Dell EMC Reference Architecture
SQL Server 2016 on Dell EMC XC Series Reference Architecture
Abstract
This white paper highlights the reference architecture and best practices
for SQL Server 2016 with the Dell XC Series Family.
April 2018
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Revisions
Date Description
April 2018 Initial release
Acknowledgements
This paper was produced by the following members of the Dell EMC storage engineering team:
Author: Kailas Goliwadekar
The information in this publication is provided “as is.” Dell Inc. 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 software described in this publication requires an applicable software license.
© 2018 Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries. All Rights Reserved. Dell, EMC, Dell EMC and other trademarks are trademarks of Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries. Other
trademarks may be trademarks of their respective owners.
Dell believes the information in this document is accurate as of its publication date. The information is subject to change without notice.
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Table of contents
Revisions............................................................................................................................................................................. 2
Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................................................................. 2
Table of contents ................................................................................................................................................................ 3
Executive summary ............................................................................................................................................................. 4
1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................................................... 5
1.1 Objectives ........................................................................................................................................................... 5
1.2 Audience ............................................................................................................................................................. 5
1.3 Terminology ........................................................................................................................................................ 6
2 Technology overview .................................................................................................................................................... 7
2.1 Dell EMC XC Series Hyper-Converged Appliances ........................................................................................... 7
2.2 XC Series architecture ........................................................................................................................................ 8
2.3 AOS 5.5 features ................................................................................................................................................ 8
2.4 Hyper-V 2016 features ....................................................................................................................................... 9
2.4.1 Discrete Device Assignment ............................................................................................................................... 9
2.4.2 DDA in XC Series ............................................................................................................................................... 9
2.5 SQL Server 2016 features ................................................................................................................................ 10
3 Solution reference architecture .................................................................................................................................. 11
3.1 SQL Server database VM configuration ........................................................................................................... 11
3.1.1 Disk layout ........................................................................................................................................................ 11
3.1.2 Memory configuration ....................................................................................................................................... 12
3.1.3 CPU configuration............................................................................................................................................. 13
3.1.4 Sample test setup ............................................................................................................................................. 13
3.2 XC Series cluster information ........................................................................................................................... 14
3.3 Network configuration ....................................................................................................................................... 15
4 XC Series benefits ...................................................................................................................................................... 16
5 Best practices ............................................................................................................................................................. 17
5.1 Dell EMC XC Series ......................................................................................................................................... 17
5.2 SQL Server 2016 .............................................................................................................................................. 17
6 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................................................. 19
7 Technical support and resources ............................................................................................................................... 20
7.1 Related resources ............................................................................................................................................ 20
7.2 Additional resources ......................................................................................................................................... 20
A Appendix ..................................................................................................................................................................... 21
A.1 Physical configuration ....................................................................................................................................... 21
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Executive summary
This document provides the reference architecture for deployment of SQL Server 2016 on Dell EMC XC
Series with Hyper-V 2016 and Windows Server 2016 installed. The document also highlights the advantages
of Discrete Direct Assignment feature on Hyper-V 2016, which enables increased performance.
The Dell EMC XC Series is a hyper-converged solution that combines storage, compute, networking, and
virtualization using industry-leading Dell EMC PowerEdge™ servers and Nutanix software. By combining the
hardware resources from each server appliance into a shared-everything model for simplified operations,
improved agility, and greater flexibility, Dell EMC and Nutanix together deliver simple, cost-effective solutions
for enterprise workloads.
The XC Series platform is hypervisor agnostic, and supports your choice of hypervisor. With a focus on ease-
of-use and the ability to rapidly deploy multiple virtualized workloads, the XC Series is the preferred platform
for many enterprises and midmarket customers alike. The XC Series platform uses the Nutanix Distributed
Storage Fabric (DSF), which delivers a unified pool of storage from all appliances across the cluster, using
techniques including mirroring, replication, auto-tiering, error detection, failover, and automatic recovery. XC
Series delivers storage through multiple protocols such as NFS, SMB, and iSCSI while leveraging standard
network infrastructure.
