h11941-EMC Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Fast Track Data ... · PDF fileVMAX Microsoft SQL Server...

WHITE PAPER

Abstract

The Symmetrix® VMAX® is an ideal consolidation platform designed to be simple, cost effective and reliable for many applications. This white paper outlines EMC VMAX Microsoft SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse Reference configuration details, its validation and corresponding test results.

December 2013

EMC Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Fast Track Data Warehouse 4.0 VMAX 10K Reference Architecture

2 VMAX Microsoft SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse Reference Architecture

Copyright © 2013 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. EMC believes the information in this publication is accurate of its publication date. The information is subject to change without notice. The information in this publication is provided “as is”. EMC Corporation makes no representations or warranties of any kind with respect to the information in this publication, and specifically disclaims implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Use, copying, and distribution of any EMC software described in this publication requires an applicable software license. For the most up-to-date listing of EMC product names, see EMC Corporation Trademarks on EMC.com. All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners. Part Number H11941


Table of contents

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

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

Audience ................................................................................................................ 5

Microsoft Fast Track Data Warehouse overview ........................................................ 5

VMAX 10K SQL Server Fast Track components .......................................................... 6

EMC VMAX 10K storage detailed design layout ....................................................... 10

Introduction to Symmetrix VMAX 10K Virtual Provisioning ....................................... 10

Topology maps for the Reference Architecture ........................................................ 17

Upgrade for FTDW 3.0 reference architecture .......................................................... 18

Reference configuration performance characteristics .............................................. 18

Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 20

For More Information ............................................................................................. 20

Appendixes ........................................................................................................... 21

A. OS details and host hardware configuration ................................................... 21

B. QLogic HBA port properties ............................................................................ 22

C. Queue depth settings for HBA......................................................................... 22

D. SQL Server Memory Settings in MB ................................................................. 23

E. SQL Server MAXDOP setting (max degree of parallelism) ................................. 23

F. SQL Server startup parameters, flags –E and –T1117 ...................................... 24

G. SQL Server Resource Governor Properties set at 12 % ..................................... 24

H. NTFS drives with 64KB block size allocation unit size ...................................... 25

I. Chosen OS performance Options .................................................................... 25

J. Enable Lock pages in memory for SQL Server account ..................................... 25

K. Sample snapshot of VMAX Host HBs/sec, and Host IOs/sec KPIs .................... 26

L. Sample overall Front-End Host bandwidth in MBs/sec ..................................... 26

M. Sample snapshot of per Front End bandwidth in MBs/sec ............................... 27

N. Sample snapshot of Back End Port 0 and Port 1 Overall MBs/sec .................... 27

O. Sample VMAX Backend % Busy , IOs/sec per port breakdown ......................... 28


Executive summary Being able to store, analyze and retrieve data quickly and easily has become the differentiator for many enterprise businesses in today’s global market economy. A critical foundation of this movement has been the establishment and continued growth of Business Intelligence (BI) systems. These “data warehouse” solutions will continue to grow in importance as organizations focus on gathering and mining data that can deliver key business insights. Data growth increases data complexity. This is where solid data warehouse design principles can help overcome legacy implementations originally intended for workloads like Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) systems.

This document is designed to present reference configurations to address several common business challenges that customers face today in utilizing data warehouse technologies. This paper is intended to help customers design and implement balanced configurations specifically for Microsoft SQL server Data Warehouse databases with the goal of providing a hardware-balanced approach and predictable out-of-box performance.

The document publishes a 20 TB solution, as derived from a UCS R210-2121605W Rack server and a single engine VMAX 10K enterprise storage system. Typically a single engine VMAX 10K, is a consolidation storage system, for multiple Data warehouse and OLTP configurations, therefore to achieve higher capacity rating, a server with higher maximum CPU Core Consumption Rate (MCR) may be used.

