System x Reference Architecture for Microsoft SQL Server

Solution Brief

System x Reference Architecture for Microsoft SQL Server Robust database consolidation solution for small and medium businesses Databases today are becoming increasingly harder to manage. Disparate workloads across departments are often fragmented, making it difficult to use hardware and licenses efficiently. Companies are trying to stretch their IT investment dollars further while maintaining high availability and reliability. Competition drives the need to respond quickly to changing business demands but current infrastructure design holds organizations back. The solution? A design that is reliable, scalable and affordable for your data management needs today and tomorrow. One that allows an organization to streamline infrastructure and consolidate those disparate workloads into a flexible, dynamic and cost-effective solution. System x® can help. System x Reference Architecture for Microsoft SQL Server is a flexible, cost effective platform for general purpose SQL Server workloads in departmental or small enterprise accounts. The solution simplified the consolidation of SQL Server instances while providing high availability, flexible workload management, and fine-grained quality of service management to ensure that service levels are met. The modular architecture is built around

a cluster of System x servers for both storage and compute nodes, Juniper Networks EX2200 1GbE Top of Rack switches for networking and use Sanbolic software to provide storage high availability and flexible SQL clustering. Many enterprise applications rely on SQL Server databases and even small businesses have many instances of SQL Server to manage. This often results in management complexity, low resource utilization, higher-than-needed licensing cost. Not to mention challenges in ensuring appropriate levels of service, availability, and options for disaster recovery. SQL Server consolidation provides an opportunity to reduce the number of instances of SQL Server, upgrade to more modern software and hardware platforms, and consistently meet service-level and availability requirements.

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System x Reference Architecture for Microsoft SQL Server

Sanbolic Melio is used to create a highly available “SoftSAN” on the storage nodes. The softSAN mirrors data across two or more servers for availability, provides active-active storage volumes for both SQL Server and Microsoft Hyper-V, and provides remote replication, QOS, snapshots, and storage Live Migration. Melio also provides advanced clustering capability for the SQL Servers.

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Flexible scalability The base level configuration of the solution includes two compute nodes and two storage nodes in 10U of rack space. This can be flexibly scaled out to four compute nodes and four storage nodes in 20U of rack space. The larger configuration can use up to 52 near-line drives to provide up to 78 TB of net storage for data warehousing applications.

Figure 1. System x Reference Architecture for Microsoft SQL Server configuration design

The complete design for the System x Reference Architecture for Microsoft SQL Server integrates System x3650 M4 servers as compute nodes, System x3630 M4 servers as storage nodes, Juniper Networks EX2200 1GbE top-of-rack switches, Microsoft Server 2012 and SQL Server 2012, IBM Systems Director and Sanbolic Melio software. This low-cost, modular architecture enables you to buy the performance you need for your workload and dynamically expand capacity when needed. Sanbolic software provides storage high availability, data protection, and the ability to manage the SQL workload at the database level on either physical or virtual SQL Servers— enabling database-as-a-service (DaaS) from an on-premise platform to support your users’ applications.

Powered by System x System x 2-socket, 2U servers are used for both compute and storage nodes. This architecture can flexibly incorporate the latest enhancements in microprocessor, memory, and storage drive components. Creating a streamlined, easy to manage and deploy design for this solution helps reduce organizational IT costs and frees up resources for other tasks in the data center. The compute nodes are the best-selling System x3650 M4 servers with two Intel® Xeon® processors and 48 GB or 96 GB of memory. The System x3650 M4 platforms are flexible, highperformance servers that deliver low total cost of ownership. These powerful servers offer an energy-smart, affordable and easy-to-use rack solution that is cost efficient with rock-solid reliability that is ideal for business critical applications.

High Availability on a Cost-Effective Platform A key value of this solution is its simplicity. All hardware is fully redundant for availability. Servers have dual power supplies. Storage volumes are mirrored across two storage nodes for availability. Dual switches are used in the networking infrastructure. Physical and virtual SQL servers are clustered for availability and load distribution using Sanbolic’s Melio and AppCluster software.

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System x Reference Architecture for Microsoft SQL Server

Managing SQL Server as a consolidated shared resource

The storage nodes are the high-capacity System x3630 M4 servers with one processor and 24 GB of memory. The x3630 M4 supports up to 42 TB of storage using fourteen 3.5 inch drives. The 3.5 inch drives can be 3 TB drives for large capacity data warehousing applications, while more transactional workloads are better deployed on 600 GB 15K SAS drives, or SSDs. The flexible design that the x3630 offers provides extensive configuration options and is able to upgrade to more robust features as needs change over time.

Customer licenses for Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Standard or Enterprise edition are installed on compute nodes by the Business Partner who builds the solution. Compute nodes can run SQL on physical servers or on Hyper-V virtual machines. AppCluster from Sanbolic provides policy-based distribution of databases across the physical and/or virtual SQL Server cluster, providing availability and efficient utilization even when workloads run periodically or have large variations in workloads.

IBM Systems Director integrates seamlessly with our x86 server platforms to simplify the management of the compute and storage nodes including discovery and asset inventory, monitoring and event alerting, and resource optimization. It also enables simplified deployment, installation and update processes which help to reduce IT management complexity and cost. Working together with third party management platforms it provides a solid foundation for virtualization and integrated services management resulting in improved responsiveness and service.

Microsoft SQL Server and Sanbolic Melio together offer the following benefits: ●● ●

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Networking with Juniper Networks ●● ●

The Juniper EX2200 1 GbE Top of Rack Ethernet switch is a single rack-unit solution for crowded wiring closets and access locations where space and power are at a premium. Featuring both 24 and 48 10/100/1000BASE-T port models, the EX2200’s 10-inch depth, low power consumption, and lowacoustic fans make it an environmentally friendly Ethernet solution that is ideal for open office deployments.

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The EX2200 Ethernet switches also include four fixed front panel Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) uplink ports to support high-speed backbone or link aggregation connections between wiring closets or upstream aggregation switches without sacrificing base ports, offering true 24+4 and 48+4 configuration options. For this configuration, two 24 port 1GbE Top of Rack switches without PoE were used for redundancy purposes.

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Enables the creation of highly scalable, highly available SQL Server clusters Provides database consolidation on active-active storage LUNs to eliminate database sprawl and simplify database management Enables automated, rapid failover of SQL Server databases or SQL Server instances among the remaining SQL Servers when a SQL Server fails, for availability Provides intelligent distribution of databases across multiple SQL Servers, for workload distribution and to improve performance Provides reliable database protection

Conclusion

Why System x

The System x Reference Architecture for Microsoft SQL Server is a cost-effective, flexible platform for SQL Server consolidation and data warehousing in small enterprises or departmental applications. It utilizes Sanbolic software to virtualize SQL Server instances on physical and/or virtual infrastructure and can support multi-tenant private cloud workloads (database as a service).

System x is the leading provider of x86 systems for the data center. The portfolio includes rack, tower, blade, dense and converged systems, and supports enterprise class performance, reliability and security. System x also offers a full range of networking, storage, software and solutions, and comprehensive services supporting business needs throughout the IT lifecycle.

The solution is based on System x 2U rack servers and internal storage. The modular design allows it to be easily expanded to accommodate growing workloads. Finally, you want something that works. Something that is reliable, easy to deploy, designed to provide high availability, provides granular service level management, and provides low cost DR capability for SQL Server workloads. That “something” is the System x Reference Architecture for Microsoft SQL Server. Now you can focus big data faster.

For more information To learn more about the System x Reference Architecture for Microsoft SQL Server, please contact your Lenovo representative or Business Partner, or visit the following website: ibm.com/systems/x/solutions/database

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