Virtualization

Setting VMware memory settings to improve SQL Server Performance

There is a VMware setting which you can set which should give you a small but noticeable performance improvement in SQL Server performance when that SQL Server is running within a VMware Virtual Machine.

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Here comes SoCal Code Camp

SoCal Code Camp is coming up in a couple of weeks now on June 27th and 28th.  I’m presenting 3 sessions solo, and I’m one of a few people doing an IT Pro Pannel to allow Developers to grill some IT Pros to see why we do things the way we do.

The Sessions are:

IT Pro Panel: Q&A for Developers
SQL Server Service Broker
SQL Service Broker Advanced Performance Tips and Tricks
Virtual SQL Servers Should I or Shouldn’t I?

I’ll be posting the slide decks and sample code shortly before Code Camp.

Denny

Use caution when using an image to setup servers which will be clustered.

A lesson that I learned while setting up our new data center for work, is to be careful when setting up your clustered servers.

Most of our servers are VMs, including a Windows 2008 Cluster (yeah I know not supported, I’m a rebel damn it and I want a Windows 2008 cluster installed under VMware ESX). Continued »

VMware and SQL and Lock Pages in Memory

With the recent release of the ability for the Lock Pages in Memory setting to be used on SQL Server 2005 and 2008 Standard Edition I see more and more people shooting them selves in the foot with this setting when running under VMware.  I see this as becoming more of an issue now that this switch is available for Standard edition as I would assume that most virtualized SQL Server installations are done using SQL Server Standard Editions.

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#emcworld Day 2 In Review

Today was day 2 of EMC World 2009.  There were some great sessions today.  I’m focused on two tracks this year, VMware and the CLARiiON product as we have just deployed both of these in our data center migration project.  Continued »

Datacenter Migration In Progress

For those of you who know me, or have heard me talk at a Code Camp in the last year, you’ve heard me talk about a data center migration that I want to do from Rackspace in Texas to our own equipment in the LA area.  Well that day has finely come.

Our current environment has served us well, but we have outgrown the services that Rackspace can offer us, and we have purchased our own production environment.  This isn’t any rinky dink environment either.  We are starting out with a fully redundant, highly available environment which can be scaled by simply deploying more VMs, and in the event that the VMware hardware is over tasked by simply plugging another VMware server into the mix, and shifting the VMs from one node of the cluster to another.

We are very proud of our new environment, so I figured that I’d give you some of the tech specs of it (yeah, I’m totally bragging here).

On the storage side of things we’ve got an EMC CX4-240 with ~35TB of storage laid out in three tiers.  This is connected via multiple 4 Gig fibre cables to a pair of Cisco fibre switches.  Each fibre switch is connected to each of the SAN attached servers.

We went with Dell servers (I would have preferred HP servers, but I was overruled).

The SQL Servers and the VMware servers are identical.  Quad chip, quad core servers each with 64 Gigs of RAM.  Each pair will be clustered for High Availability.  The VMware servers will look a little like they puked cables out of the back.  Because of all the various subnets and to ensure that each subnet is connected to each of the redundant network switches each of the VMware ESX servers will have 11 Ethernet cables, and 2 fibre cables coming out of the back.

The VMware vCenter services are running on a little single chip quad core server.  This is the only part of the system which isn’t redundant, but ESX can run fine for up to 14 days without the License server running, and since this machine has a 4 hour turn around on parts we’ll be fine if the machine dies.

The file servers which host the screenshots, emails, etc which have been captured by our application and will be served to the website upon request are a pair of dual chip, quad core servers also clustered for high availability.

All the servers are SAN attached via the fibre and all data will be saved on the SAN.

Our current environment is much smaller.  A single SQL Server, three web servers, and two file servers.  The only redundant pieces are the fibre cables from the SQL Server to the SAN, and the fact that we have three web servers.  However if the newer web server goes out in the middle of the day, the other two will choke at this point.

Rackspace has been pretty good to us over the years.  It just wasn’t cost effective for us to purchase this level of hardware before now, and Rackspace was able to provide us with a good service level for a reasonable price.  But at this point, because of the amount of hardware we were looking to move into, and the amount of bandwidth we are going to be using it simply became more cost effective for us to host the systems at a local CoLo.

The main reason that I’m telling everyone this is that if you have been trying to find me for the last two weeks or so this is why I can’t be found.  I’ve been spending pretty much every waking moment this together and getting it all setup so that we can migrate over to it.

Needless to say its an awesome project.  How many people get the chance to build a new data center and design it the way they want to from scratch.  Pretty much no one.  Data centers usually grow from a small config of a server or two in a sporadic way, and they are inherited from one person to the next.  But this time I get to design everything they way I want to from the grown up.  It’s going to be a blast.

