SQL Server 2005 on a Dell Scalable Enterprise Foundation

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1 on a Dell Scalable Enterprise Foundation Dell s vision for the scalable enterprise is based on the standardization of core elements of the data center to provide superior value, and encompasses the core tenets of simplified operations, improved utilization, and cost-effective scaling. Using Microsoft SQL Server 2005 as a representative workload on Dell PowerEdge servers, the Dell Scalable Enterprise Technology Center Labs team describes high-level considerations for building a scalable enterprise foundation that can be customized to support aggressive growth. BY TIM ABELS AND TODD MUIRHEAD Related Categories: servers Dell Scalable Enterprise Technology Center Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) Microsoft Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Scalable enterprise Visit for the complete category index. The Dell Scalable Enterprise Technology Center Labs are dedicated to developing and testing representative scalable enterprise architectures and workloads. This first article in an ongoing series examines the advantages of using industry-standard platforms as building blocks to create a foundation for managing an example Microsoft application on servers. Upcoming articles will detail best practices and key decision points regarding specific areas such as deployment, management, virtualization, and scalability of the example Microsoft application, based on actual configurations demonstrated in the Dell Scalable Enterprise Technology Center Labs test bed. This article illustrates how organizations can lay the groundwork for growing enterprise applications from the smallest to the largest possible scale without changing the underlying IT infrastructure. In fact, the Dell Scalable Enterprise Technology Center Labs team reuses many infrastructure components from project to project to show how different applications and OS environments can run on the same basic foundation of industry-standard data center platforms. Standards are the most important part of a scalable enterprise architecture. Dell s scalable enterprise architecture relies on standards-based software and hardware, such as Microsoft on Dell PowerEdge 2850 servers, to enable organizations to scale quickly and flexibly in response to changing business requirements. 1 servers are built on industry-standard Intel Xeon processors that provide 1 The Dell Scalable Enterprise Reference Architecture addresses solutions that are available today and looks ahead to future possibilities, considering how the data center may function as technology continues to mature and additional standards are defined. For a detailed definition of the Dell Scalable Enterprise Reference Architecture, see Dell Scalable Enterprise Architecture by Jimmy Pike and Tim Abels, Dell Inc., August 2005; 32

2 DELL SCALABLE ENTERPRISE TECHNOLOGY CENTER SERIES a common, cost-effective platform for high-performance, highavailability applications. This automated and standardized data center vision of Dell s scalable enterprise strategy is not fully realized today. This is because some high-level data center functions have yet to be standardized and management tools will need to be created around those standards. However, organizations can advance toward this goal by laying the groundwork with industry-standard data center components that can be managed from a central console achieving tangible benefits today from simplified operations, improved resource utilization, and cost-effective scaling. By implementing progressive levels of data center automation in pragmatic, planned phases, organizations can equip their IT infrastructure with components that are consistent with their current business goals and practices, and be prepared to take advantage of the larger scalable enterprise vision as high-level standardization in the data center matures. (For details, see the supplemental online section of this article, Progressive levels of automation for implementing the scalable enterprise, at Building a scalable enterprise foundation The Dell Scalable Enterprise Technology Center Labs team built a scalable enterprise architecture focusing on the example SQL Server 2005 database platform (Figure 1). This example architecture was used to demonstrate how a highly scalable enterprise architecture can be built using industry-standard hardware and software to help achieve the three primary benefits of Dell s scalable enterprise strategy: simplified operations, improved resource utilization, and cost-effective scaling. One centralized enterprise management console simplifies monitoring and operations to a great extent. Other Primary data network Management network Managed nodes Active Directory MOM 2005 SMS 2003 System Center a b VMware ESX Server 2.5 VMware ESX Server 2.5 Tape library Storage area network Dell/EMC CX500 storage array Figure 1. Example configuration implemented in the Dell Scalable Enterprise Technology Center Labs management consoles may be allowed to perform one-time tasks, but whenever possible, all monitoring and alerting should be done through a single management console. The integration This example architecture was used to