SQL Server 2016 on Dell EMC XC Series Reference Architecture

Transcription

1 SQL Server 2016 on Dell EMC XC Series Reference Architecture Abstract This white paper highlights the reference architecture and best practices for SQL Server 2016 with the Dell XC Series Family. April 2018 Dell EMC Reference Architecture

2 Revisions Date April 2018 Description Initial release Acknowledgements This paper was produced by the following members of the Dell EMC storage engineering team: Author: Kailas Goliwadekar The information in this publication is provided as is. Dell Inc. makes no representations or warranties of any kind with respect to the information in this publication, and specifically disclaims implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Use, copying, and distribution of any software described in this publication requires an applicable software license Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries. All Rights Reserved. Dell, EMC, Dell EMC and other trademarks are trademarks of Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries. Other trademarks may be trademarks of their respective owners. Dell believes the information in this document is accurate as of its publication date. The information is subject to change without notice. 2 SQL Server 2016 on Dell EMC XC Series Reference Architecture

3 Table of contents Revisions... 2 Acknowledgements... 2 Table of contents... 3 Executive summary Introduction Objectives Audience Terminology Technology overview Dell EMC XC Series Hyper-Converged Appliances XC Series architecture AOS 5.5 features Hyper-V 2016 features Discrete Device Assignment DDA in XC Series SQL Server 2016 features Solution reference architecture SQL Server database VM configuration Disk layout Memory configuration CPU configuration Sample test setup XC Series cluster information Network configuration XC Series benefits Best practices Dell EMC XC Series SQL Server Conclusion Technical support and resources Related resources Additional resources A Appendix A.1 Physical configuration SQL Server 2016 on Dell EMC XC Series Reference Architecture

4 Executive summary This document provides the reference architecture for deployment of SQL Server 2016 on Dell EMC XC Series with Hyper-V 2016 and Windows Server 2016 installed. The document also highlights the advantages of Discrete Direct Assignment feature on Hyper-V 2016, which enables increased performance. The Dell EMC XC Series is a hyper-converged solution that combines storage, compute, networking, and virtualization using industry-leading Dell EMC PowerEdge servers and Nutanix software. By combining the hardware resources from each server appliance into a shared-everything model for simplified operations, improved agility, and greater flexibility, Dell EMC and Nutanix together deliver simple, cost-effective solutions for enterprise workloads. The XC Series platform is hypervisor agnostic, and supports your choice of hypervisor. With a focus on easeof-use and the ability to rapidly deploy multiple virtualized workloads, the XC Series is the preferred platform for many enterprises and midmarket customers alike. The XC Series platform uses the Nutanix Distributed Storage Fabric (DSF), which delivers a unified pool of storage from all appliances across the cluster, using techniques including mirroring, replication, auto-tiering, error detection, failover, and automatic recovery. XC Series delivers storage through multiple protocols such as NFS, SMB, and iscsi while leveraging standard network infrastructure. 4 SQL Server 2016 on Dell EMC XC Series Reference Architecture

5 Introduction 1 Introduction The Dell EMC XC Series Hyper-Converged Appliances integrates our 14th generation PowerEdge server platform and Nutanix software to provide enterprise-class, infrastructure solutions for virtualized environments. The XC Series appliances incorporate many of the advanced software technologies that power leading cloud infrastructures and include key features such as: Hyper-converged Seamlessly integrates server and storage resources in a self-healing system Software defined and distributed - Allows an IT professional to perform automatic software deployment anywhere with a single click. Scale-out Increase performance and/or capacity one node at a time, even across multiple generations Automation and analytics Extensive automation and rich system-wide monitoring 1.1 Objectives This paper shows: An overview of Dell EMC XC Series Hyper-Converged Appliances An overview of Nutanix architecture An overview of AOS 5.5 features Highlights the benefits of Hyper-V 2016 Highlights the benefits of SQL Server 2016 Best Practices of SQL Server 2016 deployment High-level configuration of XC Series cluster with Nutanix and SQL Server 2016 Explanation of DDA and its benefits Conclusion 1.2 Audience This document is intended for decision makers, managers, architects, cloud administrators, backup administrators, and technical administrators of IT environments who want a solution guide that demonstrates backup of VMs based on Hyper-V. You must be familiar with Dell EMC XC Series Hyper-Converged Appliances, SQL Server, Microsoft Hyper-V, and have a basic familiarity with storage, compute, and network technologies. Business and end-user readers of this document must be familiar with general IT, backup and cloud technologies, and understand the relationship between their business, IT, and the backup requirements that are part of multiple business units. 5 SQL Server 2016 on Dell EMC XC Series Reference Architecture