Introduction Microsoft SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse provides a framework that allows the customer to select a reference architecture that has been designed, tested and validated by hardware vendors. It allows organizations to quickly and reliably deploy a total system solution stack including server, storage, and connectivity for data warehouses based on Microsoft SQL Server 2012. This approach helps to accelerate deployments and dramatically reduce the burden on end users in selecting, sizing and testing the combinations of products and technologies while minimizing the risk of failures.

This white paper describes a reference architecture implementation of Microsoft SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse 4.0, utilizing Cisco R210 servers and an EMC VMAX 10K Single Engine storage system. The goal is to define a methodology to build a balanced and optimized hardware and software configuration specifically designed for SQL Server Data Warehouse deployments.


Audience This white paper is intended for customers, partners, solution architects, storage administrators, and database administrators who are evaluating, planning, or deploying a balanced data warehouse solution. The scope is limited to the main repository of a data warehouse and the balanced configuration thereof.

Microsoft Fast Track Data Warehouse overview Optimized for common data warehouse, decision support, and business analytics deployments based on Microsoft SQL Server, the Microsoft Fast Track Data Warehouse program allows organizations to deploy tested configurations using proven technologies that offer balanced solution stacks. By following these reference configurations, new projects can be implemented quickly and confidently, avoiding much of the guesswork, planning choices, and difficult decisions involved with traditional approaches. Goals of the program include:

• Accelerated data warehouse projects with pre-tested and validated hardware and software configurations

• Reduced hardware and maintenance costs as a result of purchasing the ideal balanced hardware solution that is optimized for data warehouse workloads

• Reduced planning, setup costs and risk through optimal scale model selection, correct system configuration, available tuning guidance.

Fast Track Data Warehouse reference configurations are successful because of their specific focus on sequential I/O ---- which is critical to data warehouse performance as well as their balanced approach to hardware configuration. When planning a system, most system architects consider the memory, I/O bandwidth and storage capacity separately. Instead, Fast Track Data Warehouse reference architecture is intended to balance the overall system so that throughput is matched across the various hardware and software components specifically for data warehouse performance. Key considerations for balanced data warehousing application performance include:

• Computing power from available CPU cores

• Main memory for the use of the Microsoft SQL Server Cache

• I/O channel throughput between the server and the storage system, including the combined throughput of the Host Bus Adapters (HBA) and switching hardware


• Storage system throughput for sequential reads, caching capabilities, data storage capacity, and redundancy

• CSI (Column Store Index) technology to provide better efficiency for page storage and indexing over row-store.

The goal of a Fast Track Data Warehouse reference configuration is to achieve a cost-effective balance between capabilities of SQL Server data processing and the capabilities of the underlying hardware components.

VMAX 10K SQL Server Fast Track components

Figure 1 SQL Server 2012 Fast Track Data Warehouse component architecture


Figure 1shows the EMC VMAX 10K Fast Track Data Warehouse reference architecture which consists of a single engine EMC VMAX 10K storage system (Figure 2), Cisco R210 server (Figure 3) and connected via SAN provided by Brocade 8510 switches (Figure 4).

Figure 2 EMC VMAX 10K (987) storage system

EMC Symmetrix VMAX 10K Figure 2 is a new enterprise storage platform designed to provide customers with enterprise-level reliability, availability, and serviceability. The Symmetrix VMAX 10K leverages the EMC Virtual Matrix Architecture and it is a 100 percent virtually provisioned system. EMC Virtual Provisioning™ gives a host, application, or file system an option to provision storage than is physically provided. Physical storage is allocated only when the data is written, rather than when the application is initially configured. This eliminates manual calculations and also can reduce power and cooling costs by decreasing the amount of idle storage capacity in the array. Customers do not need to dedicate full capacity upfront while still able to provide application users with the storage capacity they need for the future growth.

