Virtualizing SQL

How to implement on virtual infrastructure to maximize

performance and HA

Agenda

• Advantages of virtualization• Licensing considerations• VM Configuration• Backups• Clustering & HA

The Way Virtualization Used to Be

• Old drawbacks – Storage was slow– Compute was not sufficient– Too expensive– Wasn’t supported

The Way Virtualization Looks Today

• New strengths– SQL apps are moving to Virtual– Virtual Infrastructure is now on-par!– Fear, Doubt, Uncertainty (FUD) remains– Advantages over physical

Advantages of Virtualized SQL

• High Availability • Snapshots• Flexibility• Portability

Multi-Vendor Virtualization Today

• Storage is blazing fast and large• Compute has scaled up!• Cost – consolidation is now a winner

The Golden Rule

Designs are essentially the same• CPU• RAM• Storage• Network

When is it not a good idea to Virtualize?

• Vendor support • Ultra-low latency requirements• ETL that runs at MAX CPU for hours

Licensing

• Individual VM licensing– Core license model– Server/CAL licensing

Licensing• License mobility– SA for vMotion

• Dense virtualization licensing– License the

hardware

VM Configuration• TEMPLATE is the means to win!• Collaborate: DBA’s & VM Admins• Provision new SQL server in an hour

VM Configuration• SQL and OS Memory tweaks– Lock Pages in Memory– SQL Max Memory

• VM Memory Reservation– Critical if using Lock Pages– Legit use of reservations

VM Configuration• SQL CPU tweaks– MDOP– Split TempDB

• VM CPU tweaks– Single vCPU to start– Multi-core vs multi-socket vCPU

VM Configuration• VM Networking– VMXNET3 (or Flexible)

• Storage considerations– Block Based - FC / FCoE & iSCSI– NAS - NFS

VM Configuration

• Fibre Channel – similar to railways

• iSCSI – similar to highways

VM Configuration - Storage• RDM vs VMDK• VM SCSI controllers• Paravirtualized SCSI controllers• VMDK - Eager Zeroed Thick• PCIe SSD cards

VM Configuration

Backup Strategy

• Must choose an approach for Full Recovery Mode!– Traditional– Hypervisor based– Hybrid

• Manage transaction logs

Clustering and HA

• Traditional clustering• vSphere HA = free clustering• SQL Always-On clustering–Best of both worlds!–Up to 8 secondary copies in 2014 including

native Azure integration

Clustering and HA

Clustering and HA• Site Recovery Manager (SRM)– Automated Disaster Recovery– Not SQL specific– BUT Recovery Plans will depend on SQL VMs

Summary• Virtualization benefits• Licensing • Configuration and Optimizations• Backup Strategies• Clustering & HA

Questions and Answers?

Take-away’s for the DBA’s

• Use a TEMPLATE!!• vCenter access– Even if it’s just read-only

• More <> better– Grow as you need it

Links

• Always-On Failover Demonstration – Kyle Quinby, Varrow• MS KB 920093 - Tuning options for SQL Server when running in high perfo

rmance workloads• MS SQL 2012 license guide for virtualization• VMw KB 1037959 - Microsoft Clustering on VMware vSphere

: Guidelines for Supported Configurations• VMware's SQL Server Best Practices Guide• When to use Lock Pages in Memory with SQL Server• How to Enable the Lock Pages in Memory Option• VMware - 1 Million IOPS on 1 VM• VMw KB 1010398 - Configuring disks to use VMware Paravirtual

SCSI (PVSCSI) adapters• VMw KB 1022242 - Types of supported Virtual Disks on ESX/ESXi hosts