6 Introduction 1.3 Terminology Useful terminology Term CVM DSF DDA Scale-out Software-defined XC Series cluster XC Series container Description Controller Virtual Machine Distributed Storage Fabric Discrete Device Assignment Scale-out increases performance linearly by adding capacity one appliance at a time. Software-defined delivers all services through software using proven Dell EMC hardware. An XC Series cluster is a hyper-converged infrastructure solution that consolidates compute and storage into a single integrated appliance and creates a distributed virtual computing platform. Each appliance in the cluster runs an industry standard hypervisor and all the appliances work together to form a cluster which is scalable. An XC Series container is a logical segmentation of the storage pool and contains a group of virtual machines (VM) or files. 6 SQL Server 2016 on Dell EMC XC Series Reference Architecture

7 Technology overview 2 Technology overview This reference architecture conveys deployment integration points of SQL Server 2016 on Dell EMC XC Series Hyper-Converged Appliances. You can leverage all the new features of Hyper-V 2016 on SQL Server 2016 that Nutanix supports. This helps increase in overall performance of the appliances. 2.1 Dell EMC XC Series Hyper-Converged Appliances The Dell EMC XC Series Hyper-Converged Appliances are a hyper-converged solution that combines storage, compute, networking, and virtualization into an industry-proven appliance based on an x86 Dell PowerEdge server running Nutanix software. Also it's worth noticing the servers are not just off the shelf PowerEdge. The processor, memory, drives, firmware and BIOS are specifically tailored for Nutanix. By combining the hardware resources from each server appliance into a shared-everything model for simplified operations, improved agility, and greater flexibility, Dell EMC and Nutanix together deliver simple, costeffective solutions for enterprise workloads. Nutanix Distributed Storage Fabric (DSF) delivers a unified pool of storage from all appliances across the cluster, using techniques including striping, replication, auto-tiering, error detection, failover, and automatic recovery. The XC Series architecture is a scalable cluster of high-performance appliances each running a standard hypervisor and containing processors, memory, and local storage (consisting of solid state disk (SSD) flash for high performance and high-capacity SATA disk drives or all SSD appliances). Each appliance runs virtual machines just like a standard hypervisor host as displayed in Figure 1. XC Series appliance architecture 7 SQL Server 2016 on Dell EMC XC Series Reference Architecture

8 Technology overview 2.2 XC Series architecture XC Series provides a hyper-converged platform that uses Distributed Storage Fabric to share and present local storage to all the virtual machines in the cluster. The general XC Series architecture is shown in Figure 2. The Dell XC easily scales without the constraints of traditional storage. DSF virtualizes the storage across all appliances and presents the same to the hypervisor as one large pool of shared storage. The DSF replicates writes synchronously to at least one other XC Series appliance to ensure cluster resiliency and availability.local storage for each XC Series appliance in the architecture is presented as one large pool of shared storage to the hypervisor.data Locality of XC Series has the ability to keep compute and storage close together that helps in consistent performance and availability of the data. In addition, DSF virtualizes local storage from all appliances into a unified pool. DSF uses local SSDs and disks from all appliances to store virtual machine data. Virtual machines running on the cluster write data to DSF as if they were writing to shared storage. XC Series offers you choice of hypervisors without being locked-in. The hypervisor covered in this reference architecture is Windows Hyper-V The Nutanix CVMs are virtual machines running on Windows Server 2016 hosts. They have direct control of the SSDs and HDDs on the Hyper-V hosts. They come preconfigured with modest settings so that you can start using the storage platform without much startup time. However, for heavy workload applications such as databases, special attention should be paid to the CVM resources since they serve as the primary access points to the SSDs and HDDs. 2.3 AOS 5.5 features Acropolis Operating System (AOS) 5.5 fully supports Hyper-V Customers on Hyper-V 2012 can upgrade to Hyper-V 2016 using 1-Click upgrade feature without any downtime to the applications. For further details regarding all new features in AOS 5.5 visit: 8 SQL Server 2016 on Dell EMC XC Series Reference Architecture

