EMC XtremIO for Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Data Warehouse Fast Track

REFERENCE ARCHITECTURE

EMC XTREMIO FOR MICROSOFT SQL SERVER 2014 DATA WAREHOUSE FAST TRACK

EMC Solutions March 2015

Copyright © 2015 EMC Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Published March 2015 EMC believes the information in this publication is accurate as of its publication date. The information is subject to change without notice. The information in this publication is provided as is. EMC Corporation 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 EMC software described in this publication requires an applicable software license. For the most up-to-date listing of EMC product names, see EMC Corporation Trademarks on EMC.com. All trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners. Part Number H13925

EMC XtremIO for Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Data Warehouse Fast Track

Reference Architecture

2

Table of contents Reference architecture overview ......................................................................................................... 5 Document purpose .......................................................................................................................... 5 The business challenge .................................................................................................................... 5 Introduction to EMC XtremIO ............................................................................................................ 5 The technology................................................................................................................................. 6 Scope .............................................................................................................................................. 6 The audience ................................................................................................................................... 6 Solution architecture .......................................................................................................................... 7 Architecture diagram ........................................................................................................................ 7 Hardware resources ......................................................................................................................... 8 Software resources ......................................................................................................................... 8 Value proposition ............................................................................................................................... 9 Microsoft Data Warehouse Fast Track program ................................................................................. 9 SQL Server clustered columnstore index .......................................................................................... 9 Solution hardware............................................................................................................................ 9 Cisco UCS Rack Server ................................................................................................................... 10 XtremIO X-Brick .............................................................................................................................. 10 XtremIO management .................................................................................................................... 12 Sizing XtremIO ............................................................................................................................... 14 Storage layout configuration ..................................................................................................... 14 I/O throttle ..................................................................................................................................... 15 Queue depth .................................................................................................................................. 16 Microsoft MPIO .............................................................................................................................. 16 EMC PowerPath .............................................................................................................................. 17 Database configuration .................................................................................................................. 17 Performance overview .................................................................................................................... 18 SQL Server settings .......................................................................................................................... 19 Start-up options ............................................................................................................................. 19 SQL Server memory settings........................................................................................................... 19 Hyper-threading ............................................................................................................................. 19 SQL Server MAXDOP setting ........................................................................................................... 19 Resource Governor ......................................................................................................................... 20 Upgrading from Data Warehouse Fast Track 4.0 ................................................................................ 21 SQL Server 2014 Data Warehouse Fast Track metrics ..................................................................... 21 Certification and bill of materials ...................................................................................................... 22



3

20-TB certification .......................................................................................................................... 22 45-TB certification .......................................................................................................................... 23 Bill of materials .............................................................................................................................. 24 20-TB certification ..................................................................................................................... 24 45-TB certification ..................................................................................................................... 25 Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 27 References ....................................................................................................................................... 28 EMC documentation ....................................................................................................................... 28 Microsoft documentation ............................................................................................................... 28



4

Reference architecture overview Document purpose This document describes the reference architecture of the EMC® Data Warehouse Fast Track for Microsoft SQL Server 2014 solution, which uses the EMC XtremIOTM storage system on Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Mount servers with Intel E5-4650 and E5-2650 processors. The business challenge

Customers require a scalable, efficient, and highly available data warehouse infrastructure. Enterprise data warehouses provide the foundation for business intelligence systems, which continue to grow dramatically as organizations realize the importance of mining their accumulated data for key business insights. Massive data growth is often accompanied by increased complexity, while data warehouse configuration typically suffers from design principles that were originally intended for online transaction processing (OLTP) systems. The reference configurations presented in this document address the common business challenges that data warehouses face today, and help customers design and implement balanced configurations specifically for Microsoft SQL Server data warehouse databases with the goal of providing a hardware-balanced approach and predictable out-of-box performance.

Introduction to EMC XtremIO

EMC XtremIO is an all-flash scale-out enterprise storage array that not only delivers high performance and scalability, but also brings new levels of ease-of-use to storage area network (SAN) storage. This next-generation storage system combines powerful and flexible hardware with advanced efficiency, management, and protection features to meet the demanding needs of today’s enterprises. Significant XtremIO features include: 

Performance—XtremIO supports very high input/output operations per second (IOPS) with sub-millisecond latency. Performance is consistently predictable and constant.



