1© Copyright 2012 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

EMC Mission Critical Infrastructure For Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Accelerated With VFCacheEMC VFCache, EMC Symmetrix VMAX 10K, EMC FAST VP, SQL Server AlwaysOn Availability Groups, VMware vSphere

EMC Solutions Group Strategic Solutions Engineering

2© Copyright 2012 EMC Corporation. All rights reserved.

Content

EMC Solutions Group Strategic Solutions Engineering

• Architecture Design • Configure VFCache for a Virtual Machine• Enable VFCache• Performance Impact of VFCache on a system

with storage optimized for the SQL workload• Performance Impact of VFCache on a system

with storage bottleneck• Q&A

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Architecture Design

AlwaysOn Replication

VFCache

Storage Design for SQL Server

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Configure VFCache for VM

VFCache-config.mp4

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Test Results:

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Test Results— Enabling VFCache

1 VFCache LUN: 278 GB

16 data LUN:1.8 TB

Time to reach thesteady state:

1 hour16:

2016:

2516:

3016:

5517:

0017:

0517:

1517:

2017:

3017:

3517:

4017:

5017:

5518:

0018:

1018:

150

5,000

10,000

15,000

20,000

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

Read/write IOPS change after enabling VFCache on system with storage bottle-

neck

IOPS latency ( ms)

IOPS

late

ncy

(ms)

Enable VFCacheSteady state

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Latency (ms)VF Cache enabled?

No YesRead 4 2write 1 2

Transaction 4 2

Host IOPS VMAX 10K front end IOPS TPS0

5000

10000

15000

20000

25000

30000

23938 24698

2193

23916

14987

2585

VFCache impact on system with optimized storage

Before enable VF cache After VFCache stablized

Same workload before/after

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host CPU ESX CPU62.00%

64.00%

66.00%

68.00%

70.00%

72.00%

74.00%

76.00%

78.00%

80.00%

67.45%

77.80%

67.85%

78.20%

CPU usage before/after VFCache on system with optimized storage

before enable VFCache after VFCache stablized

• The CPU usage was very similar before and after VFCache was enabled, indicating that the VFCache had minimal impact on the CPU usage.

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Host IOPS without VFCache

VMAX 10k IOPS without VFCache

Host IOPS with VFCache

VMAX 10k IOPS with VFCache

0

5,000

10,000

15,000

20,000

25,000

30,000

21,964 22,429 21,930

12,409

1,974 2,269 1,986

2,578

Read/Write ratio on system with optimized storage

read/write ratiowrite read

92/8 92/8 92/8

81/19

Same workload before/after

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0.00

0.10

0.20

0.30

0.40

0.21

0.25

0.130.15

Average SQL Server response time on system with op-timized storage

without VFCache with VFCache

Aver

age

resp

onse

tim

e( s

ec)

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Latency (ms)VF Cache enabled?No Yes

Read 11 4write 1 3

Transaction 10 4

Host IOPS VMAX 10K front end IOPS TPS0

5000

10000

15000

20000

25000

1412315475

1225

23602

13798

2229

VFCache impact on storage system with storage bottleneck

Before enable VF cache After VFCache stablized

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host CPU ESX CPU0.00%

10.00%

20.00%

30.00%

40.00%

50.00%

60.00%

70.00%

15.50%

24.63%

51.43%

65.57%

CPU usage before/after enabling VFCache on system with storage bottleneck

before enable VFCache after VFCache stablized

• The CPU usage was increased about three times after VFCache was enabled. Because the SQL Server transaction increased, the increase of CPU usage was expected.

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Host IOPS without VFCache

VMAX 10k IOPS without VFCache

Host IOPS with VFCache

VMAX 10k IOPS with VFCache

0

5,000

10,000

15,000

20,000

25,000

12,316 13,537

21,379

11,564

1,8071,938

2,223

2,234

Read/Write ratio on system with storage bottleneck

write read

90/10

84/16

Read/write ratio

87/13 87/13

Same workload before/after

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Result

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Update

0.00

0.10

0.20

0.30

0.40

0.50

0.60

0.70

0.80

0.63

0.70

0.340.39

Average SQL Server Response time on system with storage bottleneck

without VFCache with VFCache

seco

nd

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Summary VFCache is easy and straightforward to setup, configure, manage and

monitor in VShpere environment. With the storage system optimized for SQL Server load, VFCache

offloads read I/O from the storage while reducing the disk latency. With storage optimized for SQL Server load, VFCache enables more

SQL Server transactions processed and while reducing disk latency significantly.

VFCache can lower SQL Server response time for queries that have more reads and high response time

VFCache has minimal impact on system resources. The initial warm-up time for VFCache to reach significant performance

improvement varies for each environment. In our environment, it took about 1 hour.

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EMC Mission Critical Infrastructure For Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Accelerated With VFCache

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EMC Solutions Group Strategic Solutions Engineering

Q&A