FAST SQL SERVER BACKUP AND RESTOREWITH PURE STORAGE

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

EXECUTIVE OVERVIEW .......................................................................................................................... 3

GOALS AND OBJECTIVES ...................................................................................................................... 3

AUDIENCE ................................................................................................................................................. 3

PURE STORAGE INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................... 4

SOLUTION SUMMARY ............................................................................................................................. 4

FLASHBLADE USE CASES ...................................................................................................................... 6

TEST CONFIGURATION ........................................................................................................................... 6

IMPLEMENTATION STEPS ...................................................................................................................... 8

PERFORMANCE RESULTS ..................................................................................................................... 13

SUMMARY ................................................................................................................................................ 15

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GOALS AND OBJECTIVES

The test cases shown here are intended to emphasize the high levels of throughput, workload consolidation,

minimized RTO and RPO, and ease of administration that these connected solutions provide. Though we will focus

on Microsoft SQL Server in our examples, the use cases shown here are easily extensible to other workloads and

hypervisors, such as vSphere, VSI, and Hyper-V®, just to name a few.

• Define use cases for employing FlashBlade as a backup target in a SQL Server environment

• Provide high-level implementation steps for a given test configuration

• Document performance metrics when restoring a SQL Server database from a FlashBlade backup source

with a given configuration

• Document performance metrics when backing up a SQL Server database to a FlashBlade backup target

with a given configuration

AUDIENCE

This document is for database, system, and storage administrators responsible for maintaining SQL Server, storage,

and network environments.

EXECUTIVE OVERVIEW

Microsoft’s SQL Server relational database offering continues to be a primary

data store for organizations. As the amount of data increases from a variety of

sources, SQL Server database administrators have less time available to perform

the essential tasks of backing up data and routine backup testing validation.

While traditional backup appliances are designed to store data, they are notoriously

slow at rehydrating and recovering data. The data restore process is utilized

more than ever before as DBAs iterate on their code with up-to-date databases.

Pure Storage® FlashBlade™ helps reduce the time for both backup and restore

operations by providing high bandwidth performance and simple management.

PURE STORAGE INTRODUCTION

Ready for the Big + Fast Data of Tomorrow

The past decade saw the rise of “big data” – and storage solutions designed to allow petabytes of data to be

centralized and served for everything from data analytics to scientific discovery to movie rendering. These storage

solutions were big, but often slow, as they took advantage of bigger and bigger hard disk drives, the last mechanical

relics in today’s otherwise all-silicon data center. However, with the rise of cloud-native applications, needs and

expectations are changing.

Big but slow is not good enough anymore, and the dramatic inefficiency of rows and rows of spinning disk in the data

center just cannot keep up with the efficiency demands of today. What if an all-flash storage platform could deliver big

and fast for tomorrow’s data, and be simple and efficient enough to be the platform for your cloud-native applications?

FlashBlade is a ground-breaking, scale-out flash storage system from Pure Storage. Engineered with a massively

parallel architecture from software to hardware, FlashBlade has emerged as the industry-leading solution for use

cases requiring the highest performance, like artificial intelligence and modern analytics. Many customers have tapped

this performance to modernize their backup and recovery infrastructure.

FAST

• Elastic performance that

grows with data, up to 17 GB/s

• Always-fast, from small to

large files

• Massively parallel

architecture from software

to flash

BIG

• Petabytes of capacity

• Elastic concurrency,

up to 10s of thousands

of clients

• 10s of billions of objects

and files

SIMPLE

• Evergreen – don’t rebuy

TBs you already own

• “Tuned for Everything”

design, no manual

optimizations required

• Scale-out everything

instantly by simply

adding blades

SOLUTION SUMMARY

Problem

Database backup and restore completion times are

increasing due to fast-growing amounts of data. This

puts strain on infrastructures, increasing database

maintenance times.

Solution

FlashBlade’s architecture is flexible, and efficiently utilizes

flash-based storage to increase bandwidth performance in SQL Server environments.

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Results

Using FlashBlade (with a minimal configuration of 7 blades) as a backup target in a SQL Server environment resulted in

1.9GB/s throughput and a completion time of 14 minutes and 26 seconds. (3.2TB database, 1.6TB of realistic data in the

test configuration.)

Blade

SCALE-OUT COMPUTE + FLASH

• The Blade is the scaling unit of FlashBlade – adding Blades linearly scales capacity, performance, metadata,

and clients.

