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foxy1977
Contributor
Contributor

ESXi disk setup for SQL server VMs - advice sought

Hi folks,

Just after a bit of advice about the RAID hard drive setup on a new physical host we are putting in to run a couple of virtual SQL servers. I am looking at putting in a Dell 2950 with 16gb RAM (with space for another 16gb taking it to 32gb) and a lot of direct attached storage. My question is really around the RAID config. I am looking at running possibly 3 machines at needing about 300-500gb each storage each.

I know for physical servers we try to setup the system, transaction logs and data files on separate disks. Some of our servers were split between two raid controllers and a number of physical disks. Do we still need to plan the virtual machines along the same lines. I was thinking that we do not need to set them up in the same manner as the underlying physical setup is different. I am thinking about putting the system os on a 20gb partition and a massic 300gb data partition.

At the moment we do not have a budget for shared storage but I am hoping we can get something sorted in the next few months.

I am thinking about whether to go with RAID 5 (5 or 6 x 1tb SAS or SATA drive) or RAID 1+0 with a number of 1TB drives. What setup is going to give me the best performance? I have heard stuff about the more spindles the better. I'm assuming spindles means drives!

We are going to be converting/migrating 2 machines that are running on dual AMD 2218 2.6ghz with 4gb RAM on direct storage. Just run a few sql counters over one of the boxes and it is averaging between 60-100 transactions per second the other box is averaging about 350 per sec. We are also looking at upgrading SQL from 2000 to 2005.

Any tips and ideas gratefully received

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7 Replies
jrenton
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Take a look at this. http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-8964

Should give you all of the answers you require.

John

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Lightbulb
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Spindles do mean drives Smiley Happy

For SQL VMs disk I/O setup is just as important as on a physical system.

I posted about this here last night

http://communities.vmware.com/message/1155224#1155224

You really should take a look at this whitepaper which covers SQL I/O setup and Best practices

http://www.computationpress.com/images/disk_deck_short2.pdf

Also MSFTs take on it

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/bestpractice/pdpliobp.mspx

As you do not have Shared storage your options are a little limited at this time but setting up the I/O subsystem on a SQL system (Physical or Virtual) is something you want to put some thought into or you will face performance issues and unusual bugs down the line.

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foxy1977
Contributor
Contributor

What are RDMs?

Just having a look through a couple of them documents. I was reading them yesterday evening.

Are you guys saying that regardless of the physcal infrastructure (say

raid 5 or 10) i should still set my VMs up with 3 seperate disks

(system, logs and data) regardless of the underlying hardware.

Thanks for the advice - much appreciated

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Lightbulb
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

RDM = Raw Device Mapping

These are LUNS presented from shared storage more or less directly to the VM.

As you do not have shared storage you need not concern yourself with them right now

As to point 2 yes separate system/boot, data and logs (While your at it you could isolate tempdb on separate vmdk, although that might be a bit much)

If not for performance this will at least make a future migration to an RDM a little less difficult.

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JasonVmware
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hello,

If you are using direct attached storage right now I would setup the drives as you would in a psyhical server. One thing to remeber when you go virtual is you want to keep the same proven practices that would of been setup on a psyhical system. When you have shared storage you would want to use RAW LUN mappings for the SQL server but since you have direct attached storage I would break up your raid sets into raid 10 (1+0).

Essentially create a raid 10 set of disks for your database, and another raid 10 set for your transaction logs. The OS could be on a mirror if you like as it doesn't require as much perfomance but it is up to you. I would do this for each SQL server. So your setup would look something like this:

Raid 1 Mirror (2 disks) - Datastore for OS's - virtual disk for your os

Raid 10 - (4, or 8 disks) Datastore for SQL database - virutal disks for your SQL database

Riad 10 ( 4 or 8 disk) - Datastore for SQL Transaction Logs - virutal disks for your SQL transaction logs

I hope this helps, if you have any questions let me know.

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Texiwill
Leadership
Leadership

Hello,

I would also give a listen to Podcast #32 of the VMware COmmunities Roundtable Podcast. This discusses this in some detail but the long and short of it is, what you do in the physical world translate into the virtual world. If you would normally use multiple disks then you would continue to do so, but remember multiple VMDKs on the same LUN does not map to multiple disks in the physical world you would have to have multiple VMDKs each ondifferent LUNs or using RDMS to get that.


Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

====

Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.

Blue Gears and SearchVMware Pro Blogs: http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Blog_Roll

Top Virtualization Security Links: http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Top_Virtualization_Security_Links

--
Edward L. Haletky
vExpert XIV: 2009-2023,
VMTN Community Moderator
vSphere Upgrade Saga: https://www.astroarch.com/blogs
GitHub Repo: https://github.com/Texiwill
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foxy1977
Contributor
Contributor

Ive had a listen to that podcast.

To keep you all in the loop we have just started a capacity plan assessment with a reselled today. Going to leave it running for 3 weeks. I will let you know how it goes.

Thanks for the tips

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