Figure 3 Cisco R210 servers


A general purposed rack mount server—Cisco R210-2121605W UCS server

(Figure 3) is used in this configuration. R210 server, powered by Intel Xeon Processor X5675 processors, offers the unprecedented reliability, scalability, flexibility and performance needed for complex IT environments. The Cisco R210 server is based on Intel Xeon Processor 5675 CPUs. The Intel Xeon processors at the heart of the system deliver outstanding scalability and performance to support new business intelligence capabilities in Microsoft SQL Server 2012. These advancements help enable large-scale consolidation efforts while serving demanding data-intensive workloads. New features specific to the Intel Xeon processor such as multi-bit error correction provide advanced reliability, availability, and serviceability for enterprise database applications. In addition, dramatic TCO reductions are possible with Intel Xeon processors, helping organizations realize cost reductions with automated energy efficiency and consolidation.

Figure 4 Brocade 8510 switch

Brocade DCX 8510 Backbones use Gen 5 Fibre Channel switching infrastructure (Figure 4), deliver reliable, scalable, and high-performance for mission-critical storage. DCX Backbones are built for nonstop networking and dependable connectivity with outstanding performance. Table 1 and Table 2 below outline the hardware and software configuration details for this platform.


Server

UCS R210-2121605W Rack Mount Server

Model UCS R210-2121605W Server

CPU

2 x 6 Core Intel Xeon Processors Model X5675(3.1 GHz, 12M cache )

Number cores

12

PCI-E slots 5 PCIe 2.0 slots Internal Drives

(2) 600-GB 10k-RPM SAS disk drives

Storage

Single Engine EMC VMAX 10K

Host Bus Adapters

4 X Qlogic QLe2562 Dual Port 8 Gb Converged Network Adaptors

RAM 128 GB PC2-5300FBD

Disk drives 76 450-GB 15K-RPM 3.5” FC disk drives

Data Protection

RAID 5 for data, log and TempDB

Connectivity Switch Brocade 8510 Switch

Protocol Fibre Channel (FC)

Table 1 Hardware configuration for EMC VMAX 10K reference architecture

Software Configuration

Windows Windows Server 2012 Datacenter Edition

SQL Server SQL Server 2012 Enterprise Edition

EMC PowerPath Version 5.5. SP1 Fast Track Reference Point Tool

Version 4.0

Table 2 Software Configuration for EMC VMAX 10K reference architecture


EMC VMAX 10K storage detailed design layout

The storage design of the VMAX 10K platform provides a robust, scalable and simplified storage infrastructure. Virtual provisioning technology is used in this reference architecture for maximize the storage capacity. The VMAX 10K solution with Fully Automated Storage Tiering for Virtual Pools (FAST™ VP) technology automatically optimizes performance in tiered-storage environments, helping customer meet service demands while reducing storage costs, footprint, and administration. However, FAST™ VP was not used for this reference architecture. VMAX 10K storage boosts sustained read and write bandwidth, which is typically crucial for data warehouse deployment. The boost in bandwidth results from innovative changes to system architecture, including the adoption of high power multi-core processors, fast memory chips, 4 GB/s Fibre backend buses.

Introduction to Symmetrix VMAX 10K Virtual Provisioning

Symmetrix Virtual Provisioning, the Symmetrix implementation of what is commonly known in the industry as “thin provisioning,” enables users to simplify storage management and increase capacity utilization by sharing storage among multiple applications and only allocating storage as needed from a shared “virtual pool” of physical disks. A unique attribute of the Symmetrix VMAX 10K system is that it designed to be 100% virtually provisioned and does not support traditional “thick” devices. Symmetrix thin devices do not need to have physical storage preallocated at the time the device is created and presented to a host. A thin device is not usable until it has been bound to a shared storage pool known as a thin pool. Multiple thin devices may be bound to any given thin pool. The thin pool is comprised of devices called data devices that provide the actual physical storage to support the thin device allocations. When a write is performed to a part of any thin device for which physical storage has not yet been allocated, the Symmetrix allocates physical storage from the thin pool for that portion of the thin device only. The Symmetrix operating environment, Enginuity, satisfies the requirement by providing a block of storage from the thin pool called a thin device extent. This approach reduces the amount of storage that is actually consumed. The minimum amount of physical storage that can be reserved at a time for the dedicated use of a thin device is referred to as a data device extent. The data device extent is allocated from any one of the data devices in the associated thin pool. Allocations across the data devices are balanced to ensure that an


