TL;DW Webinar Report: Get the Benefits of Virtualizing Microsoft SQL Server on Azure Stack HCI

If you missed our webinar, you can watch the entire recording on BrightTALK. But if you need the TL;DW, here are the top takeaways and a slides list, complete with YouTube timestamps.

Top Takeaways

1/ Microsoft SQL Server 2019 is faster than SQL Server 2014.

Compared to SQL Server 2014, SQL Server 2019 (both Standard Editions) is 16.4x faster in total execution time.

SQL Server 2019 also delivers fast recovery with Accelerated Database Recovery and Availability Groups for up to five asynchronous replicas. The Big Data Cluster feature offers support for user and system databases in an Always On Availability Group as well [24:49]. It also supports Clusterless Availability Groups, which enable you to create replica copies of your data without installing clustering software when you don’t need to use automatic failover.

2/ SQL Server 2019 lets you leverage performance and scalability improvements and new technologies from Microsoft and Intel for higher throughput concurrencies.

New features like persisted log buffers and hybrid buffer pools let you take advantage of Intel® Optane™ DC persistent memory (PMEM). PMEM is a non-volatile memory that resides in the DIMM slots of the memory bus. It can be used as a storage cache layer in SQL Server 2019 applications for accelerated in-memory database performance and intelligent query processing [18:29, 42:11].

You can also increase caching speeds by adding Intel® Optane™ SSDs to the cache tier and/or increase bandwidth and memory with Intel® Optane™ PMEM in memory mode and app direct dual mode [35:57]. All of which improve SQL Server performance [47:10].

 

3/ Get better performance and resiliency for SQL Server by running it on an Azure Stack HCI solution.

Featured in Storage Review and given an Editor’s Choice award, a DataON HCI-224 four-node solution for Azure Stack HCI equipped with all-flash Intel® NVMe and Intel® Optane™ SSDs performed SQL Server workloads faster than VMware with 6.1x better throughput [22:17]. The solution is resilient and can withstand up to two hardware or two node failures, with two-way and three-way mirroring for all applications. Coupled with SQL Server Availability Groups and Accelerated Database Recovery features, it allows you to switch seamlessly to a SQL Server backup in case of primary cluster failure.

 

4/ SQL Server 2019 offers free hybrid disaster recovery (DR) on Azure and it’s easy to set up services like Azure Backup and Azure Blob Storage.

In an Azure Stack HCI solution, Azure is OS-integrated within Windows Admin Center giving you the flexibility to move to the cloud anytime. SQL Server 2019 also offers four other Azure-based SQL-related services, including Azure Synapse SQL DW, Azure Data Factory, HDinsight, and Azure Databricks [24:49].

Slides List

  • Running SQL Server on Azure Stack HCI [11:29] (SPEAKER: Brian Carrig, Microsoft)
    • SQL Server 2019 overview[14:49]
    • HCI with SQL Server [16:04]
    • SQL Server 2019 editions and SA benefits [18:29]
    • SQL Server 2014 vs SQL Server 2019 performance [21:30]
    • Azure Stack HCI review [22:17]
    • Performance guidance for SQL Server on VMs [23:43]
    • High availability and disaster recovery [24:49]
  • Accelerating SQL Server Performance with Intel Technologies [27:45] (SPEAKER: Ken LeTourneau, Intel)
    • 2nd Generation Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors [30:30]
    • Intel® Optane™ technology and benefits [32:08]
    • Intel® Optane™ persistent memory and SSDs [34:12]
    • Three ways to improve Microsoft Azure Stack HCI performance with Intel® Optane technology [35:57]
    • SQL Server and Intel® Optane™ DC SSDs [40:08]
    • SQL Server and Intel® Optane™ persistent memory [42:11]
    • SQL Server 2019 features which leverage Intel technologies [47:10]
  • Q&A [50:29]

 

If you have any questions about running SQL Server on Azure Stack HCI, please contact us at sales@dataonstorage.com.