Data protection— XtremIO has its own data protection algorithm called XtremIO Data Protection (XDP). XDP is dedicated to fast rebuilds and all-round protection and performs better than the traditional RAID types. XDP places data in any location on any SSD, without considering how to keep data contiguous to avoid disk drive head seeks. It reads data back in highly efficient ways with no adverse impact on XtremIO all‐flash architecture.



Thin provisioning—All volumes in the XtremIO All-Flash Array are thinprovisioned, allowing capacity purchases to be deferred from the time of provisioning until the data is written to the array.



SSD longevity—XtremIO technologies ensure the storage system will last for at least seven years under constant, full-speed write workloads.



Inline deduplication—The XtremIO All-Flash Array automatically deduplicates data as it enters the system, which reduces the amount of data written to flash, extending the flash lifetime and improving application response time.



5

The technology



Inline data compression—XtremIO automatically compresses data after all duplications have been removed. Compression saves storage capacity by storing data blocks in the most efficient manner.



XtremIO snapshots—XtremIO provides the industry’s first writable snapshot technology that is space-efficient for both data and metadata. Free from limitations of performance, features, topology, or capacity, XtremIO snapshots can instantly: 

Create entire application development and test environments where every engineer gets a personal sandbox



Enable high-performance analytics and reporting without any brute force data movement



Deliver near-continuous data protection (CDP) capabilities for data protection

This solution demonstrates how to use XtremIO to provide the storage resources for a robust Microsoft data warehouse environment. Data Warehouse Fast Track for Microsoft SQL Server 2014 provides a framework that enables customers to select a reference architecture that has been designed, tested, and validated by hardware vendors using Microsoft guidance and tools. It is designed to enable organizations to quickly and reliably deploy a total system solution stack, including server, storage, and connectivity, for data warehouses based on Microsoft SQL Server 2014. This approach helps dramatically reduce the burden on end users in selecting, sizing, and testing the combination of products and technologies while minimizing the risk of failures. The resulting solution is a balanced and optimized hardware and software design for SQL Server data warehouse deployments with a configuration that can:

Scope



Eliminate the complexity of data warehouse design



Reduce total cost of ownership (TCO)



Offer better performance to users

The purpose of this reference architecture is to build and demonstrate the functionality, performance, and scalability of the Data Warehouse Fast Track for Microsoft SQL Server 2014 solution as enabled by XtremIO and Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) servers. The reference architecture validates the performance of the solution and provides guidelines for building similar solutions. This document is limited to the main repository of the data warehouse and the balanced configuration of the repository. It is not a comprehensive guide to every aspect of the solution.

The audience

This document is intended for customers, partners, solution architects, storage administrators, and database administrators who evaluate, plan, and deploy balanced data warehouse solutions.



6

Solution architecture Architecture diagram

This Data Warehouse Fast Track for Microsoft SQL Server 2014 reference architecture uses the XtremIO storage system and the Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Server. The configurations are designed to optimize for data warehouse workloads and are tested by EMC and rated by Microsoft for up to 45 TB of user data capacity. Figure 1 depicts the overall physical architecture of the solution.

Figure 1.

Solution architecture



7

Hardware resources

Table 1 lists the hardware used in this solution. Table 1.

Solution hardware

Hardware

Software resources

Quantity 45-TB certification

20-TB certification

EMC XtremIO All-Flash Array

2

1

Cisco UCS server

1

1

QLogic Fibre Channel controllers

4

2

Fibre Channel multimode cables with single fiber (SF) connectors

8

4

Table 2 lists the software used in this solution. Table 2.

