60 2012 Issue 02 | dell.com/powersolutions

Data managementSpecialsection

Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2012 Issue 2. Copyright © 2012 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2012 Issue 2. Copyright © 2012 Dell Inc. All rights reserved.

Microsoft SQL Server database

deployments play a crucial role

in enterprise operations. And

as they become repositories

for everything from sales transactions

to customer information, they continue to

grow. Mission-critical SQL Server applications

require maximum database uptime and

data availability. In the event of a failure, data

must be restored quickly and accurately.

To maintain the integrity and resiliency of

SQL Server applications, organizations can

capitalize on key features provided by Dell

Compellent Storage Center™ storage area

network (SAN) arrays and enhancements

in SQL Server 2012.

For example, Compellent automated

tiered storage enables highly active data,

such as SQL Server log files, to reside on

high-performance drives while moving

less active data to lower tiers. The Dell

Compellent Data Instant Replay™ feature

provides application-consistent snapshots

that help ensure accurate and complete

restore points in the event of data failure.

And AlwaysOn features in SQL Server

2012—availability groups and failover

cluster instances—enable administrators to

configure availability at both the database

and the instance level.

Considering the critical role

of database servers

Databases are among the most important

IT elements in many organizations. They

often form the foundation of the application

infrastructure, supporting business-critical

functions from decision support systems to

online transaction processing. Additionally,

the explosion of data in today’s enterprises

The rapid growth of data has made data availability a

critical part of IT strategy. Dell™ Compellent™ storage and

Microsoft® SQL Server® 2012 database software leverage

snapshots, tiering, and other capabilities to enhance

database resiliency.

By Maggie Smith, Mike Matthews, and Nicholas Sweere

Boosting database availability through intelligent virtualized storage

dell.com/powersolutions | 2012 Issue 02 61

Data managementSpecialsection

Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2012 Issue 2. Copyright © 2012 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2012 Issue 2. Copyright © 2012 Dell Inc. All rights reserved.

is accelerating the growth of database footprints.

The Microsoft SQL Server database platform

and applications can be particularly important,

because they are frequently used to manage

core business functions ranging from sales and

marketing to order administration and financials.

To illustrate, although applications such as

Microsoft Exchange messaging software are

vital, IT administrators can take them down

for maintenance at off-hours during the day—

but doing so can still affect the organization.

However, if a financial institution using SQL Server

to run core financial modeling allowed that

database to become unavailable, the downtime

could result in significant loss of productivity,

revenue, and customer goodwill. Similarly, a

global company that depends on its Web site

for 24/7 online sales cannot afford to have the

underlying database offline.

For these reasons, organizations require

database resiliency to help ensure continuity of

business operations. Selecting the right storage

is essential for meeting these requirements—

organizations need available, responsive,

and flexible storage that can grow with their

databases. Dell Compellent storage supports

high-availability features introduced in SQL

Server 2012 and includes capabilities that enable

administrators to manage databases in a way that

helps ensure continuous uptime and resiliency.

(For more information on how Compellent

and Microsoft virtualization technologies work

together to boost IT efficiency, see the sidebar,

“Heightening business agility.”)

Examining database resiliency features

Microsoft SQL Server 2012 offers several

capabilities that enhance database availability

and data protection. It includes SQL Server

AlwaysOn, a high-availability and disaster-

recovery feature that helps improve application

failover time to increase the availability of

mission-critical applications.

AlwaysOn availability groups, introduced

in SQL Server 2012, help ensure availability of

application databases with an integrated set

of options, including automatic and manual

failover of a logical group of databases,

support for up to four secondary replicas, fast

application failover, and automatic page repair.

AlwaysOn failover cluster instances support

multisite clustering across subnets, which enables

failover of SQL Server instances across data

centers. This fast, predictable failover capability

facilitates quick application recovery.

In addition, SQL Server 2012 introduces key

features such as in-memory column store for

increased speed and fast response to queries.

Data quality services help ensure the integrity

of data and the accuracy of reports. And

enhanced data modeling capabilities address

the diverse requirements of business intelligence

users across an organization.