even distribution of allocations occurs from all available data devices in the thin pool (also referred to as wide striping). For Symmetrix, the thin device extent size is the same as the data device extent size, which is 768 KB. When a read is performed on a thin device, the data being read is retrieved from the appropriate data device in the thin pool to which the thin device is associated. If for some reason a read is performed against an unallocated portion of the thin device, zeros are returned to the reading process. When more physical data storage is required to service existing or future thin devices, for example, when a thin pool is approaching full storage allocations, data devices can be added to existing thin pools dynamically without causing a system outage. New thin devices can also be created and bound to an existing thin pool at any time. The following figure depicts the relationships between thin devices and their associated thin pools. Thin Pool A contains six data devices, and thin Pool B contains three data devices. There are nine thin devices associated with thin Pool A and three thin devices associated with thin pool B. The data extents for thin devices are distributed on various data devices as shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5 Thin devices and thin pools containing data devices

The way thin extents are allocated across the data devices results in a form of striping in the thin pool. The more data devices in the thin pool (and the associated physical drives behind them), the wider striping will be, creating an even I/O distribution across the thin pool. Wide striping simplifies storage management by reducing the time required for planning and execution of data layout.


Below are the hardware resources for the VMAX 10K:

• 1 bay system • 1 engine, 12 CPU core with 42GB memory(mirrored) • Enginuity version:5876.229.145 • Front end directors: 8 • Back end directors: 8 • Disks: Consists of 8 EFD, 80 FC and 16 SATA disks

o Only 76 450GB 15K RPM FC disks are used for Fast Track Reference Configuration testing

• Figure 6 and Figure 7 give other VMAX 10K dashboard details

Note: Application and OS related tuning and other configuration settings are shown as snapshots in the Appendixes

Array Array

Model Firmware

Array Type

Total Raw (GB)

Configured

Including RAID (GB)

Configured Usable

(GB)

RAID Overhead

(GB)

000198700045

VMAX10K

5876_229_04.22.2013_04.2

2.2013

Symmetrix

80689.97 62512.26 46325.78 16186.47

Un-configure

d (GB)

Hot Spare (GB)

Unusable (GB)

Free (GB) Used (GB) Used For Block (GB)

Used For File (GB)

Primary Used (GB)

0.37 17994.56 182.79 0.09

212.11 15207.82 0.00 12796.48

Local Replica

Used (GB)

Remote Replica

Used (GB)

System Used (GB)

Pool Usable

(GB)

Pool Free (GB)

Pool Used (GB)

% Pool Used

Pool Subscribe

d (GB)

2199.32 0.00 212.01 46113.02

31117.39 14995.63 32.52 63208.99

Total Raw (GB): Sum of all the physical disk capacity. Configured Including RAID (GB): Configured capacity that is available for data storage. Configured Usable (GB): Configured capacity that is available for data storage. Hot Spare (GB): Capacity of all hot spares on the array. RAID Overhead (GB): Array capacity used to support RAID protection overhead. Un-configured (GB): Total capacity that is available for the creation of LUNs, RAID groups, storage pools or hot spares. Unusable (GB): Array capacity in the form of small fragments that was the result of configuration and provisioning operations. Used (GB): Written space within pools, system resources, mapped and masked thick LUNs including local and remote copies. Free (GB): Unbound data devices and SAVE devices, unmapped and/or unmasked thick LUNs. Used For File (GB): Capacity that is made available to network attached storage. Used For Block (GB): Capacity that is made available to storage area network. Pool Usable (GB): Pool capacity that is available for data storage. Pool Used (GB): Written space within pools. Pool Free (GB): Unwritten space within pools and unbound capacity within RAID groups. Primary Used (GB): Array capacity that has been mapped, masked, and configured for the primary storage of application data. This does not include copies.