Solution software

Software

Configuration

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard Edition

Microsoft SQL Server

Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Enterprise Edition

Fast Track testing

Microsoft Reference Point Service version 5

EMC PowerPath

EMC PowerPath version 5.7 SP2

EMC XtremIO XMS

XtremIO 3.0.1



8

Value proposition Microsoft Data Warehouse Fast Track program

Optimized for common data warehouse, decision support, and business analytics deployments based on Microsoft SQL Server, the Data Warehouse Fast Track for Microsoft SQL Server 2014 program enables organizations to deploy tested configurations with proven technologies that offer balanced solution stacks. Three principles constitute the value proposition for Data Warehouse Fast Track:

SQL Server clustered columnstore index

Solution hardware



Predetermined balance across key system components—this helps minimize the risk of overspending for CPU or storage resources.



Predictable out-of-the-box performance—the Fast Track configuration matches SQL Server application capacity for a target workload.



Workload-centricity—the Fast Track reference architecture is aligned specifically with the corresponding data warehouse workload. It is not a onesize-fits-all scenario.

The Data Warehouse Fast Track program for SQL Server 2014 takes full advantage of the clustered columnstore index (CCI) technology in SQL Server. CCI stores data in columnar storage, enabling ten times as much data compression while speeding up the query performance with batch-mode processing as follows: 

Provides superior data compression, reducing storage and I/O bandwidth requirement as only columns referenced in the query need to be brought into memory



Reduces the need for secondary indexes, simplifies the overhead on incremental data load, and enables customers to load data in the maintenance window



Executes ad hoc, complex analytic queries efficiently because it uses predicate pushdown and partition elimination to reduce the data processing of large data sets

The solution hardware for this reference architecture includes a small and a mid-size certification for SQL Server Data Warehouse Fast Track. The small-size reference architecture is certified with 20 TB of rated user data capacity up to a maximum of 60 TB. The mid-size reference architecture is certified with 45 TB of user capacity up to a maximum user data capacity of 105 TB. Table 3 shows the certification requirements. Table 3.

Solution hardware for Data Warehouse Fast Track reference architecture

Data Warehouse Fast Track reference architecture

Cisco server

XtremIO All-Flash Arrays

EMC XtremIO 20 TB solution

Cisco UCS C240 M3 server with Intel Xeon Processor E5-2620 CPUs

EMC XtremIO single X-Brick storage array with 25x400 GB SSD

EMC XtremIO 45 TB solution

Cisco UCS C420 M3 server with Intel Xeon Processor E5-4650 CPUs

EMC XtremIO dual X-Brick storage array with 50x800 GB SSD



9

Cisco UCS Rack Server

Cisco UCS C-Series Rack Servers deliver unified computing in an industry-standard form to reduce TCO and increase agility. Each product addresses varying workload challenges through a balance of processing, memory, I/O, and internal storage resources. The 45-TB certification uses the Cisco UCS C420 M3 Rack Server, which is a high density, four-socket, two-rack unit (2RU) server designed for compute, I/O, storage, and memory-intensive stand-alone and virtualized applications. The addition of the Intel Xeon processor E5-4600 product family delivers an optimal combination of performance, flexibility, and efficiency gains. The server for 20-TB certification is the Cisco UCS C240 M3 Rack Server. It extends the capabilities of the 2 RU form factor and is designed for performance and expandability over a wide range of storage-intensive infrastructure workloads, ranging from big data to collaboration. Intel Xeon processors are at the heart of a server system that delivers outstanding scalability and performance to support the new business intelligence capabilities available in Microsoft SQL Server 2014. These enhancements enable large-scale consolidation efforts while serving demanding data-intensive workloads.

XtremIO X-Brick

Each X‐Brick is configured as an Active/Active, highly available, clustered storage array without any single point of failure. The flash drive capacity can be 400 GB or 800 GB. The physical user capacity for a single-brick cluster before data reduction is about 7.5 TB with a 400 GB flash drive, and about 30.5 TB with an 800 GB flash drive. Every volume is thin‐provisioned. With deduplication and compression, the effective logical capacity usable by hosts is much larger, and the SQL Server database data reduction rate was maintained at close to 2:1 in our testing. As a result of compression and snapshot functionality, a single X-Brick XtremIO All-Flash Array can potentially host data typically requiring more than six times as much physical storage capacity. XtremIO offers performance, capacity, protection, and the best TCO to meet diversified business requirements. The boosted, sustained read-and-write bandwidth it offers is crucial for typical data warehouse deployment. Figure 2 shows the XtremIO X-Bricks in a one-, two,- and four-unit configuration with two Cisco servers: the Cisco UCS C420 M3 and the Cisco UCS C240 M3.