9 Technology overview 2.4 Hyper-V 2016 features Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2016 is a stand-alone product that contains only the Windows hypervisor, a Windows Server driver model, and virtualization components. Customers are upgrading their environments to Windows Server 2016 drawn by advances in cloud readiness, performance, productivity, and business safeguards. With added support of Hyper-V 2016 on XC Series, you benefit from newly added features in Hyper-V on Microsoft Windows 2016 server. Features of Hyper-V 2016 on XC Series appliances For details regarding all new features in Hyper-V on Microsoft Server 2016 visit: Discrete Device Assignment One of the important new features in Hyper-V 2016 is the Discrete Device Assignment (DDA). DDA allows the physical PCIe hardware to be directly accessible from within a virtual machine. This allows high performance access to devices like NVMe storage or graphics cards within a VM. There are certain types of PCI device classes, like the Graphic Processing Units (GPU) or Non-Volatile Memory express (NVMe), installed on the host that can be directly and exclusively controlled by the Windows Server 2016 VM. DDA is supported for Generation 1 or 2 VMs of Hyper-V DDA in XC Series Dell EMC XC Series takes advantage of the DDA feature in Hyper-V 2016 VMs. Figure 4 illustrates the importance of DDA when comparing Windows 2012 R2 against Windows Earlier in Windows 2012, Nutanix used the driver passthrough.sys to connect VMs to the devices, whereas with DDA being 9 SQL Server 2016 on Dell EMC XC Series Reference Architecture

10 Technology overview introduced in Windows 2016 the VMs can directly connect the PCIe devices. This greatly increases the Performance and improves reliability. The Nutanix CVM by default supports PCI Passthrough in Hyper-V 2016 and no customization is required. The importance of DDA in Dell EMC XC Series 2.5 SQL Server 2016 features Table 3 shows few of the key features that are new or enhanced in SQL Server Feature Faster results Increased security Seamless data integration SQL Server Azure Reporting service enhancements Better High Availability (HA) SQL Server 2016 Features Description SQL Server 2016 has made improvement in delivering faster results. This is being achieved by having significant achievement in In-memory OLTP, In-Memory Analytics, and analysis services. The three new features introduced in SQL Server 2016 are Always Encrypted, Row Level Security, and Dynamic Data Masking. SQL Server 2016 facilitates access to diverse types of data, which includes integration between relational, unstructured, and semi-structured data. All Azure SQL databases come standard with high availability and a minimum of three replicas. Azure SQL database has come close to par with on-prem SQL Server databases. SQL Server 2016 has a better development environment for reporting with more data visualization. Reports are compatible with mobile as well and a new environment for mobile reports is supported. SQL Server 2016 has made significant improvements to availability groups in this version. For details regarding all new features in SQL Server 2016 visit: 10 SQL Server 2016 on Dell EMC XC Series Reference Architecture

11 Solution reference architecture 3 Solution reference architecture The overall solution reference architecture for deployment of SQL Server 2016 database on an XC Series cluster using HyperV-2016 is shown below. Each Dell EMC XC740xd appliance in a cluster has the same basic configuration: A tier of SSD-based flash storage A tier of hard drives Compute resources in the form of two Intel Xeon Gold 6134 CPU Model GB of DDR4 RAM At the hypervisor layer as shown below, each host runs Hyper-V 2016 that hosts a single controller VM and as many other SQL 2016 VMs as you can configure for your environment. The SQL VM configuration is described in Figure 5. Dell XC740xd-12 3 node cluster 3.1 SQL Server database VM configuration You can easily run SQL Server in a VM; however, SQL is resource intensive by nature so virtualization of SQL Server must adhere to best practices. XC Series operates and scales Microsoft SQL Server 2016 in conjunction with the other hosted services, providing a single scalable platform for all deployments. The below section explains the configurations for a SQL Server VM Disk layout When designing your SQL Server drive configuration, you must use several virtual disks to get optimal performance to achieve parallel I/O streams. For the Nutanix platform, the sweet spot is eight vdisks per SQL Server VM, spread intelligently across the four available SCSI controllers. 11 SQL Server 2016 on Dell EMC XC Series Reference Architecture