demonstrate how a highly scalable enterprise architecture can be built using industry-standard hardware and software to help achieve the three primary benefits of Dell s scalable enterprise strategy: simplified operations, improved resource utilization, and cost-effective scaling. of servers into Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005 and Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003 provides consolidated tools for managing, monitoring, and deploying both software and hardware. As a result, administrators can manage hardware monitoring, hardware inventory, and patching with the same tools they use to monitor and deploy SQL Server 2005 software. Virtualization is a key data center platform that contributes significantly to improved resource utilization. Not only does virtualization software enable servers to be provisioned, deployed, and maintained without incurring downtime, but it also provides a fast, flexible way to consolidate underutilized servers. The ability to reprovision servers immediately to meet daily business fluctuations also helps increase the utilization of existing resources. servers running Microsoft Virtual Server 2005, VMware ESX Server, or VMware GSX Server software enable a virtualization platform that allows a single physical server to run many virtual machines (VMs) at the same time with each VM running a separate OS and applications environment while still being managed through a central console. Industry-standard building blocks of hardware and software support the growth of scalable enterprise applications because high-volume, industry-standard data center components are typically less expensive to acquire and maintain than proprietary and custom solutions and they typically attract a larger community of support than proprietary and custom solutions. Advances in performance enabled by 64-bit support and dual-core capability of Intel Xeon processors, combined with scalable standardsbased software, help provide powerful, cost-effective enterprise solutions today and anticipate continued improvement in the design and performance of integrated, cost-effective, industrystandard platforms. Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, May Copyright 2006 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. DELL POWER SOLUTIONS 33

3 Developers Microsoft Visual Studio.NET Systems System administrators MOM Integrating resource management The Microsoft enterprise database platform introduces significant changes in features, tools, and interfaces that enable many advances for enterprises building large-scale, industry-standard database solutions. The integrated Dell and Microsoft stack configured in the Dell Scalable Enterprise Technology Center Labs shows how a single solution can be designed to address the needs of developers, system administrators, database administrators, business analysts, and business integrators. Figure 2 shows the tools that are available to various users in the integrated Microsoft and Dell implementation. MOM 2005 and management packs Tight integration with MOM 2005 enables system administrators to manage database operations in a simplified way. By providing a central operations console that can monitor and manage Microsoft, Active Directory services, Windows Server operating systems as well as Dell PowerEdge server hardware, MOM significantly simplifies data center operations. MOM is extended to manage these components with management packs (MPs). Each MP contains the definitions that MOM needs to be able to monitor and manage the software or hardware. Additionally, MOM allows administrators to extend these MPs with custom definitions and thresholds to tailor MOM to their own environments. Database administrators Microsoft Management Studio Analysis Services and Reporting Services Business analysts Analysis Services and Reporting Services Business integrators Service Broker and Integration Services Figure 2. Tools available to different types of enterprise users in the integrated Dell implementation Microsoft s SQL Server MP for MOM provides predefined enterprise-level availability and configuration monitoring; performance data collection; and default thresholds designed to proactively increase the security, availability, and performance of a SQL Server infrastructure. MOM 2005 can monitor a variety of configurations, including failover clusters, named instances, log shipping, replication clusters, data mirrors, partitioned clusters, 32-bit and 64-bit processors, multi-core processors, and Data Protection Manager for hot backup. For free downloads of the SQL Server MP, the Dell MP, and related MPs for server operating systems, clusters, Virtual Server, Active Directory, and Data Protection Manager, visit mom/managementpacks. The Dell MP, when loaded into the MOM 2005 console, imports predefined computer groups, processing rules, computer attributes, scripts, tasks, the Dell Knowledge Base, and public views for managing Dell-specific applications and hardware. The Dell MP provides the connections for MOM to be able to interact with Dell OpenManage Server Administrator (OMSA) running on Dell servers. This includes links in a Dell MP generated alert to launch the OMSA console for systems experiencing a problem