Optimize Your SQL Server Deployments

12/7/2011 3:19:21 PM

SQL Server Infrastructure is business-critical
SQL Server is the engine that drives the access to business data for many applications including web store fronts, accounting systems, customer care systems and sales tools. Meeting service levels for database performance and availability is crucial to keep business running. As systems relying on databases multiply and the underlying data sets grow, storage system performance often becomes the bottleneck. This can lead to the purchase of expensive storage options that increase operational complexity.

A related trend that worsens these problems is virtualization. In an attempt to improve IT efficiency and reduce server sprawl, companies are virtualizing servers. This increases utilization and reduces server maintenance, but it can increase the storage challenge.

A variety of approaches
Stacking your virtualization host with extra memory or an SSD cache card can be beneficial. The challenge is that these approaches can also be expensive and only accelerate one physical server at a time. Another approach is to deploy an SSD-based storage array. This will benefit the workload independent of what server it is running on. The challenge is that it is expensive and manual tuning is required to assign performance-sensitive files to the SSD.

Automated data tiering with Dell EqualLogic XVS
Dell’s EqualLogic PS Series XVS arrays help meet service level agreements while also reducing costs. The XVS continuously analyzes I/O to the data stored on it at a sub-volume level. The sub-volume elements are categorized as high I/O, medium I/O or low I/O and then dynamically placed on either SSD or SAS tiers. This automated tiering simplifies the optimization of database performance and provides an agile shared storage infrastructure for business-critical applications.

Source: Dell Solution Brief

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