12 Solution reference architecture In Hyper-V, if Generation 1 VMs are used, then you should use SCSI disks for all drives except for the operating system. For Generation 2 VMs, use all SCSI disks. Generation 2 VMs have replaced the IDE controller with Virtual SCSI controller. The SQL Server virtual machine consists of two virtual CPUs, 32 GB RAM, and thin-provisioned disks in the layout described in Table 3. Microsoft SQL Server disk layout Disk size (GB) Drive Disk purpose 200 GB Drive C: Windows OS disk 125 GB Drive G: Database disk 126 GB Drive H: Database disk 127 GB Drive E: Temp DB GB Drive F: Temp DB GB Drive T: Temp DB Log 124 GB Drive L: Database logs After the drives are provisioned, format all the SQL Server data and log drives with a 64 KB NTFS cluster size. This size optimizes I/O performance with no overhead and offers a good balance between flexibility, performance, and ease of use The OS and the SQL binary drives use the standard 4 KB NTFS cluster size. Ensure, the drive usage doesn t cross 80 percent. Typically, a SQL database spans across multiple LUNs to increase performance by allowing parallel I/O streams. In a virtualized environment, multiple virtual disks are used instead. To achieve better performance, Nutanix recommends having at least four to six database virtual disks and add more disks, depending on the capacity requirements. Additional controllers are created to separate the virtual disks for data and log files. When applications are more read intensive, the SQL Server can host multiple database files, therefore one to two database files per database is the right solution. For SQL log files, Dell EMC recommends having a single log file per database unless there is any strong reason not to. This is because SQL log files are written in a sequential manner Memory configuration It is very important to make sure you set the Max Server memory setting for SQL Server to something besides the default setting. This is especially important with larger, busier systems that may be under memory pressure. This setting controls how much memory can be used by the SQL Server Buffer Pool. If you do not set an upper limit for this value, other parts of SQL Server, and the operating system can be starved for memory, which can cause instability and performance problems. 12 SQL Server 2016 on Dell EMC XC Series Reference Architecture

13 Solution reference architecture Nutanix recommends the Max Memory configuration of SQL Server as shown in Table 4. SQL Server Max Memory configuration VM RAM Max Memory 4 GB 2,048 MB 8 GB 5,120 MB 12 GB 8,192 MB 16 GB 12,288 MB 24 GB 20,480 MB 32 GB 28,672 MB 48 GB 44,032 MB 64 GB 59,392 MB If you have properly sized the VMs and configured SQL Server max memory, then Windows should not have to use the OS page file. Thus, if your SQL Server has a lot of memory, you can manually reduce the page file size to limit the amount of required disk space. Therefore, the page file does not need to move to another volume. As with proper VM and SQL Server memory sizing, it should not be used CPU configuration Sizing the vcpus and memory of the virtual machines appropriately requires understanding the SQL Server workload. Avoid overcommitting processor and memory resources on the physical node. Use as few vcpus as possible because performance might be adversely impacted when using excess vcpus due to the scheduling constraints. Hyperthreading is a hardware technology on Intel processors that enables a physical processor core to act like two processors. In general, there is a performance advantage to enabling hyperthreading on the newer Intel processors. For SQL Server Temp DB, if the number of vcpus is less than eight, then configure the number of TempDB files equal to the number of vcpus. However, if the number of vcpus is greater than eight, start with eight TempDB files and look for memory contention. You can check in Prism for any memory contention. Then start scaling the TempDBs; for example, Increase the number of TempDBs accordingly until memory contention ceases to exist. Ensure you don t have the autogrow option enabled for TempDB and keep all the TempDBs of same size Sample test setup To validate the reference architecture, an OLTP workload was simulated with the help of a test tool DVD Store 2.1. This tool is an open source application that models an online DVD store where customer log in, search for titles and purchase movies was used. A three-node XC740xd cluster each having Hyper-V 2016 VM containing an SQL Server 2016 instance was the base for the test set up. A separate test server R640 was used, where DVD Store was installed and this server was connected to XC740xd nodes. 13 SQL Server 2016 on Dell EMC XC Series Reference Architecture