condition. OMSA is a Web-based console that is included with servers. It runs on each server to provide detailed monitoring, alerting, and diagnostic tools for the Dell server hardware. The Dell MP is designed to create tight integration of the Dell OpenManage hardware-level monitoring with MOM s enterpriselevel console. The Dell MP is available as a free download from support.dell.com. Figure 3 shows how a MOM server can manage the SQL Server 2005 platform. Note: The support servers may assist MOM with one-time support services, but MOM provides continual event monitoring, management, and unified reporting. SMS 2003 and servers SMS 2003 Service Pack 1 supports the Inventory Tool for Dell Update, which enables the SMS agent to inventory servers for the relevant Dell hardware patches. Once the inventory is complete, SMS then applies the needed patches in the correct order. SMS can also pull updates down automatically from the Internet to procure and apply current patches for Dell servers. MOM 2005 server and reporting MOM 2005 server and operations data MOM console SQL Server MP Cluster MP Windows MP Dell MP Microsoft System Center reporting (MOM, Active Directory, SMS, and Microsoft update services) Figure 3. MOM 2005 server managing systems, clusters, and Windows 34

4 To accomplish this integration, Microsoft used the Dell Partner Development Kit (PDK) to enable SMS to interact with Dell servers using the appropriate interfaces. SMS can be configured to update Dell PDK components automatically as Dell updates them, or administrators can decide to upgrade manually when needed. When servers running need to be updated and patched, using Microsoft SMS with the integrated Dell tools helps further simplify the management of these systems. The ability to automatically and systematically update the server software and hardware is essential to a highly manageable infrastructure. Virtualization and consolidation Many data center servers and storage systems are underutilized because they are built out to support peak capacity of several departments and multiple locations. Virtualization platforms for the Intel x86 architecture play a principal role in enabling server consolidation and can lead to improved server utilization. on servers provides an excellent example of how servers can be consolidated using standard hardware, proper sizing, and virtualization software. Light applications, including most developer or test databases, can be consolidated using server virtualization. This approach allows many VMs to run on a single physical server, isolating each VM with its own OS and application(s). By allowing many virtual servers to be consolidated onto a single physical server, virtualization enables servers to operate close to the maximum specified processing capacity and corrective reprovisioning can be accomplished quickly when necessary. In this way, many underutilized servers that are each running a single application can be replaced with a single, highly utilized server running many VMs. Through server consolidation, virtualization can lead to cost savings in reduced hardware acquisition and maintenance costs, reduced data center space requirements, and simplified management through a common virtualization layer. MOM 2005 MPs are available for Microsoft Virtual Server, VMware ESX Server, and VMware GSX Server products, enabling management of these virtualization environments as part of the simplified operations design. Dynamic reprovisioning and workload balancing Consolidated hardware and virtualization software can be used as flexible building blocks to enable dynamic reprovisioning and workload balancing. Standardizing and consolidating on Dell PowerEdge servers helps provide a single hardware platform with rich management tools that can be supported with a single system image. A single enterprise manager, managing a single image, is key to reprovisioning across a range of servers. When dynamically reprovisioning systems, enterprises must be careful to provide additional capacity beyond the anticipated workload. Reprovisioning and virtualization techniques enable enterprises to rebalance loads across VMs running on consolidated hardware platforms so they use resources efficiently, enabling a dynamic response to changing business conditions. servers provide a hardware platform that supports a common OS image, which enables easy reprovisioning of servers running the common system image to support various tasks. For example, 1850, PowerEdge, and PowerEdge 2850 servers share a common system image, whether they are based on single-core or dual-core processors. A major restriction when scaling 32-bit SQL Server 2000 databases was the 4 GB limit for directly addressable memory. Address Windowing Extensions (AWE) allowed 32-bit Windows to address up to 32 GB of memory for SQL Consolidated hardware and virtualization software can be used as flexible building blocks to enable dynamic reprovisioning and workload balancing. Standardizing and consolidating on Dell PowerEdge servers helps provide a single hardware platform with rich management tools that can be supported with a single system image. Server 2000 Enterprise Edition, but it was not practical for many memory-intensive, high-performance enterprise