understanding hardware: the right fights for the dba to pick with the server team

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The Right Fights for the DBA to Pick with the Server Team

Joey D’Antoni

August 17, 2015

EMBARCADERO TECHNOLOGIES


Joey D’Antoni• Joey has over 15 years of experience with a wide variety of data platforms, in

both Fortune 50 companies as well as smaller organizations

• He is a frequent speaker on database administration, big data, and career management

• He is the co-president of the Philadelphia SQL Server User’s Group

• MSCE, Business Intelligence, Data Platform

• He wants you to make sure you can restore your data

Joeydantoni.com


Survey

How is your team structured?

• Do you report through—

• Infrastructure

• Applications

• Development

• Other


Agenda

Why does this matter to your databases?

What Fights You Shouldn’t Pick

Servers

Windows

Storage

Virtualization


Why Does All of This Matter?


What Fights Not to Pick


Battles to Avoid

RAID 5—it doesn’t matter with modern storage

Whether or not your database servers are virtual or physical

Likewise with the cloud—it’s just a VM in someone else’s data center

Storage layouts—more on this later, it CAN matter, but not always


Servers


Servers

You may or may not have much say in this—depends on the size of your org

If you are buying a few servers:

• Minimize the amount of cores to what you need

• Faster, fewer cores (E7-8893 v3, E5-2637 v3)

• ALL THE RAM

• OS Drives/Install

• Consider requesting local SSD if you are using physical server—TempDB


Servers Cont’d

• High Availability and Disaster Recovery servers should have the same hardware as primary


Windows


Poll: Versions of Windows

The Oldest OS in Your Environment


Always Run SQL Server on the Latest Version of Windows

Cluster Aware Updating

Dynamic Quorum

SQL Server will run the same on any

supported version of Windows


Group Managed Service Accounts

Never have to change a

password again

Active Directory manages

passwords for accounts

Permissions are granted for

accounts to be used on servers

Introduced in Windows 2012, fully supported

in SQL 2016 (HA/DR)


Windows and AD Permissions

Instant File Initialization

Servers in a Database OU

Same File Systems Everywhere


Storage


Your SAN Admin


Modern SANs


Modern SANs Cont’d

Your SAN admin can’t tell you where the data is

This is good—the array is optimizing performance and minimizing hotspots

TempDB—should be pinned if it needs performance

Transaction Logs should avoid flash tier for optimal storage performance


All Flash Arrays

Talk to your vendor for best practices

Things like compression may be different

Arrays typically do their own compression

Randomize sequential operations to make them faster

Spreads workload across the array similar to tiered storage


Fighting for Space

• Be honest

• Work with SAN admin to reclaim space where you don’t need it

• Try to define standards for space allocations, and standard upgrade units

• Don’t waste space


Backups

• Always use compression (SQL Backup Compression)

• Deduplication is awesome, unless you want to restore your data


Virtualization


Virtualized Database Servers

Virtual servers are here to stay

Get used to them—most things stay the same

Once again—buy the VM team a beer(s)


VMs—What to Ask For

Memory Reservations—only for production, but insist on it

Read-only access to vCenter/SCVMM—you need to see host activity

A clear understanding of storage subsystem and config

No overprovisioned CPUs

Snapshots are not backups—you still need database backups

Paravirtual SCSI storage drivers

Minimize your vCPU count


Summary

This is all about relationships

It helps to be able to speak the language of the other teams

Understanding storage is good for your career

All of this stuff matters in the cloud, too


Thank you for attending!

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understanding hardware: the right fights for the dba to pick with the server team

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