how to deploy sql server on an microsoft azure virtual machines

SQL SERVER IN MICROSOFT AZURE VIRTUAL MACHINES – THE IMPORTANT DETAILS

SCOTT KLEIN

SENIOR TECHNICAL EVANGELIST

MICROSOFT

THOMAS LAROCK

HEAD GEEK

SOLARWINDS

WHY ARE YOU HERE?

» You want to know more about Azure

» You have, or will have, SQL Server running on an Azure VM

» You want to know the important details regarding SQL Server in an Azure VM

© 2015 SOLARWINDS WORLDWIDE, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 2

A LITTLE ABOUT SCOTT…

Scott is a Senior Technical Evangelist for Microsoft with over 20 years experience as a developer and architect.

He is a frequent speaker at events around the world. You can either find him on a plane in the clouds or on the ground speaking about the Cloud.

[email protected]


A LITTLE ABOUT ME…

Thomas has over 15 years experience in roles including programmer, developer, analyst, and DBA.

He is a frequent speaker, published author, and avid blogger on data related technologies.

He enjoys working with data, probably too much to be healthy, really.


A LITTLE ABOUT SOLARWINDS…

» Network Management

» System Management

» IT Security

» Database Management

» solarwinds.com/products

#Datachat


http://www.datamodel.com/

AGENDA

» Azure Blob Storage

» VM instance size and limits

» Types of Disks

» Disk Performance

» Virtual machine disk cache

» Best Practices

» Troubleshooting

» Disaster Recovery and High Availability


MICROSOFT AZURE BLOB STORAGE

» Two types of durable storage:

Premium – SSDs -> high-performance, low-latency

Standard – HDDs

» Run on the new flat network topology

» Disable geo-replication

http://tinyurl.com/azure-storage-scalability

Total Capacity Total Request Rate Total Bandwidth

(Geo-redundant)

Total Bandwidth

(Locally

Redundant)

500 TB 20,000 / sec 10 gb/sec Ingress

20 gb/sec Egress

20 gb/sec Ingress

30 gb/sec Egress


http://tinyurl.com/azure-storage-scalability

VIRTUAL MACHINE SIZE

» Basic Tier – Up to 8 cores, 14 GB, 240 GB Disk

Economical option for dev workloads, test servers, apps that

don’t require load balancing or auto-scaling

» Standard Tier – Up to 16 Cores, 112 GB, 382 GB Disk

Offer the most flexibility

» D Series - Up to 16 Cores, 112 GB, 800 GB Disk

60% faster CPUs, more memory, and local SSD

» G Series – Up to 32 Cores, 448 GB, 6,500 GB Disk

Extraordinary performance for demanding applications


DISKS

» OS Disk

Size: (Gallery image: 127GB)

Default caching is Read/Write

» Scratch Disk

Used to store temporary data – data is NOT persisted on Microsoft

Azure Storage (may be wiped clean on VM reboot)

Can store tempdb and/or BFE on D when using D-series or higher

» Data Disk(s)

Data disk stored as VHD files inside a single page

Persistent© 2015 SOLARWINDS WORLDWIDE, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 9

DATA DISKS

» Number of disks: Add max number allowed by VM size.

» Caching Policy: None (default). Enable read with Premium storage.

» NTFS allocation: 64KB

» Disk Striping:

Win8/Server2012, use Storage Spaces. Set stripe size to 64KB for OLTP and

256 KB for DW to avoid performance impact.

Windows 2008R2 or earlier: use OS striped volumes.

» Data and Log Placement:

If not an intensive workload, configure one storage pool

Otherwise, place data and log files on separate disks or storage pools


DISK I/O PERFORMANCE PREDICTABILITY

» Azure Infrastructure Services is a shared, multi-tenant

service

» Where and when you provision your virtual machines

matters

» Maintenance operations have an affect

» Cost vs. Control

» Azure disks vs. local attached disks


VIRTUAL MACHINE DISK CACHE

Two tier cache

Most recently accessed data stored in RAM of the physical host

This cache space is shared by virtual machines on the host.

Less recently accessed data stored on the local hard disks of the

physical host

There is a cache space reserved to each virtual machine OS

Disk and Data Disk based on the virtual machine size


VIRTUAL MACHINE DISK CACHE

» Purpose of Microsoft Azure VM disk cache

Reduce transactions (hence costs) against Azure Storage

Reduce disk IO latency when IO rate is low

Improve boot time

» Support Cache Modes

Disk type Read Only Read Write None

OS Disk Supported Default Not Supported

Data Disks Supported Supported Default


SQL Best Practices


PLACEMENT OPTIONS FOR DATA FILES

Place database files across multiple data disks

Create a single volume on top of multiple data disks

Create multiple striped volumes, each with one or more data disks based on specific I/O performance requirements


SYSTEM DATABASES

» Place on Data Disk

Adjust the XEvent & Trace file paths, SQL Error log path, default

backup path, default database location.

» Three Reasons Why:

Performance Variance – More IOPS from the OS disk or a data

disk. Performance of D drive is not predictable due to varying size.

Configuration upon VM downtime – SQL Server service and file

placement

Performance Bottleneck – Heavy use of D can introduce IOPS

constraints.