Denny

My take on databases in the Cloud

I haven’t made a decision on putting databases in the cloud.  I think Amazon and now Microsoft have the write idea for cloud databases.  Give people lots of options, use named value pars (AmazonDB or the old school Azure database) when it makes sence and use full blown RDBMS when it makes sence.

But the big question that I have (besides pricing) is how does all this fit into the overall picture for my company or my client.

Do I see a lot of large enterprises moving large parts of there environment into the Cloud?  Probably not.

Do I see the small/medium business moving customer facing applications to the Cloud?  Possibly, it’s going to depend on the application and the business model.

Do I see the cloud being a stepping stone in a eventual path to building your own data center?  Very much so.

Why don’t I see large enterprises moving data into the cloud?  Mainly control and compliance.  Large companies (and even larger medium sized companies) want to control everything about there data.  They also need to be able to ensure that no one who isn’t authorized to view the data can’t view the data.  The easiest way to do this is to own the machines that have the data. Large companies also have to have DR plans.  Those plans usually can’t depend on some other company doing “Yes, it will be back up.”.

I said above that I see the cloud being a stepping stone to getting your own servers and data center.  The path that I see in my mind is for the small to medium business who can’t afford to setup their own servers onsite or at a colo.  For them cloud computing is a great first step to let them get started and see where the application goes.  If nothing happens, then there isn’t much capitol lost.  If it grows like crazy then everything scales nicely (not yet sure how well and automatically the databases scale).  This gives the SMB the ability to judge where the business is going to go and how fast it’s going to get there.

Some applications may be able to stay in the cloud forever.  Either they persist a lot of the data at the client, or they simply never outgrow the cloud.  On the otherhand I see a lot of applications going from running in the cloud to moving to an MSP (Managed Services Provider) such as Rackspace, MaximumASP, etc.  These guys offer the benifits of dedicated hardware, without having to shell out the massive amounts of cash up front.  Over time however it becomes cost ineffective to continue at an MSP, and buying your own hardware simply becomes the correct thing to do.  The trick is knowing when this is the case, so that you aren’t spending a lot of money at the MSP.

Now for those that were paying attention, you’ll noticed that I skipped the point above about the SMB moving somethings into the cloud.  I think this falls into both answers above.  Some things will make sense to host up in the cloud, other things won’t.

What do you think will happen to the cloud?  Where do you see it being really useful?  Will you be moving applications into the cloud at your current company, at a future company?

These are questions that you’ll need to ask yourself at some point, so why not now?  In these times of rapid change to the IT world (and the world in general) don’t be afraid to change your answers to these questions.

Denny

SQL Server virtualization pros and cons: Weigh the performance impact

It’s been a while since I’ve posted about new articles that I’ve published.  Over the next few weeks I’m going to see if I can’t remedy that, and get all caught up.

Over on SearchSQLServer.com I posted an article entitled “SQL Server virtualization pros and cons: Weigh the performance impact“.

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VMware 3.5 won’t start any VMs if the Licensing server is down

So tonight I finely got around to patching the fourth VMware ESX 3.0.2 server to 3.5 Update 3.

The other 3 servers went just fine, quick reboot when done and back up and running in no time.

So experience said that the fourth one would be no problem…

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EMC World 2008 Day 1 (The first post)

While waiting for the first keynote to start I figured that this would be as good a time as any to write a quick post.

 I just got out of the first session of the morning.  I decided to catch the VMware VI3 session which went over the new features of ESX 3.5.

 It was a very good session packed with great info about the new features of VMware ESX 3.5 which came out a few months ago.

3.5 introduces the Storage Vmotion.  It’s similar to the regular Vmotion which moves VMs from one host to another, but it’s designed to move a VMs storage from one disk (LUN, array, etc) to another disk within the same host without taking the VM down.  In prior versions of VMware to move a VM from on disk to another you would need to power the machine down and then move the machine.  It can now be done as a live operation.  It does temporally double the memory and CPU requirements of the guest OS, and it is a CPU and disk intensive operation and should be done off hours, but it’s a great way to move from a full disk to an empty one.

 Another great technology which I was introduced to is the VDM or Virtual Desktop Manager.  As I understand this technology it allows you to take a single Windows XP guest OS, and allow many people to connect to it.  The VDM places a connect pool in front of the Windows XP guest OS and as people connect to it, it takes a snap of the guest OS, and lets the new user use the snap.  This allows many people to use a single Virtual Machine without increasing the amount of disk space required, and reducing the IO requirement of your Windows XP (or Vista) guests on the host.

As the Keynotes proceed I’ll try and go over what they are talking about.

Denny