You are on page 1of 21

Enterprise Strategy Group | Getting to the bigger truth.

TM

Virtualizing SQL Server Workloads with Microsoft Hyper-V R2


Mark Bowker, Senior Analyst Brian Garrett, Vice President, ESG Lab

2011 Enterprise Strategy Group

The Enterprise Strategy Group

2011 Enterprise Strategy Group

Application Virtualization Timeline


100% virtualized Scalability Percent Virtualized
Tier-1

Performance Availability

Tier-2

Agility Manageability Consolidation

Utilities

Time

59% have not virtualized any tier-1 workloads


2011 Enterprise Strategy Group

ESG Server Virtualization Maturity Model


Percent of current virtualization users, by segment Basic, 22% Progressing, 53% Advanced, 25%

75% of the market

58% are less than 30% virtualized 75% expect to be more than 30% virtualized in 24 months

56% have less than 250 virtual machines deployed

2011 Enterprise Strategy Group

Factors Preventing Organizations from Using Virtualization

Collaboration and Training Virtual Stall

Best Practices

Application Performance

Lack of Understanding

Virtualization technology is not the barrier to success


2011 Enterprise Strategy Group

Accelerating Virtualization Adoption


Massive Opportunity
70% of organizations using more than one hypervisor

31% expect 25:1 VM consolidation in 24 months


75% expect to be more than 30% virtualized in 24 months Key Metrics for Gauging Virtualization Success

2011 Enterprise Strategy Group

Extent of Production VM-based Applications


Tier-2 database (i.e., Oracle Standard, Microsoft SQL, MySQL, etc.)

Why This Matters


Deployment flexibility Simplified administration Reduced hardware costs

Ability to improve service levels


2011 Enterprise Strategy Group

ESG Lab: Hands-on Testing and Analysis


The Gold Standard in Independent Product Validation Services Discover whether a product works as advertised or not
Insight into why and how these capabilities matter

Focused on usability, functionality, performance, scalability, total cost of ownership, etc.

2011 Enterprise Strategy Group

2010 ESG Lab Highlights: VM Scalability


Hyper-V R2 on 16 servers with Microsoft Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV) stored on a single SAN attached disk array supported 1,024 virtual machines
Virtual Machine Scalability
1 through 16 Microsoft Hyper-V R2 Servers
1,024

896

Vrirtual Machines

768 640 512 384 256 128 0 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16

Clustered Hyper-V R2 Servers


http://www.enterprisestrategygroup.com/2010/11/emc-symmetrix-vmax-and-microsoft-server-virtualization-scalable-enterprise-class-virtual-infrastructure/
2011 Enterprise Strategy Group

2010 ESG Lab Highlights: Mixed Workloads


Hyper-V R2 on 2 servers with 16 VMs sharing a single disk array:
18,750 mailboxes with the Microsoft Exchange 2010 Jetstress utility and 3,475 small database IOs per second with the Microsoft SQLIO utility and 650 MB/sec of database throughput with the SQLIO utility and 3,106 simulated web server IOPs with the Iometer utility and 413 MB/sec of simulated backup throughput with the Iometer utility with predictably fast response times and scalability
14,000 12,000

I/O's per second (IOPS)

10,000 8,000 6,000 4,000 2,000 0 1 2 3 4

Exchange SQL Server Web Server Scan/read

Virtual Machines
http://www.enterprisestrategygroup.com/2010/06/ibm-system-storage-ds5020ds3950-express-and-ibm-system-x3950-m2-mixed-workload-performance-in-microsoft-hyper-v-r2-environments/
2011 Enterprise Strategy Group

10

2011 ESG Lab Test Bed (Physical)

HP BL680C up to 24 cores and 128 GB RAM per blade

2x4 Gbps FC per server


SAN

RAID-10 Pools:

EMC CX4-960 155 15K RPM FC disk drives

Data (88): Logs(16):

OS(24):
Apps(16):

2011 Enterprise Strategy Group

2011 SQL Server Test Bed (Logical)


Application: SQL Server 2008 R2 VM configuration: 4 vCPU, 16 GB RAM Guest OS: Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1
Hyper-V R2

Hypervisor: Microsoft Hyper-V R2 Physical OS: Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1


SAN

Virtual machine images: SQL data and logs:

Fixed VHD Fixed VHD

2011 Enterprise Strategy Group

12

2011 SQL Server Workload


Online Transaction Processing (OLTP)
Online brokerage application One to four SQL Server 2008 R2 VMs 20,000 customer database per VM Out of the box SQL Server settings

2011 Enterprise Strategy Group

13

2011 SQL Server Workload Results


Hyper-V R2 Enabled OLTP Workload Scalability
(OLTP workload, 4 vCPU per VM, Windows 2008 R2 SP1, SQL Server 2008 R2)
Average Transaction Response (ms)
100,000 500

80,000

400

Customer s

60,000

300

40,000

200

20,000

100

Hyper-V R2 Virtual Machines


2011 Enterprise Strategy Group

14

2011 SQL Server Workload Results


Hyper-V R2 Performance and Scalability
(OLTP workload, 4 vCPU per VM, Windows 2008 R2 SP1, SQL Server 2008 R2)
2,000 1,800 1,600

Transactions/sec

1,400 1,200 1,000 800 600 400 200 0

Virtual Machines

2011 Enterprise Strategy Group

15

2011 SQL Server Workload Results


Hyper-V R2 Performance and Scalability
( OLTP workload, 4 vCPU per VM, Windows 2008 R2 SP1, SQL Server 2008 R2)
4

Virtual Machines

500

1,000

1,500

2,000

2,500

3,000

3,500

4,000

SQL Server Batch Requests per Second


2011 Enterprise Strategy Group

16

2011 SQL Server Workload Results


Hyper-V R2 OLTP Performance vs. Native
(OLTP workload, 4 CPU cores, Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 SP1, SQL Server 2008 R2)
Physical Server 1,000 900 800 700 Hyper-V R2 Virtual Machine

Transactions/sec

600 500 400 300 200 100 0

2011 Enterprise Strategy Group

17

2011 SQL Server Results Summary


Hyper-V R2 SQL Server 2008 R2 Workload Scalability
20,000 to 80,000 customers (one to four VMs) Low response times as VMs are added

Near linear performance scalability


Transactions SQL server batch requests per second

Low Hyper-V R2 overhead compared to physical (12%)

2011 Enterprise Strategy Group

18

The Bigger Truth


Why This Matters
Performance scaled with low response times as SQL Server application workloads were consolidated on a physical server. The manageably low performance impact of Hyper-V R2 wont be detected by the vast majority of end-users and applications. The performance, scalability, and low overhead of Hyper-V R2 can be used to reduce costs and improve the manageability, flexibility, and availability of consolidated SQL Server applications.

2011 Enterprise Strategy Group

19

Issues to Consider
Mileage varies; test with your workloads and your data Hyper-V

Included for free with Windows Server 2008 Proven to perform with demanding applications
Size matters

Utility-class SQL Server apps are a great place to start Apps that are resource-constrained on a physical server may not be good candidates for virtualization
High Availability matters Leverage ESG Lab Validations, Microsoft and its partners best practices/proof points
2011 Enterprise Strategy Group

20

Thank You

For more information, please contact Mark Bowker, Senior Analyst 508.381.5153 | mark.bowker@esg-global.com Brian Garrett, Vice President, ESG Lab 508.381.5160 | brian.garrett@esg-global.com

Getting to the bigger truth.

TM

2011 Enterprise Strategy Group

You might also like