Introduction
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1 Introduction
The Dell EMC™ XC Series Hyper-Converged Appliances integrates our 14th generation PowerEdge server platform and Nutanix software to provide enterprise-class, infrastructure solutions for virtualized environments.
The XC Series appliances incorporate many of the advanced software technologies that power leading cloud infrastructures and include key features such as:
• Hyper-converged – Seamlessly integrates server and storage resources in a self-healing system
• Software defined and distributed - Allows an IT professional to perform automatic software
deployment anywhere with a single click.
• Scale-out – Increase performance and/or capacity one node at a time, even across multiple
generations
• Automation and analytics – Extensive automation and rich system-wide monitoring
1.1 Objectives This paper shows:
• An overview of Dell EMC XC Series Hyper-Converged Appliances
• An overview of Nutanix architecture
• An overview of AOS 5.5 features
• Highlights the benefits of Hyper-V 2016
• Highlights the benefits of SQL Server 2016
• Best Practices of SQL Server 2016 deployment
• High-level configuration of XC Series cluster with Nutanix and SQL Server 2016
• Explanation of DDA and its benefits
• Conclusion
1.2 Audience This document is intended for decision makers, managers, architects, cloud administrators, backup
administrators, and technical administrators of IT environments who want a solution guide that demonstrates
backup of VMs based on Hyper-V. You must be familiar with Dell EMC XC Series Hyper-Converged
Appliances, SQL Server, Microsoft Hyper-V, and have a basic familiarity with storage, compute, and network
technologies.
Business and end-user readers of this document must be familiar with general IT, backup and cloud
technologies, and understand the relationship between their business, IT, and the backup requirements that
are part of multiple business units.
Introduction
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1.3 Terminology
Useful terminology
Term Description
CVM Controller Virtual Machine
DSF Distributed Storage Fabric
DDA Discrete Device Assignment
Scale-out Scale-out increases performance linearly by adding capacity one appliance at a time.
Software-defined Software-defined delivers all services through software using proven Dell EMC hardware.
XC Series cluster An XC Series cluster is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution that consolidates compute and storage into a single integrated appliance and creates a distributed virtual computing platform. Each appliance in the cluster runs an industry standard hypervisor and all the appliances work together to form a cluster which is scalable.
XC Series container An XC Series container is a logical segmentation of the storage pool and contains a group of virtual machines (VM) or files.
Technology overview
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2 Technology overview This reference architecture conveys deployment integration points of SQL Server 2016 on Dell EMC XC
Series Hyper-Converged Appliances.
You can leverage all the new features of Hyper-V 2016 on SQL Server 2016 that Nutanix supports. This helps
increase in overall performance of the appliances.
2.1 Dell EMC XC Series Hyper-Converged Appliances The Dell EMC XC Series Hyper-Converged Appliances are a hyper-converged solution that combines
storage, compute, networking, and virtualization into an industry-proven appliance based on an x86 Dell
PowerEdge™ server running Nutanix software. Also it's worth noticing the servers are not just off the shelf
PowerEdge. The processor, memory, drives, firmware and BIOS are specifically tailored for Nutanix. By
combining the hardware resources from each server appliance into a shared-everything model for simplified
operations, improved agility, and greater flexibility, Dell EMC and Nutanix together deliver simple, cost-
effective solutions for enterprise workloads. Nutanix Distributed Storage Fabric (DSF) delivers a unified pool
of storage from all appliances across the cluster, using techniques including striping, replication, auto-tiering,
error detection, failover, and automatic recovery.
The XC Series architecture is a scalable cluster of high-performance appliances each running a standard
hypervisor and containing processors, memory, and local storage (consisting of solid state disk (SSD) flash
for high performance and high-capacity SATA disk drives or all SSD appliances). Each appliance runs virtual
machines just like a standard hypervisor host as displayed in Figure 1.
XC Series appliance architecture
Technology overview
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2.2 XC Series architecture XC Series provides a hyper-converged platform that uses Distributed Storage Fabric to share and present
local storage to all the virtual machines in the cluster. The general XC Series architecture is shown in Figure
2.
The Dell XC easily scales without the constraints of traditional storage.