Local Replica Used (GB): Array capacity that has been mapped, masked, and configured as local replicas. This capacity is commonly used for testing and backup. Remote Replica Used (GB): Capacity used for remote copies, commonly for disaster recovery. System Used (GB): Capacity reserved for use by the array for internal operations. Pool Subscribed (GB): Pool Capacity that has been subscribed by pool devices.

Figure 6 VMAX 10K storage details dashboard

Component Description Count Arrays Represent the entire System/Storage Bay Symmetrix VMAX 1

Hosts Server accessing data or applications from storage system by means of a network.

0

Disks Hardware storage component from which you can read and write data.

119

Directors

The component in the Symmetrix system that supports front end, back end, and SRDF connections, and also provides physical memory, connection to the virtualmatrix, and connection to Back-End I/O Modules

16

Devices

A uniquely addressable part of the Symmetrix subsystem that consists of a set of access arms, the associated disk surfaces, and the electronic circuitry required to locate, read, and write data. A logical unit of storage defined within a Symmetrix array.

569

Ports Interface device between the storage system and other computers or peripheral devices. Also, an interface between a drive and bus.

16

RAID Groups

A logical association of between 2 to 16 drives with the same RAID level

0

Pools A logical construct of drives supporting both read and write data accesses.

3

Storage Groups

A storage group is a logical grouping of up to 4,096 Symmetrix devices. Both thick and thin LUNs can be used.

19

Figure 7 VMAX 10K individual component counts

The VMAX 10K support use of 2.5” drives, 3.5” drives or a mix of both drive types in the array. A single system bay could house up to 10 Disk Array Enclosures (DAEs) with 3.5” or 2.5 disk drives. A single engine VMAX 10K can start with as few as 24 drives and scale up to four engines supporting 1560 drives for a maximum usable capacity of up to 1.5PB. In this reference architecture, 76 usable 3.5 inch FC disks with capacity of 450GB are used to create thin LUN for the database files, log files and data staging. The allocation of these LUNs followed the applicable best practices for the optimal number of data files with regard to the number of processor cores.


Data warehouse data files are pooled into one common virtually provisioned (thin) pool. The pool was configured using RAID5 (3+1) and the storage was allocated on demand as requested from the SQL server and wide striped across the thin provisioned pool. RAID 5 was chosen as the storage deployment layout for two key reasons: • Lower cost data protection compared to RAID 1, with RAID 5 requiring only 25% of the total usable capacity for storing parity data • High read performance as all drives contribute to the delivery of data The following list provides general design guidance for running the Microsoft data warehouse workload on a VMAX 10K storage array using the thin provisioning:

• Separating database and logs onto their own LUNS. The configuration consists of 16 data LUNs and 1 log LUN

• Thin devices (TDEV) are configured for virtual provisioning, which improve capacity utilization because only the portion of what is used is allocated in the share common pool

• Raid5 (3+1) configuration is used • 692.14 MB Stripped Meta devices with 17 meta members are created

for better performance • Each TDEV, had 8 FBA Front End Paths • Figure 8, Figure 9, Figure 10 below give details of the thin pool, and

TDEV configuration details


Figure 8 EMC Unisphere for VMAX FC_Pool thin pool configuration

Figure 9 EMC Unisphere for VMAX TDEV Meta volumes


Figure 10 Example of a striped Meta-TDEV with its capacity details

Figure 11 Detailed striped Meta-TDEV metrics


Topology maps for the Reference Architecture

Server host DSIB1135, with Qlogic Host Bus Adapter cards comprising of 8 ports were connected to VMAX 10K (0019870045) via a Brocade fabric. Each of the 16 TDEVs had 8 Front End VMAX ports, seen via 4 unique HBA ports. The 16 Data LUNs were divided into 2 sets of 8 devices each serviced by 4 unique HBA ports, to help load balancing and limit the number of paths to less than 32. Figure 11 and Figure 12 show the layout and connectivity details

