FAST SQL SERVER BACKUP AND RESTORE WITH PURE STORAGE WHITE PAPER
FAST SQL SERVER BACKUP AND RESTOREWITH PURE STORAGE
WHITE PAPER
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
EXECUTIVE OVERVIEW .......................................................................................................................... 3
GOALS AND OBJECTIVES ...................................................................................................................... 3
AUDIENCE ................................................................................................................................................. 3
PURE STORAGE INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................... 4
SOLUTION SUMMARY ............................................................................................................................. 4
FLASHBLADE USE CASES ...................................................................................................................... 6
TEST CONFIGURATION ........................................................................................................................... 6
IMPLEMENTATION STEPS ...................................................................................................................... 8
PERFORMANCE RESULTS ..................................................................................................................... 13
SUMMARY ................................................................................................................................................ 15
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GOALS AND OBJECTIVES
The test cases shown here are intended to emphasize the high levels of throughput, workload consolidation,
minimized RTO and RPO, and ease of administration that these connected solutions provide. Though we will focus
on Microsoft SQL Server in our examples, the use cases shown here are easily extensible to other workloads and
hypervisors, such as vSphere, VSI, and Hyper-V®, just to name a few.
• Define use cases for employing FlashBlade as a backup target in a SQL Server environment
• Provide high-level implementation steps for a given test configuration
• Document performance metrics when restoring a SQL Server database from a FlashBlade backup source
with a given configuration
• Document performance metrics when backing up a SQL Server database to a FlashBlade backup target
with a given configuration
AUDIENCE
This document is for database, system, and storage administrators responsible for maintaining SQL Server, storage,
and network environments.
EXECUTIVE OVERVIEW
Microsoft’s SQL Server relational database offering continues to be a primary
data store for organizations. As the amount of data increases from a variety of
sources, SQL Server database administrators have less time available to perform
the essential tasks of backing up data and routine backup testing validation.
While traditional backup appliances are designed to store data, they are notoriously
slow at rehydrating and recovering data. The data restore process is utilized
more than ever before as DBAs iterate on their code with up-to-date databases.
Pure Storage® FlashBlade™ helps reduce the time for both backup and restore
operations by providing high bandwidth performance and simple management.
PURE STORAGE INTRODUCTION
Ready for the Big + Fast Data of Tomorrow
The past decade saw the rise of “big data” – and storage solutions designed to allow petabytes of data to be
centralized and served for everything from data analytics to scientific discovery to movie rendering. These storage
solutions were big, but often slow, as they took advantage of bigger and bigger hard disk drives, the last mechanical
relics in today’s otherwise all-silicon data center. However, with the rise of cloud-native applications, needs and
expectations are changing.
Big but slow is not good enough anymore, and the dramatic inefficiency of rows and rows of spinning disk in the data
center just cannot keep up with the efficiency demands of today. What if an all-flash storage platform could deliver big
and fast for tomorrow’s data, and be simple and efficient enough to be the platform for your cloud-native applications?
FlashBlade is a ground-breaking, scale-out flash storage system from Pure Storage. Engineered with a massively
parallel architecture from software to hardware, FlashBlade has emerged as the industry-leading solution for use
cases requiring the highest performance, like artificial intelligence and modern analytics. Many customers have tapped
this performance to modernize their backup and recovery infrastructure.
FAST
• Elastic performance that
grows with data, up to 17 GB/s
• Always-fast, from small to
large files
• Massively parallel
architecture from software
to flash
BIG
• Petabytes of capacity
• Elastic concurrency,
up to 10s of thousands
of clients
• 10s of billions of objects
and files
SIMPLE
• Evergreen – don’t rebuy
TBs you already own
• “Tuned for Everything”
design, no manual
optimizations required
• Scale-out everything
instantly by simply
adding blades
SOLUTION SUMMARY
Problem
Database backup and restore completion times are
increasing due to fast-growing amounts of data. This
puts strain on infrastructures, increasing database
maintenance times.
Solution
FlashBlade’s architecture is flexible, and efficiently utilizes
flash-based storage to increase bandwidth performance in SQL Server environments.
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Results
Using FlashBlade (with a minimal configuration of 7 blades) as a backup target in a SQL Server environment resulted in
1.9GB/s throughput and a completion time of 14 minutes and 26 seconds. (3.2TB database, 1.6TB of realistic data in the
test configuration.)
Blade
SCALE-OUT COMPUTE + FLASH
• The Blade is the scaling unit of FlashBlade – adding Blades linearly scales capacity, performance, metadata,
and clients.