DSF virtualizes the storage across all appliances and presents the same to the hypervisor as one large pool
of shared storage. The DSF replicates writes synchronously to at least one other XC Series appliance to
ensure cluster resiliency and availability.Local storage for each XC Series appliance in the architecture is
presented as one large pool of shared storage to the hypervisor.Data Locality of XC Series has the ability to
keep compute and storage close together that helps in consistent performance and availability of the data.
In addition, DSF virtualizes local storage from all appliances into a unified pool. DSF uses local SSDs and
disks from all appliances to store virtual machine data. Virtual machines running on the cluster write data to
DSF as if they were writing to shared storage.
XC Series offers you choice of hypervisors without being locked-in. The hypervisor covered in this reference
architecture is Windows Hyper-V 2016.
The Nutanix CVMs are virtual machines running on Windows Server 2016 hosts. They have direct control of the SSDs and HDDs on the Hyper-V hosts. They come preconfigured with modest settings so that you can start using the storage platform without much startup time. However, for heavy workload applications such as databases, special attention should be paid to the CVM resources since they serve as the primary access points to the SSDs and HDDs.
2.3 AOS 5.5 features Acropolis Operating System (AOS) 5.5 fully supports Hyper-V 2016. Customers on Hyper-V 2012 can
upgrade to Hyper-V 2016 using 1-Click upgrade feature without any downtime to the applications.
For further details regarding all new features in AOS 5.5 visit:
https://www.nutanix.com/2017/12/06/7-reasons-upgrade-aos-5-5/
Technology overview
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2.4 Hyper-V 2016 features
Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2016 is a stand-alone product that contains only the Windows hypervisor, a
Windows Server driver model, and virtualization components. Customers are upgrading their environments to
Windows Server 2016 drawn by advances in cloud readiness, performance, productivity, and business
safeguards. With added support of Hyper-V 2016 on XC Series, you benefit from newly added features in
Hyper-V on Microsoft Windows 2016 server.
Features of Hyper-V 2016 on XC Series appliances
For details regarding all new features in Hyper-V on Microsoft Server 2016 visit:
https://www.emc.com/collateral/TechnicalDocument/xcseries-with-microsoft-hyperv2016-support-tech-
preview.pdf
2.4.1 Discrete Device Assignment One of the important new features in Hyper-V 2016 is the Discrete Device Assignment (DDA). DDA allows the
physical PCIe hardware to be directly accessible from within a virtual machine. This allows high performance
access to devices like NVMe storage or graphics cards within a VM.
There are certain types of PCI device classes, like the Graphic Processing Units (GPU) or Non-Volatile
Memory express (NVMe), installed on the host that can be directly and exclusively controlled by the Windows
Server 2016 VM.
DDA is supported for Generation 1 or 2 VMs of Hyper-V 2016.
2.4.2 DDA in XC Series Dell EMC XC Series takes advantage of the DDA feature in Hyper-V 2016 VMs. Figure 4 illustrates the
importance of DDA when comparing Windows 2012 R2 against Windows 2016. Earlier in Windows 2012,
Nutanix used the driver passthrough.sys to connect VMs to the devices, whereas with DDA being
Technology overview
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introduced in Windows 2016 the VMs can directly connect the PCIe devices. This greatly increases the
Performance and improves reliability.
The Nutanix CVM by default supports PCI Passthrough in Hyper-V 2016 and no customization is required.
The importance of DDA in Dell EMC XC Series
2.5 SQL Server 2016 features Table 3 shows few of the key features that are new or enhanced in SQL Server 2016.
SQL Server 2016 Features
Feature Description
Faster results SQL Server 2016 has made improvement in delivering faster results. This is being achieved by having significant achievement in In-memory OLTP, In-Memory Analytics, and analysis services.
Increased security The three new features introduced in SQL Server 2016 are Always Encrypted, Row Level Security, and Dynamic Data Masking.
Seamless data integration
SQL Server 2016 facilitates access to diverse types of data, which includes integration between relational, unstructured, and semi-structured data.
SQL Server Azure All Azure SQL databases come standard with high availability and a minimum of three replicas. Azure SQL database has come close to par with on-prem SQL Server databases.