Figure 2.

XtremIO X-Brick scaling units with two Cisco servers



10

Table 4 and Table 5 list the hardware configuration for both the small and the midsize solution. Table 4.

Hardware configuration for XtremIO 20-TB reference architecture

Hardware

Components

Quantity/description

Server

Cisco UCS Server

UCS C240 M3

CPU

2 x 6 Core Intel Xeon processors model E52620 (2.0 GHz)

Number of cores

12

PCI-E slots

2 x 8 PCIe3.0 or 2 x 16 PCIe3.0

Internal drives

2 x 146 GB SAS disk drives

Storage controller

1 LSI MegaRAID SAS 9261-8i

Network adapters

2 x Gigabit Ethernet LAN-on-motherboard (LOM) ports, 2 x 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports, and 2 x dedicated out-of-band (OOB) management ports

RAM

128 GB PC2-5300 Fully Buffered dual in-line memory modules (DIMMs) (FBD)

Memory slot

32 GB DDR3 DIMMs with 64 DIMM slots

EMC XtremIO

Single X-Brick XtremIO All-Flash Storage Array

Host bus adapters

2 x QLogic 2562 dual-port 8 Gb HBA

Disk drives

25 x 400 GB SSD

Data protection

XDP built-in data protection

Protocol

Fibre Channel

Storage

Network connectivity

Table 5.

Hardware configuration for XtremIO 45-TB reference architecture

Components Server

Quantity/Description Cisco UCS Server

UCS C420 M3

CPU

4 x 8 Core Intel Xeon processors model E5-4670 (2.7 GHz)

Number of cores

32

PCI-E slots

10

Internal drives

2 x 300 GB SAS disk drives

Storage controller

1 LSI MegaRAID SAS 9261-8i



11

Components

Quantity/Description

Storage

Connectivity

Network Adapters

2 x Gigabit Ethernet LAN-on-motherboard (LOM) ports, 2 x 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports, and 2 x dedicated out-of-band (OOB) management ports

RAM

384 GB DDR3 RDIMMs

Memory Slot

32 GB DDR3 DIMMs with 64 DIMM slots

EMC XtremIO

Dual X-Brick XtremIO cluster

Host bus adapters

4 x QLogic 2562 dual-port 8 Gb HBA

Disk drives

50 x 800 GB SSD

Data protection

XDP built-in data protection

Protocol

Fibre Channel (FC)

Table 6 lists the software configuration for both the small and the mid-size solution. Table 6.

XtremIO management

Software configuration for EMC XtremIO reference architecture

Software

Configuration

Windows

Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard Edition

SQL Server

Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Enterprise Edition

Fast Track testing

Microsoft Reference Point Service Version 5.0

EMC PowerPath

EMC PowerPath version 5.7 SP1

XtremIO

XtremIO 3.0

XtremIO Management Server (XMS) is the management station for an XtremIO system that can be physical or virtual and is accessed through the XMS GUI or CLI interface. Figure 3 shows a sample XMS dashboard summary page. This page provides administrators with a wealth of information about connected storage systems, including storage panel overall efficiency, physical and logical capacity, and volume performance detail.



12

Figure 3.

XtremIO Storage Management Application dashboard

Figure 4 shows the XMS storage panel, which provides information about the physical and logical volume as well as the deduplication and compression ratio. The panel shows that XtremIO achieves about 1.3:1 compression on top of the SQL Server compression.

Figure 4.

XtremIO Management Application dashboard storage panel

The benefits of the XtremIO deduplication and compression features include: 

Inline data deduplication—The XtremIO All-Flash Storage Array automatically deduplicates data as it enters the system, which reduces the amount of data written to flash, thereby extending the flash lifetime and improving application response time.