Extending data protection, availability,

and performance

IT organizations can leverage storage-based

resiliency features to enhance and extend

Microsoft SQL Server database resiliency—if

the storage selected meets at least three key

requirements. First, storage must be built to

avoid downtime through hardware redundancy

and on-the-fly administration. Second, storage-

based business continuity technologies such

as snapshots are essential for protecting

Heightening business agility Together with advanced storage virtualization technologies from Dell

Compellent, end-to-end server virtualization and management tools from

Microsoft help IT decision makers simplify data center management—enabling

organizations to adapt quickly and flexibly to changing business conditions.

Capitalizing on Compellent virtual storage for server consolidation allows

organizations to advance IT efficiency in several major ways:

• Maximize utilization of storage resources

• Minimize data center footprint

• Heighten power and cooling efficiency

• Optimize total cost of ownership

A virtual data center environment based on Microsoft and Compellent

technologies is designed to ensure continuous availability and improved

disaster recovery through instant local virtual machine recovery and simple

replication of virtual servers and storage.

Replays for application integrity

Dell Compellent Replay Manager integrates with Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) to help ensure time-consistent replays of Microsoft Exchange, SQL Server, and Microsoft Hyper-V® volumes. In this video, discover how to use Replay Manager to schedule and manage replays for maintaining application integrity.

qrs.ly/831tje6

62 2012 Issue 02 | dell.com/powersolutions

Data managementSpecialsection

Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2012 Issue 2. Copyright © 2012 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2012 Issue 2. Copyright © 2012 Dell Inc. All rights reserved.

mission-critical application data. Finally,

storage that includes next-generation data

efficiencies can automate data movement

and optimize for both performance and

capacity. Organizations can leverage the

capabilities of Dell Compellent storage

in these ways to extend the availability

of essential application data stored in

SQL Server databases.

Of course, the need for outage

recovery is avoided altogether if an

outage does not occur in the first

place. Hardware redundancy built into

Compellent storage allows a controller

or hard drive to fail without interrupting

data availability to end users. Compellent

storage also enables administrators to add

capacity and performance dynamically—

an organization can increase the size of

the storage volume, switch out hot-

swappable drives, or add new drives

without taking down the SQL Server

database. Controllers can be upgraded

to adapt to new demands while the SAN

stays up and running.

If a system failure occurs, organizations

can greatly mitigate the impact of

downtime on the customer experience

through automatic and transparent

recovery using Dell Compellent Replay

Manager™ software. Replay Manager works

with Compellent Data Instant Replay to

provide application-aware, time-consistent

snapshots, or replays, for Microsoft SQL

Server (see Figure 1).

The Dell Compellent Data Progression™

feature provides automated storage

tiering, which helps minimize latency for

mission-critical SQL Server applications

by automatically moving infrequently

used data from tier 1 to a lower storage

tier. This capability is especially useful in

data warehouse environments, which

typically contain large amounts of static

data. Administrators often partition data

to improve manageability, separating out

old data and designating it as read only.

To facilitate and help manage this often

complex process, administrators can use

Data Progression to establish policies

for aging data and automatically move

infrequently accessed data to lower-tier,

cost-effective storage, freeing the high-

performance tier 1 storage for active data.

Data Progression enables

improvements in application performance.

With the most important data on tier 1

drives, disk reads and writes are fast,

which in turn can speed up applications

or databases accessing data on those

drives. If lower-tier data comes back into

frequent use, Compellent storage returns

it to the top tier. (For more information on

how Compellent storage can boost the

performance of SQL Server databases, see

the sidebar, “Accelerating insights.”)

Recovering local and remote

databases

Together, Microsoft and Dell Compellent

technologies enable organizations

to quickly and efficiently safeguard

geographically dispersed Microsoft SQL

Server 2012 databases. These technologies

leverage replays to continuously protect

data from server failures, viruses, human

error, and other disruptive events.

Compellent Data Instant Replay is

designed to deliver continuous data

protection by taking multiple space-efficient

snapshots throughout the day. Once a

base snapshot is taken of data written

to a volume, only incremental changes

are captured in ongoing snapshots. This

technique helps save disk space and speed

local recovery. Administrators can take

thousands of snapshots in short intervals for

recovery to a previously known state. Real-

time intelligence and virtual pointers keep

associated snapshots in sync.

The ability to take thousands of

replays of SQL Server databases allows

organizations to efficiently back up

large amounts of data with minimal user

interruption and to recover data quickly.

Replays enable administrators to back

up even large SQL Server databases in

a matter of seconds. Those replays can

then be used to recover data to a server

just as quickly, using a simple point-and-

click interface or using Microsoft Windows

PowerShell™ scripts.