Reporting service enhancements
SQL Server 2016 has a better development environment for reporting with more data visualization. Reports are compatible with mobile as well and a new environment for mobile reports is supported.
Better High Availability (HA)
SQL Server 2016 has made significant improvements to availability groups in this version.
For details regarding all new features in SQL Server 2016 visit:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/sql-server/what-s-new-in-sql-server-2016
Solution reference architecture
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3 Solution reference architecture The overall solution reference architecture for deployment of SQL Server 2016 database on an XC Series
cluster using HyperV-2016 is shown below.
Each Dell EMC XC740xd appliance in a cluster has the same basic configuration:
• A tier of SSD-based flash storage
• A tier of hard drives
• Compute resources in the form of two Intel Xeon Gold 6134 CPU Model 85
• 192 GB of DDR4 RAM
At the hypervisor layer as shown below, each host runs Hyper-V 2016 that hosts a single controller VM and
as many other SQL 2016 VMs as you can configure for your environment. The SQL VM configuration is
described in Figure 5.
Dell XC740xd-12– 3 node cluster
3.1 SQL Server database VM configuration You can easily run SQL Server in a VM; however, SQL is resource intensive by nature so virtualization of
SQL Server must adhere to best practices. XC Series operates and scales Microsoft SQL Server 2016 in
conjunction with the other hosted services, providing a single scalable platform for all deployments.
The below section explains the configurations for a SQL Server VM.
3.1.1 Disk layout When designing your SQL Server drive configuration, you must use several virtual disks to get optimal
performance to achieve parallel I/O streams. For the Nutanix platform, the sweet spot is eight vDisks per SQL
Server VM, spread intelligently across the four available SCSI controllers.
Solution reference architecture
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In Hyper-V, if Generation 1 VMs are used, then you should use SCSI disks for all drives except for the
operating system. For Generation 2 VMs, use all SCSI disks. Generation 2 VMs have replaced the IDE
controller with Virtual SCSI controller.
The SQL Server virtual machine consists of two virtual CPUs, 32 GB RAM, and thin-provisioned disks in the
layout described in Table 3.
Microsoft SQL Server disk layout
Disk size (GB) Drive Disk purpose
200 GB Drive C: Windows OS disk
125 GB Drive G: Database disk
126 GB Drive H: Database disk
127 GB Drive E: Temp DB -1
124 GB Drive F: Temp DB -2
125 GB Drive T: Temp DB Log
124 GB Drive L: Database logs
After the drives are provisioned, format all the SQL Server data and log drives with a 64 KB NTFS cluster
size. This size optimizes I/O performance with no overhead and offers a good balance between flexibility,
performance, and ease of use The OS and the SQL binary drives use the standard 4 KB NTFS cluster size.
Ensure, the drive usage doesn’t cross 80 percent.
Typically, a SQL database spans across multiple LUNs to increase performance by allowing parallel I/O
streams. In a virtualized environment, multiple virtual disks are used instead. To achieve better performance,
Nutanix recommends having at least four to six database virtual disks and add more disks, depending on the
capacity requirements. Additional controllers are created to separate the virtual disks for data and log files.
When applications are more read intensive, the SQL Server can host multiple database files, therefore one to
two database files per database is the right solution.
For SQL log files, Dell EMC recommends having a single log file per database unless there is any strong
reason not to. This is because SQL log files are written in a sequential manner.
3.1.2 Memory configuration It is very important to make sure you set the Max Server memory setting for SQL Server to something
besides the default setting. This is especially important with larger, busier systems that may be under memory
pressure. This setting controls how much memory can be used by the SQL Server Buffer Pool. If you do not
set an upper limit for this value, other parts of SQL Server, and the operating system can be starved for
memory, which can cause instability and performance problems.
Solution reference architecture
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Nutanix recommends the Max Memory configuration of SQL Server as shown in Table 4.
SQL Server Max Memory configuration
VM RAM Max Memory
4 GB 2,048 MB
8 GB 5,120 MB
12 GB 8,192 MB
16 GB 12,288 MB
24 GB 20,480 MB
32 GB 28,672 MB
48 GB 44,032 MB
64 GB 59,392 MB
If you have properly sized the VMs and configured SQL Server max memory, then Windows should not have to use the OS page file. Thus, if your SQL Server has a lot of memory, you can manually reduce the page file size to limit the amount of required disk space. Therefore, the page file does not need to move to another volume. As with proper VM and SQL Server memory sizing, it should not be used.
