60 2012 Issue 02 | dell.com/powersolutions
Data managementSpecialsection
Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2012 Issue 2. Copyright © 2012 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2012 Issue 2. Copyright © 2012 Dell Inc. All rights reserved.
Microsoft SQL Server database
deployments play a crucial role
in enterprise operations. And
as they become repositories
for everything from sales transactions
to customer information, they continue to
grow. Mission-critical SQL Server applications
require maximum database uptime and
data availability. In the event of a failure, data
must be restored quickly and accurately.
To maintain the integrity and resiliency of
SQL Server applications, organizations can
capitalize on key features provided by Dell
Compellent Storage Center™ storage area
network (SAN) arrays and enhancements
in SQL Server 2012.
For example, Compellent automated
tiered storage enables highly active data,
such as SQL Server log files, to reside on
high-performance drives while moving
less active data to lower tiers. The Dell
Compellent Data Instant Replay™ feature
provides application-consistent snapshots
that help ensure accurate and complete
restore points in the event of data failure.
And AlwaysOn features in SQL Server
2012—availability groups and failover
cluster instances—enable administrators to
configure availability at both the database
and the instance level.
Considering the critical role
of database servers
Databases are among the most important
IT elements in many organizations. They
often form the foundation of the application
infrastructure, supporting business-critical
functions from decision support systems to
online transaction processing. Additionally,
the explosion of data in today’s enterprises
The rapid growth of data has made data availability a
critical part of IT strategy. Dell™ Compellent™ storage and
Microsoft® SQL Server® 2012 database software leverage
snapshots, tiering, and other capabilities to enhance
database resiliency.
By Maggie Smith, Mike Matthews, and Nicholas Sweere
Boosting database availability through intelligent virtualized storage
dell.com/powersolutions | 2012 Issue 02 61
Data managementSpecialsection
Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2012 Issue 2. Copyright © 2012 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2012 Issue 2. Copyright © 2012 Dell Inc. All rights reserved.
is accelerating the growth of database footprints.
The Microsoft SQL Server database platform
and applications can be particularly important,
because they are frequently used to manage
core business functions ranging from sales and
marketing to order administration and financials.
To illustrate, although applications such as
Microsoft Exchange messaging software are
vital, IT administrators can take them down
for maintenance at off-hours during the day—
but doing so can still affect the organization.
However, if a financial institution using SQL Server
to run core financial modeling allowed that
database to become unavailable, the downtime
could result in significant loss of productivity,
revenue, and customer goodwill. Similarly, a
global company that depends on its Web site
for 24/7 online sales cannot afford to have the
underlying database offline.
For these reasons, organizations require
database resiliency to help ensure continuity of
business operations. Selecting the right storage
is essential for meeting these requirements—
organizations need available, responsive,
and flexible storage that can grow with their
databases. Dell Compellent storage supports
high-availability features introduced in SQL
Server 2012 and includes capabilities that enable
administrators to manage databases in a way that
helps ensure continuous uptime and resiliency.
(For more information on how Compellent
and Microsoft virtualization technologies work
together to boost IT efficiency, see the sidebar,
“Heightening business agility.”)
Examining database resiliency features
Microsoft SQL Server 2012 offers several
capabilities that enhance database availability
and data protection. It includes SQL Server
AlwaysOn, a high-availability and disaster-
recovery feature that helps improve application
failover time to increase the availability of
mission-critical applications.
AlwaysOn availability groups, introduced
in SQL Server 2012, help ensure availability of
application databases with an integrated set
of options, including automatic and manual
failover of a logical group of databases,
support for up to four secondary replicas, fast
application failover, and automatic page repair.
AlwaysOn failover cluster instances support
multisite clustering across subnets, which enables
failover of SQL Server instances across data
centers. This fast, predictable failover capability
facilitates quick application recovery.
In addition, SQL Server 2012 introduces key
features such as in-memory column store for
increased speed and fast response to queries.
Data quality services help ensure the integrity
of data and the accuracy of reports. And
enhanced data modeling capabilities address
the diverse requirements of business intelligence
users across an organization.
