PowerPivot  Credible, consistent data via BI Semantic Model and Data Quality Services  Scale on demand from devices to datacenter to cloud

SQL Server 2012 Licensing

Microsoft SQL Server is increasingly being deployed in virtualized environments, which enable running instances of SQL Server concurrently in separate virtual machines.

SQL Server 2012 offers expanded virtualization rights, options and benefits to provide greater flexibility for customers deploying in virtual environments.

Customers have the choice to license SQL Server 2012 when it is deployed on a virtual environment.

 Licensing an individual SQL Server 2012 Virtual machine:

1. When licensing an individual virtual machine using per core licensing model, the customer

must purchase the core license for each virtual processor.

2. When licensing an individual virtual machine using Server + CAL licensing model, the

customer must purchase one server license for each virtual machine.

 Maximize Virtualization by licensing the entire physical server: Licensing all the physical cores

on server can run SQL virtual machine equal to physical cores.

For example, a four processor server with four cores can run sixteen SQL Virtual machines.

Visit http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/en/us/get-sql-server/how-to-buy.aspx for more information on licensing.

The remainder of this white paper discusses the sample SQL Server 2012 database reference configurations that are possible on Dell PowerEdge servers using Microsoft Hyper-V as the virtualization platform.

+ 12 hidden pages