3.1.3 CPU configuration Sizing the vCPUs and memory of the virtual machines appropriately requires understanding the SQL Server
workload. Avoid overcommitting processor and memory resources on the physical node. Use as few vCPUs
as possible because performance might be adversely impacted when using excess vCPUs due to the
scheduling constraints.
Hyperthreading is a hardware technology on Intel processors that enables a physical processor core to act
like two processors. In general, there is a performance advantage to enabling hyperthreading on the newer
Intel processors.
For SQL Server Temp DB, if the number of vCPUs is less than eight, then configure the number of TempDB
files equal to the number of vCPUs. However, if the number of vCPUs is greater than eight, start with eight
TempDB files and look for memory contention. You can check in Prism for any memory contention. Then start
scaling the TempDBs; for example, Increase the number of TempDBs accordingly until memory contention
ceases to exist. Ensure you don’t have the autogrow option enabled for TempDB and keep all the TempDBs
of same size.
3.1.4 Sample test setup To validate the reference architecture, an OLTP workload was simulated with the help of a test tool DVD
Store 2.1. This tool is an open source application that models an online DVD store where customer log in,
search for titles and purchase movies was used.
A three-node XC740xd cluster each having Hyper-V 2016 VM containing an SQL Server 2016 instance was
the base for the test set up. A separate test server R640 was used, where DVD Store was installed and this
server was connected to XC740xd nodes.
Solution reference architecture
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Each of the SQL Server VM had 100 GB of data loaded into multiple drives. SQLVM settings followed the
Nutanix best practices found at http://go.nutanix.com/microsoft-sql-server-converged-infrastructure.html. To
access the link, fill out the form and Nutanix would send a link to the best practices document.
The DVD store test was run for 45 min and the OPMs (Operation Per Minutes) was noted. Nutanix Prism, the
GUI management utility, was used to monitor cluster activity and health during test runs. Real time data
during test runs indicated that the cluster remained healthy during the significant workload testing.
3.2 XC Series cluster information The XC Series cluster set up used to validate the reference architecture described in the paper had the
following hardware components:
• Two, 1.92 TB SAS SSDs
• Ten, 4 TB 7.2K RPM SAS Disks
• Two, 8-Core Intel(R) Xeon(R) Gold 6134 CPU Model 85 Stepping 4 @ 3.20GHz CPUs
• 12, 16 GB DDR-4 QR 2133 MHz RAM Modules (192GB Total)
The cluster, populated with all three nodes, is shown from a hardware resource perspective in Figure 5. The
cluster provides resources required by VM workloads and arranges those workloads in the most effective
manner. This places VM workloads on nodes with available CPU and RAM resources, as well as the best fit
for local disk resources.
Three-node XC740xd-12 Series cluster resources
The XC740xd cluster used was designed and configured using best practices from Nutanix available at
http://go.nutanix.com/microsoft-sql-server-converged-infrastructure.html.
Every attempt is made by the cluster to keep virtual machines and their associated storage on the same
cluster node for performance consistency. However, each cluster node is connected to, and communicates
Solution reference architecture
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with, the other nodes on a 10 GB network. This communication allows virtual machines and their associated
storage to reside on different cluster nodes. In such a case, the cluster begins to move the data on that virtual
machine to the local cluster node using the same 10 GB network.
The XC Series cluster physical configuration details, which includes details about the cluster, SQL VM, and
network is provided in the Appendix under section A.1
3.3 Network configuration A minimum of two 10 GbE interfaces are recommended for each host. Each host should connect to dual
redundant switches for network path redundancy.