Extending data protection, availability,
and performance
IT organizations can leverage storage-based
resiliency features to enhance and extend
Microsoft SQL Server database resiliency—if
the storage selected meets at least three key
requirements. First, storage must be built to
avoid downtime through hardware redundancy
and on-the-fly administration. Second, storage-
based business continuity technologies such
as snapshots are essential for protecting
Heightening business agility Together with advanced storage virtualization technologies from Dell
Compellent, end-to-end server virtualization and management tools from
Microsoft help IT decision makers simplify data center management—enabling
organizations to adapt quickly and flexibly to changing business conditions.
Capitalizing on Compellent virtual storage for server consolidation allows
organizations to advance IT efficiency in several major ways:
• Maximize utilization of storage resources
• Minimize data center footprint
• Heighten power and cooling efficiency
• Optimize total cost of ownership
A virtual data center environment based on Microsoft and Compellent
technologies is designed to ensure continuous availability and improved
disaster recovery through instant local virtual machine recovery and simple
replication of virtual servers and storage.
Replays for application integrity
Dell Compellent Replay Manager integrates with Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) to help ensure time-consistent replays of Microsoft Exchange, SQL Server, and Microsoft Hyper-V® volumes. In this video, discover how to use Replay Manager to schedule and manage replays for maintaining application integrity.
qrs.ly/831tje6
62 2012 Issue 02 | dell.com/powersolutions
Data managementSpecialsection
Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2012 Issue 2. Copyright © 2012 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2012 Issue 2. Copyright © 2012 Dell Inc. All rights reserved.
mission-critical application data. Finally,
storage that includes next-generation data
efficiencies can automate data movement
and optimize for both performance and
capacity. Organizations can leverage the
capabilities of Dell Compellent storage
in these ways to extend the availability
of essential application data stored in
SQL Server databases.
Of course, the need for outage
recovery is avoided altogether if an
outage does not occur in the first
place. Hardware redundancy built into
Compellent storage allows a controller
or hard drive to fail without interrupting
data availability to end users. Compellent
storage also enables administrators to add
capacity and performance dynamically—
an organization can increase the size of
the storage volume, switch out hot-
swappable drives, or add new drives
without taking down the SQL Server
database. Controllers can be upgraded
to adapt to new demands while the SAN
stays up and running.
If a system failure occurs, organizations
can greatly mitigate the impact of
downtime on the customer experience
through automatic and transparent
recovery using Dell Compellent Replay
Manager™ software. Replay Manager works
with Compellent Data Instant Replay to
provide application-aware, time-consistent
snapshots, or replays, for Microsoft SQL
Server (see Figure 1).
The Dell Compellent Data Progression™
feature provides automated storage
tiering, which helps minimize latency for
mission-critical SQL Server applications
by automatically moving infrequently
used data from tier 1 to a lower storage
tier. This capability is especially useful in
data warehouse environments, which
typically contain large amounts of static
data. Administrators often partition data
to improve manageability, separating out
old data and designating it as read only.
To facilitate and help manage this often
complex process, administrators can use
Data Progression to establish policies
for aging data and automatically move
infrequently accessed data to lower-tier,
cost-effective storage, freeing the high-
performance tier 1 storage for active data.
Data Progression enables
improvements in application performance.
With the most important data on tier 1
drives, disk reads and writes are fast,
which in turn can speed up applications
or databases accessing data on those
drives. If lower-tier data comes back into
frequent use, Compellent storage returns
it to the top tier. (For more information on
how Compellent storage can boost the
performance of SQL Server databases, see
the sidebar, “Accelerating insights.”)
Recovering local and remote
databases
Together, Microsoft and Dell Compellent
technologies enable organizations
to quickly and efficiently safeguard
geographically dispersed Microsoft SQL
Server 2012 databases. These technologies
leverage replays to continuously protect
data from server failures, viruses, human
error, and other disruptive events.
Compellent Data Instant Replay is
designed to deliver continuous data
protection by taking multiple space-efficient
snapshots throughout the day. Once a
base snapshot is taken of data written
to a volume, only incremental changes
are captured in ongoing snapshots. This
technique helps save disk space and speed
local recovery. Administrators can take
thousands of snapshots in short intervals for
recovery to a previously known state. Real-
time intelligence and virtual pointers keep
associated snapshots in sync.
The ability to take thousands of
replays of SQL Server databases allows
organizations to efficiently back up
large amounts of data with minimal user
interruption and to recover data quickly.
Replays enable administrators to back
up even large SQL Server databases in
a matter of seconds. Those replays can
then be used to recover data to a server
just as quickly, using a simple point-and-
click interface or using Microsoft Windows
PowerShell™ scripts.