• Each blade contains a low-power Intel XEON System-on-a-Chip processor and FPGA ARM cores to run Purity
for FlashBlade (Purity//FB) software.
• Blades contain raw flash chips, DRAM, as well as integrated NV-RAM protection to guard write operations
from sudden power loss.
• Blades are available in 8, 17, and 52TB capacities; blades can be mixed and matched and hot-added into
the system.
• Blades were designed with ultra-low latency in mind, leveraging PCIe to connect flash chips to CPUs, and
low-latency Purity Fabric to communicate with other blades in the system.
Purity//FB
SCALE-OUT STORAGE SOFTWARE
• Plug-and-go deployment that takes minutes, not days.
• Non-disruptive upgrades and hot-swap everything.
• Fewer parts = more reliability.
Purity//FB
LOW-LATENCY, SOFTWARE-DEFINED NETWORKING
• Fewer parts = more reliability.
• FlashBlade includes a built-in 40Gb Ethernet fabric, used for both communication between Blades and
to clients.
• The Purity Fabric implements low-latency proprietary protocols bypassing the TCP/IP stack, separating
client, data, and metadata traffic in the system via QoS.
• Each chassis includes 8x 40Gb/s Ethernet ports for both client connectivity and direct chassis interconnect.
FLASHBLADE USE CASES
SQL Server Backup Restore Operation
Backing up a SQL Server database is one of the most important tasks for a database administrator. It is not really a backup
until it is off the primary database storage subsystem and the process has been validated. Optimizing backup and restore
completion time is a high priority. FlashBlade increases bandwidth with its parallel architecture to help achieve this.
SQL Server Backup Restore Validation
Scheduled backup restore testing is essential for backup validation. A backup should be tested outside of the
production system regularly to ensure it is free of corruption, is able to be restored successfully, and the data is
accessible. FlashBlade decreases the completion time to restore for this validation process.
SQL Server Development Test Environments
Organizations can have a variety of database environments outside of production. Development, test, staging, etc. often
need database copies quickly. FlashBlade decreases the completion time to restore databases for these environments.
TEST CONFIGURATION
Note: To ensure configuration, performance, and compatibility are optimal, please reference and apply
the following Pure Storage Best Practice Guides:
• Microsoft Windows Server Best Practices Guide
• FlashBlade User Guide
• SQL Server Best Practices Guide
COMPUTE INFORMATION/PARAMETER
VENDOR CISCO
MODEL C460 M4
PROCESSOR QTY.(2) INTEL E7-8890 2.20 GHZ V4 24 CORE
DRAM 3 TB
NETWORK INTERFACE CARD
QTY. (2) INTEL NETWORK ADAPTER XL710-Q2 40GB/S
• TEAMED
• TEAMING MODE LACP
• LOAD BALANCING MODE DYNAMIC
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NETWORK INFORMATION/PARAMETER
STORAGE PROTOCOL SMB 2.1
NETWORK SWITCH ARISTA DCS-7050QX-32S-F
OPERATING SYSTEM INFORMATION/PARAMETER
WINDOWS SERVER 2016 BUILD 14393
POWER MANAGEMENT HIGH PERFORMANCE ENABLED
LOCAL SECURITY POLICY LOCK PAGES IN MEMORY ENABLED
PERFORM VOLUME MAINTENANCE TASKS INSTANT FILE INITIALIZATION ENABLED
DATABASE SOURCE STORAGE INFORMATION/PARAMETER
MODEL FLASHARRAY //X 70
OPERATING ENVIRONMENT PURITY 4.10.4
CAPACITY 79 TB
BACKUP TARGET STORAGE INFORMATION/PARAMETER
MODEL FLASHBLADE
CONFIGURATION 7 BLADES
OPERATING ENVIRONMENT ELASTICITY 2.0.6
CAPACITY 58.78 TB
WORKLOAD INFORMATION/PARAMETER
SQL SERVER BACKUP OPERATION
• BUFFERCOUNT = 6144.
• BLOCKSIZE = 65536.
• MAXTRANSFERSIZE=4194304 (4MB).
• SEVEN BACKUP FILES (WRITER THREADS).
• SQL SERVER BACKUP COMPRESSION ENABLED.
• CHECKSUM ENABLED.
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SQL SERVER RESTORE OPERATION
• BUFFERCOUNT = 6144.
• BLOCKSIZE = 65536.
• MAXTRANSFERSIZE=65536.
• SEVEN WINDOWS VOLUMES (READER THREADS).