• Each blade contains a low-power Intel XEON System-on-a-Chip processor and FPGA ARM cores to run Purity

for FlashBlade (Purity//FB) software.

• Blades contain raw flash chips, DRAM, as well as integrated NV-RAM protection to guard write operations

from sudden power loss.

• Blades are available in 8, 17, and 52TB capacities; blades can be mixed and matched and hot-added into

the system.

• Blades were designed with ultra-low latency in mind, leveraging PCIe to connect flash chips to CPUs, and

low-latency Purity Fabric to communicate with other blades in the system.

Purity//FB

SCALE-OUT STORAGE SOFTWARE

• Plug-and-go deployment that takes minutes, not days.

• Non-disruptive upgrades and hot-swap everything.

• Fewer parts = more reliability.

Purity//FB

LOW-LATENCY, SOFTWARE-DEFINED NETWORKING

• Fewer parts = more reliability.

• FlashBlade includes a built-in 40Gb Ethernet fabric, used for both communication between Blades and

to clients.

• The Purity Fabric implements low-latency proprietary protocols bypassing the TCP/IP stack, separating

client, data, and metadata traffic in the system via QoS.

• Each chassis includes 8x 40Gb/s Ethernet ports for both client connectivity and direct chassis interconnect.

FLASHBLADE USE CASES

SQL Server Backup Restore Operation

Backing up a SQL Server database is one of the most important tasks for a database administrator. It is not really a backup

until it is off the primary database storage subsystem and the process has been validated. Optimizing backup and restore

completion time is a high priority. FlashBlade increases bandwidth with its parallel architecture to help achieve this.

SQL Server Backup Restore Validation

Scheduled backup restore testing is essential for backup validation. A backup should be tested outside of the

production system regularly to ensure it is free of corruption, is able to be restored successfully, and the data is

accessible. FlashBlade decreases the completion time to restore for this validation process.

SQL Server Development Test Environments

Organizations can have a variety of database environments outside of production. Development, test, staging, etc. often

need database copies quickly. FlashBlade decreases the completion time to restore databases for these environments.

TEST CONFIGURATION

Note: To ensure configuration, performance, and compatibility are optimal, please reference and apply

the following Pure Storage Best Practice Guides:

• Microsoft Windows Server Best Practices Guide

• FlashBlade User Guide

• SQL Server Best Practices Guide

COMPUTE INFORMATION/PARAMETER

VENDOR CISCO

MODEL C460 M4

PROCESSOR QTY.(2) INTEL E7-8890 2.20 GHZ V4 24 CORE

DRAM 3 TB

NETWORK INTERFACE CARD

QTY. (2) INTEL NETWORK ADAPTER XL710-Q2 40GB/S

• TEAMED

• TEAMING MODE LACP

• LOAD BALANCING MODE DYNAMIC

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NETWORK INFORMATION/PARAMETER

STORAGE PROTOCOL SMB 2.1

NETWORK SWITCH ARISTA DCS-7050QX-32S-F

OPERATING SYSTEM INFORMATION/PARAMETER

WINDOWS SERVER 2016 BUILD 14393

POWER MANAGEMENT HIGH PERFORMANCE ENABLED

LOCAL SECURITY POLICY LOCK PAGES IN MEMORY ENABLED

PERFORM VOLUME MAINTENANCE TASKS INSTANT FILE INITIALIZATION ENABLED

DATABASE SOURCE STORAGE INFORMATION/PARAMETER

MODEL FLASHARRAY //X 70

OPERATING ENVIRONMENT PURITY 4.10.4

CAPACITY 79 TB

BACKUP TARGET STORAGE INFORMATION/PARAMETER

MODEL FLASHBLADE

CONFIGURATION 7 BLADES

OPERATING ENVIRONMENT ELASTICITY 2.0.6

CAPACITY 58.78 TB

WORKLOAD INFORMATION/PARAMETER

SQL SERVER BACKUP OPERATION

• BUFFERCOUNT = 6144.

• BLOCKSIZE = 65536.

• MAXTRANSFERSIZE=4194304 (4MB).

• SEVEN BACKUP FILES (WRITER THREADS).

• SQL SERVER BACKUP COMPRESSION ENABLED.

• CHECKSUM ENABLED.

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SQL SERVER RESTORE OPERATION

• BUFFERCOUNT = 6144.

• BLOCKSIZE = 65536.

• MAXTRANSFERSIZE=65536.

• SEVEN WINDOWS VOLUMES (READER THREADS).

• SQL SERVER COMPRESSED BACKUP.