Inline compression— XtremIO automatically compresses data after all duplications have been removed, which ensures that the compression is performed only for unique data blocks. Data compression further reduces the



13

data footprint by eliminating data redundancy within the binary level of each data block. Sizing XtremIO

Sizing the system’s storage capacity is relatively simple. Each 10 TB X-Brick can hold up to 7.5 TB of physical storage. Thanks to the deduplication, compression and snapshot features, the maximum logical capacity for a single X-Brick system with 2:1 compression ratio could range from 117 TB to 138 TB. All volumes in XtremIO All-Flash Arrays are thin-provisioned. After logging in to the XMS Web GUI, create a volume and define its name and size, as shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5.

Create volumes in XtremIO All-Flash Array

XtremIO allows for expansion of a volume. After expanding a volume, the host must rescan the LUN for changes and query the volume to show the new size. Thanks to the management and design simplicity, customers do not need to create RAID groups or assign hot spares. Storage layout configuration Table 7.

Storage layout for 20 TB certification

Volume number

Volume name

Capacity

Mount point

Allocation

1

FTDATA1

2 TB

C:\Mount\FTDATA1

Data files and TempDB files

2

FTDATA2

2 TB

C:\Mount\FTDATA2


3

FTDATA3

2 TB

C:\Mount\FTDATA3




14

Volume number

Volume name

Capacity

Mount point

Allocation

4

FTDATA4

2 TB

C:\Mount\FTDATA4


5

FTDATA5

2 TB

C:\Mount\FTDATA5


6

FTDATA6

2 TB

C:\Mount\FTDATA6


7

FTDATA7

2 TB

C:\Mount\FTDATA7


8

FTDATA8

2 TB

C:\Mount\FTDATA8


9

LOG

500 GB

C:\Mount\Log

Log files

10

Staging

3 TB

c:\Mount\Staging

Staging files

Table 8.

I/O throttle

Storage layout for 45 TB certification

Volume number

Volume name

Capacity

Mount point

Allocation

1

FTDATA1

3 TB

C:\Mount\FTDATA1


2

FTDATA2

3 TB

C:\Mount\FTDATA2


3

FTDATA3

3 TB

C:\Mount\FTDATA3


4

FTDATA4

3 TB

C:\Mount\FTDATA4


5

FTDATA5

3 TB

C:\Mount\FTDATA5


6

FTDATA6

3 TB

C:\Mount\FTDATA6


7

FTDATA7

3TB

C:\Mount\FTDATA7


8

FTDATA8

3 TB

C:\Mount\FTDATA8


9

LOG

1 TB

C:\Mount\Log

Log files

10

Staging

4 TB

c:\Mount\Staging

Staging files

To optimize performance to extreme levels, you must configure host access to the XtremIO All-Flash storage array to enable higher I/O throughput. It is important to choose the UCS server’s highest setting to maximize the I/O throttle for the vHBA Fibre Channel port. In the tested solution, we1 set the I/O throttle counts for both the 45-TB and the 20-TB certification to 1024, as shown in Figure 7.

1

In this Reference Architecture, "we" refers to the EMC Solutions engineering team that validated the solution.



15

Figure 6.

Queue depth

When using Windows with XtremIO, for optimal performance we recommend adjusting the queue depth and execution throttle of the Fibre Channel HBA to the maximum value. The maximum queue depth value is currently 256 for QLogic HBAs. You can adjust this value in the Windows Registry, as shown in Figure 8.

Figure 7.

Microsoft MPIO

Set the I/O throttle count

Adjust the queue depth

XtremIO supports native Microsoft Multipath I/O (MPIO), which must be enabled through Windows Server Manager. To send I/O down the path with the fewest currently outstanding I/O requests, configure it for the lowest queue depth policy, as shown in Figure 8. Note that exactly eight blank spaces are required before the end quote in the first command. This command will automatically reboot the host without prompting. Refer to the XtremIO Host Configuration Guide for more information.

Figure 8.