14 Solution reference architecture Each of the SQL Server VM had 100 GB of data loaded into multiple drives. SQLVM settings followed the Nutanix best practices found at To access the link, fill out the form and Nutanix would send a link to the best practices document. The DVD store test was run for 45 min and the OPMs (Operation Per Minutes) was noted. Nutanix Prism, the GUI management utility, was used to monitor cluster activity and health during test runs. Real time data during test runs indicated that the cluster remained healthy during the significant workload testing. 3.2 XC Series cluster information The XC Series cluster set up used to validate the reference architecture described in the paper had the following hardware components: Two, 1.92 TB SAS SSDs Ten, 4 TB 7.2K RPM SAS Disks Two, 8-Core Intel(R) Xeon(R) Gold 6134 CPU Model 85 Stepping 3.20GHz CPUs 12, 16 GB DDR-4 QR 2133 MHz RAM Modules (192GB Total) The cluster, populated with all three nodes, is shown from a hardware resource perspective in Figure 5. The cluster provides resources required by VM workloads and arranges those workloads in the most effective manner. This places VM workloads on nodes with available CPU and RAM resources, as well as the best fit for local disk resources. Three-node XC740xd-12 Series cluster resources The XC740xd cluster used was designed and configured using best practices from Nutanix available at Every attempt is made by the cluster to keep virtual machines and their associated storage on the same cluster node for performance consistency. However, each cluster node is connected to, and communicates 14 SQL Server 2016 on Dell EMC XC Series Reference Architecture

15 Solution reference architecture with, the other nodes on a 10 GB network. This communication allows virtual machines and their associated storage to reside on different cluster nodes. In such a case, the cluster begins to move the data on that virtual machine to the local cluster node using the same 10 GB network. The XC Series cluster physical configuration details, which includes details about the cluster, SQL VM, and network is provided in the Appendix under section A Network configuration A minimum of two 10 GbE interfaces are recommended for each host. Each host should connect to dual redundant switches for network path redundancy. Network components Components Data and management network XC Series internode connection (VM traffic) idrac inband network Cabling Description 10 GbE switch 10 GbE switch 1 GbE switch CAT6 coaxial and 10G twin axial Network configuration 15 SQL Server 2016 on Dell EMC XC Series Reference Architecture

16 XC Series benefits 4 XC Series benefits XC Series appliances install quickly, integrate easily into any data center, and can be deployed for multiple virtualized workloads including desktop virtualization, database and private cloud projects. With XC Series appliances you can take advantage of the Hyper-V 2016 DDA feature along with Nutanix software to increase the overall performance and reliability. Dell EMC has over 10 years of experience integrating hardware and software for appliances built with PowerEdge servers. That experience enabled us to develop technologies that simplify and streamline common workflows performed throughout the appliance s lifecycle. It starts with factory installation of the software stack and hypervisor of choice and pre-configuration of system settings to maximize performance of the Nutanix software. Other examples include software modules that deliver fast and seamless deployment, rapid factory restore and bare metal recovery, rich in-band hardware monitoring and management capabilities, and components developed specifically for HCI to simplify workflow orchestration across a cluster. The XC Series unique value also extends beyond core infrastructure with fully integrated Dell EMC data protection, an exclusive offering for the XC Series. With the optional Data Protection Management Console (DPMC), enhanced data protection from Avamar VE and Data Domain enables the XC Series to deliver a turnkey HCI experience with enterprise class data protection. XC Series also incorporates optimizations for Microsoft Windows 2016 Hyper-V plus Azure including one-click hypervisor updates. The XC Series Azure Log Analytics Solution provides integration of XC Series into customer s OMS-based data center automation tools, enabling insights such as trend analysis and behavioral anomaly detection. For other XC Series benefits, see: 16 SQL Server 2016 on Dell EMC XC Series Reference Architecture

17 Best practices 5 Best practices 5.1 Dell EMC XC Series For this reference architecture, an XC Series cluster was formed using three XC740xd nodes. The Network and the XC Series cluster was formed according to the best practice guide. Deploying the XC Series cluster is performed in three stages. The first and third stages are related to the network. The initial network is created in step one. The cluster is built in step two. The last step configures the final production network. For more information about the latest technical content and best practices for the XC Series, go to the following links: XC Series Family Technical Resource Center Dell EMC XC Series Networking Deployment and Best Practices Guide 5.2 SQL Server 2016 The following best practices were used for the standard version of SQL Server 2016 VM configurations. General: Perform a current state analysis to identify workloads and sizing. Start with a proof of concept, then test, optimize, iterate, and scale. Drive configuration: Distribute databases and log files across multiple VMDKs. Distribute vdisks across four SCSI controllers. Use 64 KB NTFS allocation for database and log drives. Size for at least 20 percent free disk space on all drives. Create drives of slightly different sizes. SQL Server data files: Split each database into multiple files: one file per vcpu. Size database files equally. Enable Autogrow in 256 MB or 512 MB increments to start. Do not shrink databases. SQL Server log files: Under most circumstances, one log per database (including TempDB) should be sufficient. Log files fill sequentially, so additional files do not increase performance. Temp DB: Use multiple TempDB files, all the same size. Do not autogrow TempDB files. If cores < 8, the number of TempDB files = cores. If cores > 8, start with eight TempDB files and monitor for performance. 17 SQL Server 2016 on Dell EMC XC Series Reference Architecture