MICROSOFT AZURE VM SQL BEST PRACTICES

» Place user database files (data & log) on data disks; do

not change the default cache setting for data disk

» If the OS disk has to be used:

Disable write cache (ReadOnly)

Limit the DB size to 20 GB

» Avoid OS disk striping

Use SQL striping instead – distribute data files evenly across all

the data disks

» Add more data disks when I/O bound

Stop adding more disks if no longer gaining IOPs© 2015 SOLARWINDS WORLDWIDE, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 17

TRADITIONAL SQL BEST PRACTICES

» Data page compression recommended for I/O bound

workloads

Reduce IO

CPU usage can increase through

» Enable instant file initialization

Grant (Perform volume maintenance tasks) to SQL Server

This helps restore and autogrow performance

» Don’t use autogrow, pre-allocate instead

» Disable autoshrink


DISK WARM-UP

» Warm up = “Priming the pump”

» Warm-up affect can result in reduced rate of throughput and

bandwidth

» Warm up will increase costs

» Warm up your disks before measuring performance

After initializing the file by writing some bit pattern sequentially using

SQLIO for example, run any random IO workload with a high

outstanding I/O (to drive High IOPs) to warm-up the drive. (1 hour

should be sufficient)


APP DESIGN/DEPLOYMENT CONSIDERATIONS

» Moving to the cloud doesn’t solve app design issues

Poor designs can (and will) get magnified!

» Performance baselining

Bare metal, Hyper-V, third party hosting

Hardware (CPU, memory, SSD?)

Understand the constraints of your workload!


PERFORMANCE MONITORING

» Define and monitor key SQL Server performance KPIs

Maximum value for \Process(SQLServ)\% Processor Time

Average value for \Process(SQLServ)\% Processor Time

Maximum value for \Processor(_Total)\% Processor Time

Average value for \Processor(_Total)\% Processor Time

Maximum value for \SQLServer:SQL Statistics\Batch Requests/sec

Average value for \SQLServer:SQL Statistics\Batch Requests/sec


KEY PERFORMANCE COUNTERS

Logical disk counter Typical storage termSuggested actions in

Microsoft Azure virtual machine environment

Disk reads / second

Disk writes / second

IOPS Measure the number of I/O’s per second.

Consider adding more data disks in line with your IOPS

requirements.

Average disk sec / read

Average disk sec / write

Latency Measure disk latency.

Note: Numbers might vary; look at averages over time.

Average disk bytes / read

Average disk bytes / write

Block size Measure the size of I/O’s being issued.

Note: Larger I/O’s tend to have higher latency, such as those

associated with BACKUP/RESTORE.

Average / current disk

queue length

Outstanding or waiting

IOPS

Provides insight into the applications I/O pattern.

Disk read bytes/sec

Disk write bytes/sec

Throughput or aggregate

throughput

Measure of total disk throughput.

Note: Ideally, larger block scans should be able to heavily utilize

connection bandwidth (for example, your throughput can be higher

with a smaller number of larger IOPS).

Monitor along with information from sys.dm_io_virtual_file_stats© 2015 SOLARWINDS WORLDWIDE, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. 22

VM DASHBOARD


• Monitor tab for

storage account

• Enabled under the

configure tab

• VM read and write

to their VHDs using

GetBlob and

PutPage

commands

respectively

VM DASHBOARD


TROUBLESHOOTING - STORAGE ANALYTICS

LOGGING

» Enable monitoring of the blob service

Minimal: only the aggregate value is available for each metric.

Recommended for ongoing monitoring

Verbose: each metric can be filtered by the specific API of interest.

Recommended for troubleshooting and detailed analysis

» Aggregated data is placed inside the storage account

inside a hidden container called $logs


Disaster Recovery and

High Availability


THE NEED FOR DISASTER-RECOVERY

An event can cause on-prem SQL Server to become

unavailable

• Temporarily (e.g. gateway failure)

• Permanently (e.g. flooding)

A disaster recovery site is expensive

• Site rent + maintenance

• Hardware

• Operations


USING AZURE FOR DISASTER RECOVERY


redmond.corp.microsoft.com

uswest.internal.cloudapp.net

Windows Cluster

Availability Group

Virtual

Network

EXAMPLE OF AVAILABILITY GROUP SPANNING

ON-PREMISE AND AZURE


WHAT IS SUPPORTED

Technology SQL Server

Version

Zero Data Loss Scop

e

#

Secondaries

Automatic

Failover

Readable

Secondarie

s

Availability

Groups

SQL Server 2012 Yes*

(Sync Mode)

DB(s) 4 Yes

(w/ additional

cluster

member)**

Yes

Database

Mirroring

SQL Server 2008

R2

SQL Server 2012

Yes*

(High Safety

Mode)

DB 1 Yes

(w/

Witness)**

Limited

(database

snapshots)

Log

Shipping

SQL Server 2008

R2

SQL Server 2012

No DB N No Limited

(standby

state)

* Most customers use Async Mode (High Performance) to avoid impacting primary performance

**Async Mode only supports Force Failover to make DR (and potential data loss) a conscious decision


WHY?AVAILABILITY GROUPS

Provide additional benefits:

• Integrated HA/DR

• Offload Read workloads to Azure

• Connect reporting/BI apps

• Migrate apps and run against local secondaries

• Offload Backups to Azure

• A solution for policy compliance

Remember it requires:

• Same Windows Domain

• Needs an Active Directory Domain Controller


AGENDA

» Azure Blob Storage

» VM instance size and limits

» Types of Disks

» Disk Performance

» Virtual machine disk cache

» Best Practices

» Troubleshooting

» Disaster Recovery and High Availability


FREE TRIAL

• Try Database Performance Analyzer FREE for 14 days

• Quickly identify root cause of issues that impact end-user response time

• See historical trends over days, months, and years

• Monitor on-premise, on VMware®, in the Cloud, including Amazon® AWS and Azure™

virtual machines

• Agentless architecture, safe to use in production

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RESOLVE PERFORMANCE ISSUES QUICKLY

© 2015 SOLARWINDS WORLDWIDE, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

www.solarwinds.com/dpa-download/

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