Configure the lowest queue depth policy for XtremIO



16

EMC PowerPath

XtremIO supports EMC PowerPath multipathing with PowerPath 5.7 SP2 or later. PowerPath processes XtremIO devices as native devices. We used PowerPath in our testing to maximize multipathing and load-balancing, as shown in Figure 9.

Figure 9.

Database configuration

PowerPath multipathing

We performed the benchmark testing for the reference architecture with the TPC-Hlike database and a sequential-read workload simulation tool known as Reference Point Service. Microsoft’s Fast Track Data Warehouse Reference Guide for SQL Server 2014 states that the test database size should be based on the number of sockets on the server. For 45-TB certification, we used a four-socket server with a 2 TB TPC-H testing database, and for 20-TB certification we used a two-socket server with a 1 TB TPC-H testing database. The Data Warehouse Fast Track testing tool constrains the database size and SQL Server maximum memory based on the number of sockets in the reference implementation being tested. For a two-socket server, the testing database is 1 TB with an SQL Server maximum memory of 118 GB, while a four-socket server should be combined with a 2 TB testing database with a maximum SQL Server memory of 236 GB . These constraints allow precise certification metrics and accurate characterization of the reference implementation. The test database uses a primary database file group with additional secondary file groups that represent the seven partitions. Table 9 lists the details. Table 9.

Test database file groups

File group

Files

Notes

Primary

1

Contains the master database file (MDF)

Part_ci1FG

12

1 file on each LUN

Part_ci2FG

12

2 files on each LUN

Part_ci3FG

12

3 files on each LUN

Part_ci4FG

12

4 files on each LUN

Part_ci5FG

12

5 files on each LUN

Part_ci6FG

12

6 files on each LUN

Part_ci7FG

12

7 files on each LUN



17

Performance overview

The testing consisted of a minimum of 12 I/O-intensive and CPU-intensive performance runs against the row store and the column store. The performance bandwidth requirements defined in Table 10 are output from the simulation tool. Table 10.

Database configuration certification performance bandwidth requirements

Performance bandwidth

45 TB

20 TB

Row store rated I/O (MB/s)

4,372

2,235

Column store rated I/O (queries/Hr/TB)

1,337

574

On the storage side, with a mixed data warehouse workload of 256 KB and 512 KB and a 90% read-10% write combination, the maximum throughput could reach 3,000 MB/s for a single X-Brick system, as shown in Figure 10, and 5,300 MB/s for a dual XBrick cluster, as shown in Figure 11.

Figure 10.

20 TB performance bandwidth for SQL Server 2014

Figure 11.

45 TB performance bandwidth for SQL Server 2014



18

SQL Server settings Start-up options

Configure the following SQL Server startup parameters: 1.

Add -E to the start-up options. This increases the number of contiguous extents in each file that are allocated to a database table as it grows, thereby improving sequential disk access.

2.

Add -T1117 to the start-up options. The trace flag ensures even growth of all files in a file group, which in turn ensures maximum physical I/O performance.

SQL Server memory settings

SQL Server 2014 best practice is to allocate no more than 92 percent of the total available RAM to SQL Server. If additional applications will share the server, decrease the amount of maximum SQL Server memory accordingly.

Hyper-threading

The processors in the UCS C-Series server use Intel Hyper-Threading Technology, which allows the server to use more logical CPU cores than are physically available in the system. When higher intensity workloads use a large number of parallel queries, the hyper-threading technology allows SQL Server to oversubscribe the amount of CPU and memory resources given to queries during run time. For example, in 45-TB certification configuration, the Cisco UCS C420 server has 32 physical CPU cores, but SQL Server could allocate up to 64 logical CPU cores to queries after hyper-threading is enabled.

SQL Server MAXDOP setting

SQL Server can dynamically allocate SQL threads with hyper-threading technology. Maximum degree of parallelism (MAXDOP) controls the number of logical cores that SQL Server uses for the parallel execution of a query. In our testing we used the following MAXDOP settings: 

20-TB certification: 12 for row store and 24 for column store



45-TB certification: 32 for row store and 64 for column store to provide the best scan rates for the respective runs without requiring use of 100 percent of the processors

Figure 12 shows a MAXDOP parameter setting of 32 in 45-TB certification testing.