Figure 12 High level topology layout of the reference hardware


Figure 13 Detailed connectivity layout of the reference hardware

Upgrade for FTDW 3.0 reference architecture

To upgrade from Fast Track Data Warehouse 3.0 to 4.0, no new hardware is required. Simply upgrade the software to SQL Server 2012. The throughput remains the same. Fast Track V4 is optimized for ColumnStore Index (CSI), which improves I/O scan performance and buffer hit rates. So concurrent CSI and non-CSI query plans had improved workload performance.

Reference configuration performance characteristics Following Microsoft SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse guidelines, two performance tests were completed. • Baseline hardware validation. Used SQLIO tools to ensure the hardware

has been properly configured and the components are performing to the maximum listed bandwidth and IOPs.


• The whole system was validated by loading a defined TPCH database on SQL server to ensure that access to data was performed efficiently for the hardware configuration. The tests consisted of a set of concurrent queries representative of data warehouse workloads, which ran for predefined times each. These tests help measure the logical and physical scan rates for the underlying reference configuration.

Table 3 shows the test results of EMC VMAX 10K’s powerful, high - performing configuration, which achieved benchmark testing and was validated by Microsoft.

Fast Track Rated Database Capacity 20 TB Benchmark Scan Rate Logical 3161 MB/s Benchmark Scan Rate Physical 2106 MB/s Average SQL Server data processing rate 2633 MB/s

Maximum SQL Server data processing rate 3907 MB/s

Table 3 Benchmark performance test metrics and ratings

Note: 20 TB Rating was derived with a UCS R210-2121605W Rack server and a single engine VMAX 10K. Typically a single engine VMAX 10K, is an enterprise consolidation storage system, for multiple Data Warehouse and OLTP configurations, therefore to achieve higher capacity rating, a server with higher maximum CPU Core Consumption Rate (MCR) may be used.

Figure 13 below shows a stacked bar graph of the total host throughput MB/s across 8 front-end ports of VMAX 10K


Figure 14 Total Bandwidth MB/s Graph of VMAX 10K test performance

Note: Unisphere for VMAX throughput and performance snapshots are in the Appendixes

Conclusion Microsoft SQL Server Fast Track Architecture presents a balanced configuration of processor core and disk performance capabilities, optimized for sequential workload. The reference configuration presented here is designed, tested and validated by EMC and Microsoft, and offers simplicity, reliability, scalability and low TCO for organizations deploying infrastructure for data warehouse with predictable performance.

For More Information

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1F Avg

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2E Avg

1H Avg

2F Avg

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1E Avg


To learn more about the Microsoft SQL Server Fast Track Data Warehouse solution, visit http://www.microsoft.com/fasttrack and https://community.emc.com/community/connect/everything_microsoft

Appendixes

A. OS details and host hardware configuration

http://www.microsoft.com/fasttrack


B. QLogic HBA port properties

C. Queue depth settings for HBA


D. SQL Server Memory Settings in MB

E. SQL Server MAXDOP setting (max degree of parallelism)


F. SQL Server startup parameters, flags –E and –T1117

G. SQL Server Resource Governor Properties set at 12 %


H. NTFS drives with 64KB block size allocation unit size

I. Chosen OS performance Options

J. Enable Lock pages in memory for SQL Server account


K. Sample snapshot of VMAX Host HBs/sec, and Host IOs/sec KPIs

L. Sample overall Front-End Host bandwidth in MBs/sec


M. Sample snapshot of per Front End bandwidth in MBs/sec

N. Sample snapshot of Back End Port 0 and Port 1 Overall MBs/sec


O. Sample VMAX Backend % Busy , IOs/sec per port breakdown

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