• SQL SERVER COMPRESSED BACKUP.
• CHECKSUM ENABLED.
DATABASE APPLICATION INFORMATION/PARAMETER
MICROSOFT SQL SERVER ENTERPRISE 2016 13.0.4446 (X64)
DATABASE SIZE 3.2TB
DATA SIZE (REALISTIC DATA) 1.6GB
TRACE FLAGS (FOR TESTING PURPOSES ONLY)ENABLE DATABASE BACKUP INFO AND OUTPUT TO ERROR LOG
DBCC TRACEON (3213, 3605, -1)
IMPLEMENTATION STEPS
Note: To ensure configuration, performance, and compatibility are optimal, please reference and apply
the following Pure Storage Best Practice Guides:
• Microsoft Windows Server Best Practices Guide
• FlashBlade User Guide
• SQL Server Best Practices Guide
1. Network Infrastructure
• Designate IP addresses for compute host network interface cards, FlashBlade, FlashBlade VIP (virtual IP
address), to be used within the same subnet.
• Configure switch to be used with FlashBlade and compute host.
2. Deploy FlashBlade
• Assign IP address information to FlashBlade.
• Assign IP address information to FlashBlade VIP (virtual IP address).
• Join FlashBlade to the existing Active Directory Domain.
• Create a number of storage SMB file systems to correspond with each backup file used. Seven are used
in this example.
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FIGURE 1. Creation of SMB File Systems
• Create a number of network data VIPs to correspond with each blade installed. Seven are used in
this example.
FIGURE 2. Creation of network data VIPs
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3. Windows Compute Host
• Assign IP address information to the network interface card.
• Team network interface cards if applicable and assign IP address. If network teaming is used, set teaming
mode accordingly (static teaming, switch independent, LACP), depending on the type of network switch
used. Set load-balancing mode accordingly (address hash, Hyper-V port, and dynamic); this is
environment dependent.
• Map SMB shares from FlashBlade to Windows with drive letter and credentials. Use SMB share use
persistence to ensure reconnect after reboot.
• Check status of SMB share mapping to local Windows drive letters.
FIGURE 3. SMB share mapping in local Windows drives
4. SQL Server Instance
• In SQL Server, add backup devices to correspond to the SMB share local drive letters.
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FIGURE 4. Adding backup devices in SQL Server
• If applicable when the host SQL Server instance is not a member of the domain the FlashBlade participates
in, use the xp_cmdshell and Windows network commands net use to assign the Windows-mapped drive
letters as backup devices for use in SQL Server.
Note: The number of source database reader threads SQL Server assigns to a backup/restore operation is
dependent on how many logical Windows device volumes are used for the SQL Server database files on the
primary source storage.
Backup performance may vary and be limited to the number of source database reader threads used in a given
configuration.
The number of underlying physical storage subsystem disks, devices, etc., does not affect SQL Server thread
creation with regard to a backup/restore operation.
Tests for this configuration were performed with seven reader and write threads.
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In this source database file example, seven reader threads are used for Windows logical drives A, E, F, O, P, Q, and R.
FIGURE 5. Reader threads in a source database file
In this source database file example, one reader thread is used for Windows logical drive X.
FIGURE 6. Reader threads in a source database file
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PERFORMANCE RESULTS
SQL Server native backup/restore test completion time and bandwidth metrics.
SQL Server Backup to FlashBlade Target
FIGURE 7. SQL Server native backup/restore metrics
• Database 3.2TB, data size 1.6TB (realistic data)
• Completion time 14 minutes 26 seconds
• BACKUP DATABASE successfully processed 210,754,282 pages in 863.430 seconds (1906.949 MB/sec)
• T-SQL was used for this backup test to FlashBlade
FIGURE 8. Backup confirmation
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SQL Server Restore from FlashBlade Source
FIGURE 9. SQL restore to target from FlashBlade
• Database 3.2TB, data size 1.6TB (realistic data)
• Completion time 18 minutes 11 seconds
• RESTORE DATABASE successfully processed 210,754,282 pages in 1089.687 seconds (1511.000 MB/sec)
• T-SQL was used for this restore test to FlashArray //X
FIGURE 10. Restore confirmation
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SUMMARY
SQL Server has evolved and become the mission-critical platform of choice for many organizations. As your
data platform evolves, so should your storage – backed by the FlashBlade product offering. Utilizing our all-flash
technology reduces the time and complexity involved in performing these essential database backup and restore
operations for SQL Server database administration.
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