19

Figure 12.

SQL Server MAXDOP setup

Resource Governor You can use SQL Server Resource Governor to reduce the maximum memory consumed by each query, setting the constraint options to provide the balance you need: 

Lower constraints provide higher performance for individual queries.



Increased constraints guarantee the number of queries that can run concurrently.

The default setting for SQL Server 2014 is 25 percent of SQL Server memory resources for each session. In our testing we used the following Resource Governor memory grant settings: 

45-TB certification: 6 percent for row store and 25 percent for column store runs



20-TB certification: 12 percent for both row store and column store runs



20

Upgrading from Data Warehouse Fast Track 4.0 No new hardware is required to upgrade from Data Warehouse Fast Track 4.0 for SQL Server 2012 to Data Warehouse Fast Track for SQL Server 2014. Simply upgrade the software to SQL Server 2014. The throughput remains the same. SQL Server 2014 Data Warehouse Fast Track metrics

Data Warehouse Fast Track for SQL Server 2014 certification uses the following primary metrics for capacity evaluation: 

Rated user data capacity—Calculated based on the row store relative throughput, the column store relative throughput, available storage, and the physical system memory. The calculation is based on an assumed compression ratio of 5:1.



Maximum user data capacity—Calculated based on the total disk capacity of all disks allocated to primary data storage. A compression ratio of 5:1 is assumed.



Row store relative throughput—Calculated as a percentage ratio of the row store throughput to the row store throughput of the validated sample Data Warehouse Fast Track reference configuration (a two-socket system with 25 TB of rated user data capacity)



Column store relative throughput—Calculated as a percentage ratio of the column store throughput to the column store throughput of the Data Warehouse Fast Track reference architecture.

The testing tool for SQL Server 2014 Data Warehouse Fast Track certification is designed based on a compression ratio of 5:1 because of the page compression feature introduced in SQL Server 2008, which enables data warehouse workloads to achieve a typical data compression of two times to five times while keeping the data in row structures. Customers should verify that the reference architecture they are deploying contains enough storage to accommodate their data needs.



21

Certification and bill of materials 20-TB certification

Figure 13 shows the Data Warehouse Fast Track certification for the small solution.

Figure 13.

20-TB certification



22

45-TB certification

Figure 14 shows the Data Warehouse Fast Track certification for the mid-size solution.

Figure 14.

45-TB certification



23

Bill of materials

The bill of materials is a list of the part numbers and stock-keeping units (SKUs) in the solution as well as the quantities needed to assemble it. 20-TB certification Table 11 lists the server components in the small solution. Table 11.

Server components

Product

SKU

Quantity

UCS C240 M3 Rack Server (without CPU, MRB, PSU)

C240-BASE-2646

1

2.0 GHz E5-2620

UCS-CPU-E52620

2

2 X 8 GB DDR3-1333-MHz RDIMM/PC3-10600/dual rank/x2/1.35v

UCS-MR-2X082RX-C

8

8-drive backplane with expander for C-Series

UCSC-DBKP-08E

2

300 GB 6 Gb SAS 10K RPM SFF HDD/hot plug/drive sled mounted

A03-D300GA2

4

QLogic QLE 2562-HBAA 2 port 8 Gb SFP+ Copper

N2XX-AQPCI01

4

LSI 6G MegaRAID 9261-8i card (RAID 0,1,5,6,10,60) 512WC

R2XX-PL003

1

1200W 2u power supply for UCS

UCSC-PSU2-1200

2

Power cord, 200/240V 6A North America

CAB-N5K6A-NA

2

Cable Management Arm - 2u for C-Series

UCSC-CMA-0002

1

2U Rail Kit for UCS C-Series servers

UCSC-RAIL-2U

1

16 GB SD card module for UCS Servers

UCS-SD-16G

1

Memory kit for UCS-MR-2X082RX-C

UCS-MKIT-082RX-C

16

CPU heat sink for UCS C240 M3 Rack Server

UCSC-HS-01-C240

2

HDD slot blanking panel for UCS B-Series Blade Servers

N20-BBLKD

12

Full height PCIe filler for C-Series

UCSC-PCIF-01F

1

.79m SAS RAID Cable for C240

UCSC-RC-P8M-C240

2

Onsite 24X7X4 UCS C240 M3 Rack Server

CON-OSP-C240-M3

1

Table 12 lists the storage components in the small solution. Table 12.

