Microsoft SQL Server Best Practices and Design Guidelines for EMC
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White Paper MICROSOFT SQL SERVER BEST PRACTICES AND DESIGN GUIDELINES FOR EMC STORAGE EMC VNX Family, EMC Symmetrix VMAX Systems, and EMC Xtrem Server Products Design and sizing best practices SQL Server performance acceleration with flash technologies Disaster recovery and high availability best practices EMC Solutions Abstract This white paper identifies best practices and key decision points for planning and deploying Microsoft SQL Server with the EMC® VNX® family of unified storage, EMC Symmetrix® VMAX® series storage, and EMC XtremSF™ and EMC XtremSW™ Cache products. October 2013 Copyright © 2013 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. EMC believes the information in this publication is accurate as of its publication date. The information is subject to change without notice. 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Part Number H12341 Microsoft SQL Server Best Practices and Design Guidelines for EMC Storage EMC VNX Series, EMC Symmetrix VMAX systems, and EMC Xtrem Server Products 2 Table of contents Executive summary ............................................................................................................................... 7 Purpose of this paper ....................................................................................................................... 7 Audience ......................................................................................................................................... 7 Scope .............................................................................................................................................. 7 Terminology ..................................................................................................................................... 8 Microsoft SQL Server components and architecture ........................................................................... 10 SQL Server overview ....................................................................................................................... 10 SQL Server releases ................................................................................................................... 10 SQL Server 2012 ............................................................................................................................ 10 SQL Server 2012 editions .......................................................................................................... 10 SQL Server components ................................................................................................................. 11 Windows Server ............................................................................................................................. 11 Windows volume types .............................................................................................................. 12 SMB 3.0 .................................................................................................................................... 13 SQL Server architecture .................................................................................................................. 13 SQL Server logical components ...................................................................................................... 15 SQL Server physical components ................................................................................................... 16 File types ................................................................................................................................... 16 Page and extent ........................................................................................................................ 16 Transaction log .......................................................................................................................... 17 Filegroup ................................................................................................................................... 17 I/O and bandwidth characteristics of SQL Server ............................................................................... 18 Overview ........................................................................................................................................ 18 OLTP .............................................................................................................................................. 18 Data warehouse/OLAP database .................................................................................................... 19 Reading pages ............................................................................................................................... 20 Writing pages ................................................................................................................................. 20 Log Manager .................................................................................................................................. 21 Tempdb usage ............................................................................................................................... 21 I/O patterns ................................................................................................................................... 21 Best practices for SQL Server storage sizing and provisioning ........................................................... 23 Overview ........................................................................................................................................ 23 General SQL Server storage best practices ..................................................................................... 23 Basic best practices for SQL Server............................................................................................ 24 Basic best practices for storage ................................................................................................. 25 Clustering considerations .......................................................................................................... 25 Considerations for earlier versions ............................................................................................ 26 Microsoft SQL Server Best Practices and Design GuidelinesMicrosoft for EMC Exchange Storage: EMC VNX Series,Storage EMC Symmetrix Best Practices VMAX and systems, Design and Guidance EMC Xtrem for Server EMC ProductsStorage 3 General storage considerations ...................................................................................................... 26 Performance versus capacity considerations ............................................................................. 26 Disk type selection .................................................................................................................... 26 Pools and RAID types................................................................................................................. 28 Virtual Provisioning storage considerations ................................................................................... 30 Thin LUN versus thick LUN ......................................................................................................... 30 Storage sizing best practices ......................................................................................................... 31 Consideration for OLTP database sizing ......................................................................................... 31 Best practices for FAST VP sizing ............................................................................................... 32 Consideration for OLAP database sizing ......................................................................................... 34 Hypervisor storage considerations ................................................................................................. 35 General virtualization guidelines ............................................................................................... 35 Best practices for the VMware vSphere environment ................................................................. 38 Microsoft Hyper-V ...................................................................................................................... 40 SQL Server clustering storage considerations ................................................................................. 41 Symmetrix VMAX storage design guidelines ................................................................................... 41 VMAX series hardware design considerations ........................................................................... 42 Virtual Provisioning considerations and best practices .............................................................. 42 FAST VP considerations and best practices for a VMAX storage system ...................................... 42 VNX storage design guidelines ....................................................................................................... 43 FAST