By leveraging integration with Microsoft

Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS),

Compellent Replay Manager helps ensure

data remains consistent even if SQL Server

is running when the snapshot is captured.

SQL Server remains online during the

snapshot process, but I/O between

SQL Server and Compellent storage is

momentarily quiesced—or paused—to

enable point-in-time accuracy. Figure 1. Taking an application-aware, time-consistent snapshot using Dell Compellent Replay Manager

dell.com/powersolutions | 2012 Issue 02 63

Data managementSpecialsection

Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2012 Issue 2. Copyright © 2012 Dell Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, 2012 Issue 2. Copyright © 2012 Dell Inc. All rights reserved.

VSS coordinates the function and

timing of the OS, application, and

storage, enabling Data Instant Replay to

take replays without error, disruption, or

downtime. After the replay is taken, the

SQL Server application resumes normal

operation without disrupting end-user

access to enterprise data.

The Dell Compellent Remote Instant

Replay™ feature leverages the same space-

efficient snapshot technology between

local and remote sites for cost-effective

disaster recovery and business continuity.

Following initial site synchronization,

only incremental changes in enterprise

data need to be replicated. Storage

administrators using Remote Instant Replay

can choose between Fibre Channel and

native IP connectivity for data transfer.

Maintaining the integrity and

resiliency of database applications

Dell Compellent storage works side by

side with the native AlwaysOn feature

of Microsoft SQL Server 2012 to offer

reliable, consistent protection of SQL

Server databases. IT decision makers

weighing the benefits of native backup

and storage-based snapshots can

implement both approaches in the

same environment. In some cases, data

protection strategies such as nightly

off-site backups of the full database

using native capabilities of SQL Server

2012 will meet organizational needs.

Other tier 1 applications and databases

may require more frequent backups.

Compellent storage can play an important

role in minimizing backup windows,

using replays to help reduce the intervals

between recovery points and recovery

time objective targets.

In the end, the high-availability,

data protection capabilities of

Compellent storage and SQL Server

share the ultimate goal of protecting

today’s deluge of business-critical

application data and helping IT

administrators to meet ever-increasing

service-level agreements.

Learn more

Dell Compellent storage:

dell.com/compellent

Dell Compellent Replay Manager:

qrs.ly/js1u63g

Microsoft SQL Server 2012:

microsoft.com/sqlserver

Authors

Maggie Smith is a senior marketing manager

at Dell. She is focused on storage solutions for

Microsoft applications and has over 30 years of

experience marketing technology products.

Mike Matthews is a product specialist for Dell

Compellent, focused on helping customers use

Microsoft SQL Server on Dell Compellent storage.

Nicholas Sweere is a product marketing manager

for Dell Compellent storage, focused on core

applications and third-party integrations.

Accelerating insightsAs expensive as healthcare is in the United States,

government and private insurance companies must

verify the integrity of claims after they have been paid in

order to recoup any overpayments. These organizations

turn to Las Vegas–based HealthDataInsights Inc. (HDI), a

technology-enabled healthcare services company that

specializes in the identification and recoupment of claim

overpayments to providers.

The company’s profitability depends largely on how fast

it can load its customers’ claims data—as much as 2 TB a

month—as well as how quickly it can analyze that data and

return results. The company optimized this process using

Dell PowerEdge™ R910 servers running Microsoft SQL Server

2008 but quickly identified its storage area network (SAN) as a

performance bottleneck.

After replacing its legacy SAN with the Dell Compellent

Storage Center SAN, HDI quickly saw improvements in

performance and disk utilization. For example, using Storage

Center to store and manage its SQL Server databases, HDI

obtained a 60 percent improvement in performance on data

loads and an 84 percent performance improvement on SQL

queries compared to the legacy SAN.

With its legacy SAN, HDI found the process of allocating

SAN space to be extremely time-consuming, and the drives

were poorly utilized. Because Compellent storage virtualizes

the underlying arrays, storage utilization was much more

efficient—HDI achieved a 60 percent reduction in the number

of disk drives required compared to the legacy system.

As well as enabling HDI to improve its data analysis

capabilities, Compellent storage helps HDI ensure high

availability through fully redundant hardware and advanced

failover features—continuously protecting critical claims data

against downtime and disaster. For more information, visit

qrs.ly/uo1u550.