Storage components

Storage

Model number

Quantity

XtremIO virtual rack

X02-VRACK-FD

1

XtremIO-25*400 GB flash drives with OE software

X02-D24-400F

1

XtremIO X-Brick-1 configuration kit

X02-KIT01-FD

1



24

Storage

Model number

Quantity

XtremIO storage controller with tag

X02-CTRL-TAGF

1

XtremIO storage controller

X02-CTRL-F

1

XtremIO - UPS 220V

X02-UPS-220F

2

45-TB certification Table 13 lists the server components in the mid-size solution. Table 13.

Server components

Server

Part number

Quantity

UCS C420 M3 Rack SVR without CPU, memory, HDD, or PCIe

UCSC-BASE-M3C420

1

2.7 GHz E5-4650 130W 10C CPU / 30M cache

UCS-CPU-E54670

4

2 X 8 GB DDR3-1333-MHz RDIMM/PC3-10600/dual rank/x2/1.35v

UCS-MR-2X082RX-C

16

LSI controller 9260-8i

RC420-PL001

1

600 GB 6 Gb SAS 10K RPM SFF HDD/hot plug/drive sled mounted

A03-D300GA2

2

North America, NEMA L6-20 250V/20A plugIEC320/C13 receptacle

CAB-AC-250V/13A

4

Memory kit for UCS-MR-2X082RX-C

UCS-MKIT-082RX-C

32

Cable management arm for C420 M3

RC420-CBLARM

1

Rail kit for the UCS C420 M3 rack server

RC420-SLDRAIL

1

Memory riser board for C420 M3 server only

UCSC-MRB-002C420

8

UCS 2.5 inch HDD blanking panel

N20-BBLKD

10

CPU heat sink for UCS C420 rack server

RC420-BHTS1

4

1200W power supply unit for C-series C420 M3

RC420-PSU2-1200W

2

QLogic QLE 2562-HBA 2port 8Gb SFP+ Copper

N2XX-AQPCI01

4

Table 14 lists the storage components in the mid-size solution. Table 14.

Storage components

Storage

Model number

Quantity

XtremIO virtual rack

X02-VRACK-FD

1

XtremIO -25*800 GB flash drives OE sw

X02-D24-800F

2

XtremIO X-Brick 2 configuration kit

X02-KIT02-FD

1



25

Storage

Model number

Quantity

XtremIO X-Brick 1 configuration kit

X02-KIT01-FD

1

XtremIO-IB switch

X02-IBSW-F

2

XtremIO- storage controller with tag

X02-CTRL-TAGF

1

XtremIO- storage controller

X02-CTRL-F

3

XtremIO- UPS 220V

X02-UPS-220F

2



26

Conclusion The Microsoft SQL Server Fast Track architecture presents a balanced configuration of processor core and disk performance capabilities optimized for sequential workloads. The reference configuration presented in this document underwent hundreds of hours of testing to provide the optimal and most reliable configuration for SQL Server 2014 Data Warehouse Fast Track using Cisco UCS server and EMC XtremIO. With a rated user capacity of 20 TB and 45 TB respectively, these two solutions deliver the best mix of performance and data capacity, offering simplicity, reliability, scalability, and a low TCO for enterprise-level data warehouse solutions. Contact EMC or Microsoft today to learn if this offering is right for you.



27

References EMC documentation

Microsoft documentation

The following documents, located on emc.com, provide more information: 

EMC XtremIO white papers and data sheets



Introduction to EMC XtremIO Storage Array white paper

The following document, located on msdn.microsoft.com, provides more information about the Microsoft SQL Server Data Warehouse Fast Track solution:



Data Warehouse Fast Track Reference Guide for SQL Server 2014



28