Network components
Components Description
Data and management network 10 GbE switch
XC Series internode connection (VM traffic) 10 GbE switch
iDRAC inband network 1 GbE switch
Cabling CAT6 coaxial and 10G twin axial
Network configuration
XC Series benefits
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4 XC Series benefits XC Series appliances install quickly, integrate easily into any data center, and can be deployed for multiple
virtualized workloads including desktop virtualization, database and private cloud projects. With XC Series
appliances you can take advantage of the Hyper-V 2016 DDA feature along with Nutanix software to increase
the overall performance and reliability.
Dell EMC has over 10 years of experience integrating hardware and software for appliances built with
PowerEdge servers. That experience enabled us to develop technologies that simplify and streamline
common workflows performed throughout the appliance’s lifecycle. It starts with factory installation of the
software stack and hypervisor of choice and pre-configuration of system settings to maximize performance of
the Nutanix software. Other examples include software modules that deliver fast and seamless deployment,
rapid factory restore and bare metal recovery, rich in-band hardware monitoring and management
capabilities, and components developed specifically for HCI to simplify workflow orchestration across a
cluster.
The XC Series’ unique value also extends beyond core infrastructure with fully integrated Dell EMC data
protection, an exclusive offering for the XC Series. With the optional Data Protection Management Console
(DPMC), enhanced data protection from Avamar VE and Data Domain enables the XC Series to deliver a
turnkey HCI experience with enterprise class data protection.
XC Series also incorporates optimizations for Microsoft Windows 2016 Hyper-V plus Azure including one-click
hypervisor updates. The XC Series Azure Log Analytics Solution provides integration of XC Series into
customer’s OMS-based data center automation tools, enabling insights such as trend analysis and behavioral
anomaly detection.
For other XC Series benefits, see:
https://www.emc.com/collateral/analyst-reports/idc-quantifying-business-value-xc-series-powered-by-
nutanix.pdf
Best practices
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5 Best practices
5.1 Dell EMC XC Series For this reference architecture, an XC Series cluster was formed using three XC740xd nodes. The Network
and the XC Series cluster was formed according to the best practice guide. Deploying the XC Series cluster is
performed in three stages. The first and third stages are related to the network. The initial network is created
in step one. The cluster is built in step two. The last step configures the final production network.
For more information about the latest technical content and best practices for the XC Series, go to the
following links:
XC Series Family Technical Resource Center
Dell EMC XC Series Networking Deployment and Best Practices Guide
5.2 SQL Server 2016 The following best practices were used for the standard version of SQL Server 2016 VM configurations.
General:
• Perform a current state analysis to identify workloads and sizing.
• Start with a proof of concept, then test, optimize, iterate, and scale.
Drive configuration:
• Distribute databases and log files across multiple VMDKs.
• Distribute vdisks across four SCSI controllers.
• Use 64 KB NTFS allocation for database and log drives.
• Size for at least 20 percent free disk space on all drives.
• Create drives of slightly different sizes.
SQL Server data files:
• Split each database into multiple files: one file per vCPU.
• Size database files equally.
• Enable Autogrow in 256 MB or 512 MB increments to start.
• Do not shrink databases.
SQL Server log files:
• Under most circumstances, one log per database (including TempDB) should be sufficient.
• Log files fill sequentially, so additional files do not increase performance.
Temp DB:
• Use multiple TempDB files, all the same size.
• Do not autogrow TempDB files.
• If cores < 8, the number of TempDB files = cores.
• If cores > 8, start with eight TempDB files and monitor for performance.
Best practices
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• Size TempDB 1 at 10 percent of database size.
• One TempDB drive should be sufficient for most environments.
RAM:
• More RAM can increase SQL DB read performance.
• Configure SQL Server maximum memory per previous section guidance.
• Size each VM to fit within a NUMA node’s memory footprint.
vCPUs:
• Do not over allocate vCPUs to VMs.
• Consider Nutanix CVM core usage.
For a comprehensive Best Practices list, visit: http://www.emc.com/collateral/TechnicalDocument/virtualized-
sql-performance-and-scaling-on-xcseries-webscale.pdf
SQLVM settings followed the Nutanix best practices found at http://go.nutanix.com/microsoft-sql-server-
converged-infrastructure.html. To access the link, fill out the form and Nutanix would send a link to the best
practices document.