18 Best practices RAM: Size TempDB 1 at 10 percent of database size. One TempDB drive should be sufficient for most environments. More RAM can increase SQL DB read performance. Configure SQL Server maximum memory per previous section guidance. Size each VM to fit within a NUMA node s memory footprint. vcpus: Do not over allocate vcpus to VMs. Consider Nutanix CVM core usage. For a comprehensive Best Practices list, visit: SQLVM settings followed the Nutanix best practices found at To access the link, fill out the form and Nutanix would send a link to the best practices document. 18 SQL Server 2016 on Dell EMC XC Series Reference Architecture

19 Conclusion 6 Conclusion This paper demonstrated the best practices for SQL Server 2016 on Hyper-V It also states the features of Hyper-V 2016 and highlights the importance of Discrete Device Assignment. Nutanix software maintains consistent configuration across all the nodes supporting DDA in the default set up. The DDA feature in Nutanix increases the performance and improves reliability. If the best practices and the reference architecture is correctly followed, then there are many benefits to running SQL Server VM using Dell EMC XC Series as mentioned in the below table. Benefits of SQL Server 2016 VM on Dell XC Series Feature Modular incremental scale High performance Data efficiency Business continuity and data protection Description The XC Series has three nodes to begin with and can easily scaled as needed. You can size the nodes based on the CPU speed, CPU core count, and memory and storage density, minimizing the upfront CapEx. When the XC Series has SSD and HDD clusters, ILM keeps the most accessed data on SSD and cache tiers thus greatly increasing SQL performance. The Nutanix data locality feature ensures that a VM and the storage both reside on the same physical node, which reduces the storage I/O latency and minimizes network usage and overhead. The Nutanix solution on XC Series allows for all the compression and deduplication policies at the VM level. Native snapshot and replication features provide extensive disaster recovery and protection capabilities. Cluster management in Prism A very intuitive approach to manage cluster and a converged GUI make it simple to monitor SQL Server 2016 VMs and cluster nodes. You can easily track the memory, disk, and CPU usage in real time. 19 SQL Server 2016 on Dell EMC XC Series Reference Architecture

20 Technical support and resources 7 Technical support and resources 7.1 Related resources See the following referenced or recommended resources related to this document: Note: The links below are open to customers although some may require registration for access. Nutanix Bible: Nutanix blog: SQL Best Practices: PCI Passthrough: PCI Passthrough Machines and Devices: Nutanix Acropolis 5.5: DVD Store: SQL Server: Additional resources Referenced or recommended publications: Dell.com/XCSeriesmanuals is focused on meeting customer needs with proven services and support. Dell EMC Technical Resource Center on DellEMC.com provides expertise that helps to ensure customer success on Dell EMC XC Series platforms. Dell EMC XC Series Hyper-Converged Appliances on DellEMC.com provides marketing materials and the latest product information on the XC Series Family. 20 SQL Server 2016 on Dell EMC XC Series Reference Architecture

21 Appendix A Appendix A.1 Physical configuration XC Series Cluster Configuration Primary Source configuration: hardware and software components XC Series 3x 2U: Description Firmware/BIOS: Hypervisor: Hyper-V 2016 AOS: x Intel(R) Xeon(R) Gold 6134 CPU Model 85 Stepping 3.20 GHz 192 GB RAM (12 x 16 GB DIMMS) 2 x 1.92 TB SAS SSD drives 10 x 4 TB SAS drives 1 x Intel(R) 2P X710/2P I350 rndc SQL VM configuration SQL Server 2016 Standard Edition Hypervisor: Hyper-V 2016 VM version: Windows Server GB RAM 8 HDD configured Primary VM configuration VM OS: Windows Server vcpus, 64 GB RAM CVM: 12 vcpus, 32 GB RAM Network Monitoring 2 x Dell EMC Networking S4048-ON switches Nutanix Prism SQL Server Management Studio XC Series container hosting primary VMs Dual redundant switches were used for high availability. Monitoring for XC Series cluster is done using Nutanix PRISM. SSMS for monitoring SQL Queries 21 SQL Server 2016 on Dell EMC XC Series Reference Architecture