• CHECKSUM ENABLED.

DATABASE APPLICATION INFORMATION/PARAMETER

MICROSOFT SQL SERVER ENTERPRISE 2016 13.0.4446 (X64)

DATABASE SIZE 3.2TB

DATA SIZE (REALISTIC DATA) 1.6GB

TRACE FLAGS (FOR TESTING PURPOSES ONLY)ENABLE DATABASE BACKUP INFO AND OUTPUT TO ERROR LOG

DBCC TRACEON (3213, 3605, -1)

IMPLEMENTATION STEPS

Note: To ensure configuration, performance, and compatibility are optimal, please reference and apply

the following Pure Storage Best Practice Guides:

• Microsoft Windows Server Best Practices Guide

• FlashBlade User Guide

• SQL Server Best Practices Guide

1. Network Infrastructure

• Designate IP addresses for compute host network interface cards, FlashBlade, FlashBlade VIP (virtual IP

address), to be used within the same subnet.

• Configure switch to be used with FlashBlade and compute host.

2. Deploy FlashBlade

• Assign IP address information to FlashBlade.

• Assign IP address information to FlashBlade VIP (virtual IP address).

• Join FlashBlade to the existing Active Directory Domain.

• Create a number of storage SMB file systems to correspond with each backup file used. Seven are used

in this example.

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FIGURE 1. Creation of SMB File Systems

• Create a number of network data VIPs to correspond with each blade installed. Seven are used in

this example.

FIGURE 2. Creation of network data VIPs

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3. Windows Compute Host

• Assign IP address information to the network interface card.

• Team network interface cards if applicable and assign IP address. If network teaming is used, set teaming

mode accordingly (static teaming, switch independent, LACP), depending on the type of network switch

used. Set load-balancing mode accordingly (address hash, Hyper-V port, and dynamic); this is

environment dependent.

• Map SMB shares from FlashBlade to Windows with drive letter and credentials. Use SMB share use

persistence to ensure reconnect after reboot.

• Check status of SMB share mapping to local Windows drive letters.

FIGURE 3. SMB share mapping in local Windows drives

4. SQL Server Instance

• In SQL Server, add backup devices to correspond to the SMB share local drive letters.

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FIGURE 4. Adding backup devices in SQL Server

• If applicable when the host SQL Server instance is not a member of the domain the FlashBlade participates

in, use the xp_cmdshell and Windows network commands net use to assign the Windows-mapped drive

letters as backup devices for use in SQL Server.

Note: The number of source database reader threads SQL Server assigns to a backup/restore operation is

dependent on how many logical Windows device volumes are used for the SQL Server database files on the

primary source storage.

Backup performance may vary and be limited to the number of source database reader threads used in a given

configuration.

The number of underlying physical storage subsystem disks, devices, etc., does not affect SQL Server thread

creation with regard to a backup/restore operation.

Tests for this configuration were performed with seven reader and write threads.

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In this source database file example, seven reader threads are used for Windows logical drives A, E, F, O, P, Q, and R.

FIGURE 5. Reader threads in a source database file

In this source database file example, one reader thread is used for Windows logical drive X.

FIGURE 6. Reader threads in a source database file

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PERFORMANCE RESULTS

SQL Server native backup/restore test completion time and bandwidth metrics.

SQL Server Backup to FlashBlade Target

FIGURE 7. SQL Server native backup/restore metrics

• Database 3.2TB, data size 1.6TB (realistic data)

• Completion time 14 minutes 26 seconds

• BACKUP DATABASE successfully processed 210,754,282 pages in 863.430 seconds (1906.949 MB/sec)

• T-SQL was used for this backup test to FlashBlade

FIGURE 8. Backup confirmation

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SQL Server Restore from FlashBlade Source

FIGURE 9. SQL restore to target from FlashBlade

• Database 3.2TB, data size 1.6TB (realistic data)

• Completion time 18 minutes 11 seconds

• RESTORE DATABASE successfully processed 210,754,282 pages in 1089.687 seconds (1511.000 MB/sec)

• T-SQL was used for this restore test to FlashArray //X

FIGURE 10. Restore confirmation

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SUMMARY

SQL Server has evolved and become the mission-critical platform of choice for many organizations. As your

data platform evolves, so should your storage – backed by the FlashBlade product offering. Utilizing our all-flash

technology reduces the time and complexity involved in performing these essential database backup and restore

operations for SQL Server database administration.

SALES@PURESTORAGE.COM | 800-379-PURE | @PURESTORAGE

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