Conclusion
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6 Conclusion This paper demonstrated the best practices for SQL Server 2016 on Hyper-V 2016. It also states the features
of Hyper-V 2016 and highlights the importance of Discrete Device Assignment.
Nutanix software maintains consistent configuration across all the nodes supporting DDA in the default set up.
The DDA feature in Nutanix increases the performance and improves reliability.
If the best practices and the reference architecture is correctly followed, then there are many benefits to running SQL Server VM using Dell EMC XC Series as mentioned in the below table.
Benefits of SQL Server 2016 VM on Dell XC Series
Feature Description
Modular incremental scale The XC Series has three nodes to begin with and can easily scaled as needed. You can size the nodes based on the CPU speed, CPU core count, and memory and storage density, minimizing the upfront CapEx.
High performance When the XC Series has SSD and HDD clusters, ILM keeps the most accessed data on SSD and cache tiers thus greatly increasing SQL performance. The Nutanix data locality feature ensures that a VM and the storage both reside on the same physical node, which reduces the storage I/O latency and minimizes network usage and overhead.
Data efficiency The Nutanix solution on XC Series allows for all the compression and deduplication policies at the VM level.
Business continuity and data protection
Native snapshot and replication features provide extensive disaster recovery and protection capabilities.
Cluster management in Prism A very intuitive approach to manage cluster and a converged GUI make it simple to monitor SQL Server 2016 VMs and cluster nodes. You can easily track the memory, disk, and CPU usage in real time.
Technical support and resources
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7 Technical support and resources
7.1 Related resources See the following referenced or recommended resources related to this document:
Note: The links below are open to customers although some may require registration for access.
• Nutanix Bible: http://nutanixbible.com/
• Nutanix blog: http://longwhiteclouds.com/
• SQL Best Practices: http://stevenpoitras.com/2013/11/advanced-nutanix-sql-server-nutanix-best-
practices-released/
• PCI Passthrough: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/virtualization/2015/11/19/discrete-device-
assignment-description-and-background/
• PCI Passthrough Machines and Devices:
https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/virtualization/2015/11/20/discrete-device-assignment-machines-
and-devices/
• Nutanix Acropolis 5.5: https://www.nutanix.com/2017/12/06/7-reasons-upgrade-aos-5-5/
• DVD Store: http://linux.dell.com/dvdstore
• SQL Server: http://www.sqlservercentral.com/
7.2 Additional resources Referenced or recommended publications:
Dell.com/XCSeriesmanuals is focused on meeting customer needs with proven services and support.
Dell EMC Technical Resource Center on DellEMC.com provides expertise that helps to ensure customer
success on Dell EMC XC Series platforms.
Dell EMC XC Series Hyper-Converged Appliances on DellEMC.com provides marketing materials and the
latest product information on the XC Series Family.
Appendix
21 SQL Server 2016 on Dell EMC XC Series Reference Architecture
A Appendix
A.1 Physical configuration
XC Series Cluster Configuration
Primary Source configuration: hardware and software components
Description
XC Series 3x XC740xd-12 @ 2U:
• Firmware/BIOS: 1.3.4
• Hypervisor: Hyper-V 2016
• AOS: 5.5.0.4
• 2 x Intel(R) Xeon(R) Gold 6134 CPU Model 85 Stepping 4 @ 3.20 GHz
• 192 GB RAM (12 x 16 GB DIMMS)
• 2 x 1.92 TB SAS SSD drives
• 10 x 4 TB SAS drives
• 1 x Intel(R) 2P X710/2P I350 rNDC
SQL VM configuration • SQL Server 2016 Standard Edition
• Hypervisor: Hyper-V 2016
• VM version: Windows Server 2016
• 64 GB RAM
• 8 HDD configured
Primary VM configuration • VM OS: Windows Server 2016
• 16 vCPUs, 64 GB RAM
• CVM: 12 vCPUs, 32 GB RAM
XC Series container hosting primary VMs
Network • 2 x Dell EMC Networking S4048-ON switches
Dual redundant switches were used for high availability.
Monitoring • Nutanix Prism
• SQL Server Management Studio
Monitoring for XC Series cluster is done using Nutanix PRISM.
SSMS for monitoring SQL Queries