applications due to AWE address translation overhead, and the 4 GB limit could be extended only for a single SQL service and cache. In comparison, 64-bit Windows Server 2003 with 64-bit running on 64-bit servers is designed to directly address all SQL services up to the maximum amount of memory supported by the hardware, with no overhead penalties. Leading price/performance examples Dell has worked with Microsoft to provide a cost-effective, scalable database platform integrating servers and applications. servers are available with high-performance components, including dual-core Intel Xeon processors, PCI Express expansion slots, double data rate 2 (DDR2) memory, and on-board management controllers. For example, a with a dual-core Intel Xeon processor running in Extended Memory 64 Technology (EM64T) 64-bit mode broke the $1 cost per transaction barrier on the TPC-C Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, May Copyright 2006 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. DELL POWER SOLUTIONS 35

5 System 2850 tpmc Price/tpmC (US$) Processor 38, dual-core Intel Xeon processor at 2.8 GHz, 2 2 MB cache 28, single-core Intel Xeon processor at 2.8 GHz, 2 MB cache 28, single-core Intel Xeon processor at 3.4 GHz, 2 MB cache 26, single-core Intel Xeon processor at 3.4 GHz, 1 MB cache Source: Top Ten TPC-C by Price/Performance Version 5 Results as of April 13, 2006; tpcc/results/tpcc_price_perf_results.asp. For detailed configurations, visit the preceding TPC-C results page and click on each system, and then click Executive Summary. Figure 4. Four top TPC-C results by price/performance benchmark 2 using a configuration that included. The second, third, and fourth best price/performance TPC-C results were also servers, with configurations that included SQL Server 2000 (see Figure 4). Based on these TPC-C results, the upgrade to dual-core and improved the price/performance by 30 to 50 percent. These results show the potential for improved performance across a wide range of SQL applications and servers in the data center. Advancing scalable enterprise goals Standardization and integration are at the heart of Dell s scalable enterprise architecture. By deploying industry-standard data center components such as servers and SQL Server 2005 database applications together with virtualization technology, any size organization from a small firm starting out with a stand-alone server environment to a huge global enterprise with an established infrastructure in place can build a highly manageable, scalable foundation. Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 and Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003 are instrumental in simplifying operations, improving resource utilization, and scaling cost-effectively because they enable administrators to monitor and manage the integrated environment including SQL Server 2005, Windows Server 2003, and servers from a central console. By demonstrating how to provision, deploy, and manage representative scalable enterprise architectures, the Dell Scalable Enterprise Technology Center shares best practices and identifies key decision points that can help organizations benefit today and lay the groundwork to take full advantage of the scalable enterprise approach as high-level standards for data center automation mature. Tim Abels is a senior software architect on the Dell Scalable Enterprise Technology Center Labs team. Tim has an M.S. in Computer Science from Purdue University. Licensing considerations Dell offers the license as an option that can be purchased with a PowerEdge server. Microsoft Windows and SQL Server 2005 licensing enable a dramatic improvement in price/ performance because they are both based on sockets instead of cores. For example, on PowerEdge 6800 or PowerEdge 6850 servers with dual-core processors and Intel Hyper- Threading Technology provides eight cores and 16 threads for the same licensing fee as SQL Server 2000 on single-core processors, which provides only four cores and eight threads. 3 Similarly, Windows Server 2003 Release 2 (R2), Enterprise Edition, improves licensing by enabling up to four instances of SQL Server in VMs on a single physical server. The VMs can be hosted with Microsoft Virtual Server, VMware ESX Server, or VMware GSX Server and can include instances of Windows Server 2003 R2, Standard Edition or Enterprise Edition. Additionally, the license limit of four VMs applies to running instances only, allowing for many inactive system images on a storage area network or file servers. 4 Todd Muirhead is a senior engineering consultant on the Dell Scalable Enterprise Technology Center Labs team. Todd has a B.A. in Computer Science from the University of North Texas. FOR MORE INFORMATION Dell scalable enterprise: Microsoft SQL Server on Dell and SQL Server services: Microsoft Windows and server management: MOM 2005 and management packs: SMS 2003 and Inventory Tool for Dell Update: Virtualization resources: For more information about TPC-C, tpmc, and the Transaction Processing Performance Council, visit 3 For details about Microsoft s licensing policy for multi-core processors, visit 4 For details about Microsoft licensing for Windows Server 2003 R2 in a virtualized environment, visit 36