By leveraging integration with Microsoft
Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS),
Compellent Replay Manager helps ensure
data remains consistent even if SQL Server
is running when the snapshot is captured.
SQL Server remains online during the
snapshot process, but I/O between
SQL Server and Compellent storage is
momentarily quiesced—or paused—to
enable point-in-time accuracy. Figure 1. Taking an application-aware, time-consistent snapshot using Dell Compellent Replay Manager
dell.com/powersolutions | 2012 Issue 02 63
Data managementSpecialsection
Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2012 Issue 2. Copyright © 2012 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2012 Issue 2. Copyright © 2012 Dell Inc. All rights reserved.
VSS coordinates the function and
timing of the OS, application, and
storage, enabling Data Instant Replay to
take replays without error, disruption, or
downtime. After the replay is taken, the
SQL Server application resumes normal
operation without disrupting end-user
access to enterprise data.
The Dell Compellent Remote Instant
Replay™ feature leverages the same space-
efficient snapshot technology between
local and remote sites for cost-effective
disaster recovery and business continuity.
Following initial site synchronization,
only incremental changes in enterprise
data need to be replicated. Storage
administrators using Remote Instant Replay
can choose between Fibre Channel and
native IP connectivity for data transfer.
Maintaining the integrity and
resiliency of database applications
Dell Compellent storage works side by
side with the native AlwaysOn feature
of Microsoft SQL Server 2012 to offer
reliable, consistent protection of SQL
Server databases. IT decision makers
weighing the benefits of native backup
and storage-based snapshots can
implement both approaches in the
same environment. In some cases, data
protection strategies such as nightly
off-site backups of the full database
using native capabilities of SQL Server
2012 will meet organizational needs.
Other tier 1 applications and databases
may require more frequent backups.
Compellent storage can play an important
role in minimizing backup windows,
using replays to help reduce the intervals
between recovery points and recovery
time objective targets.
In the end, the high-availability,
data protection capabilities of
Compellent storage and SQL Server
share the ultimate goal of protecting
today’s deluge of business-critical
application data and helping IT
administrators to meet ever-increasing
service-level agreements.
Learn more
Dell Compellent storage:
dell.com/compellent
Dell Compellent Replay Manager:
qrs.ly/js1u63g
Microsoft SQL Server 2012:
microsoft.com/sqlserver
Authors
Maggie Smith is a senior marketing manager
at Dell. She is focused on storage solutions for
Microsoft applications and has over 30 years of
experience marketing technology products.
Mike Matthews is a product specialist for Dell
Compellent, focused on helping customers use
Microsoft SQL Server on Dell Compellent storage.
Nicholas Sweere is a product marketing manager
for Dell Compellent storage, focused on core
applications and third-party integrations.
Accelerating insightsAs expensive as healthcare is in the United States,
government and private insurance companies must
verify the integrity of claims after they have been paid in
order to recoup any overpayments. These organizations
turn to Las Vegas–based HealthDataInsights Inc. (HDI), a
technology-enabled healthcare services company that
specializes in the identification and recoupment of claim
overpayments to providers.
The company’s profitability depends largely on how fast
it can load its customers’ claims data—as much as 2 TB a
month—as well as how quickly it can analyze that data and
return results. The company optimized this process using
Dell PowerEdge™ R910 servers running Microsoft SQL Server
2008 but quickly identified its storage area network (SAN) as a
performance bottleneck.
After replacing its legacy SAN with the Dell Compellent
Storage Center SAN, HDI quickly saw improvements in
performance and disk utilization. For example, using Storage
Center to store and manage its SQL Server databases, HDI
obtained a 60 percent improvement in performance on data
loads and an 84 percent performance improvement on SQL
queries compared to the legacy SAN.
With its legacy SAN, HDI found the process of allocating
SAN space to be extremely time-consuming, and the drives
were poorly utilized. Because Compellent storage virtualizes
the underlying arrays, storage utilization was much more
efficient—HDI achieved a 60 percent reduction in the number
of disk drives required compared to the legacy system.
As well as enabling HDI to improve its data analysis
capabilities, Compellent storage helps HDI ensure high
availability through fully redundant hardware and advanced
failover features—continuously protecting critical claims data
against downtime and disaster. For more information, visit
qrs.ly/uo1u550.
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