VMworld Europe 2014: Virtualizing Databases Doing IT Right – The Sequel

Disclaimer
• This presentation may contain product features that are currently under development.
• This overview of new technology represents no commitment from VMware to deliver these
features in any generally available product.
• Features are subject to change, and must not be included in contracts, purchase orders, or
sales agreements of any kind.
• Technical feasibility and market demand will affect final delivery.
• Pricing and packaging for any new technologies or features discussed or presented have not
been determined.
2

Don Sullivan Product Manager Bus Critical Aps
• VMware Chief Technology Office Ambassador
• Started Working with Oracle Version 7,8.X,9.X,10.x .….
• Co-Author Oracle Certified Master Practicum
• Frequent speaker at VMworld, EMCworld, VMug & IOUG
• Principal Oracle University Instructor (Oracle 7 through 10g)
– Backup and Recovery, Performance Tuning, OracleNet
– RMAN, Partitioning, SQL Tuning, OPS/RAC,
– Oracle Internals classes:(Advanced Recovery, Space and
Transaction Management, Optimizer Internals, Datatypes and
Storage Internals)
3

Michael J Corey
Books Include:
Virtualizing SQL Server with VMware Doing IT
Right
Oracle Database 12c: Install, Configure & Maintain
like a Professional
Oracle 11g A Beginner’s Guide
Oracle 10g A Beginner’s Guide
Oracle 9i - A Beginner's Guide
SQL Server 7 Data Warehousing
Oracle8i - Data Warehousing
Oracle8i - A Beginner's Guide
Oracle8 - Data Warehousing
Oracle8 – Tuning
Oracle8 - A Beginner's Guide
Oracle - Data Warehousing
Oracle - A Beginner's Guide
Tuning Oracle
Key Past/Current Affiliations:
Past President of the IOUG
Founding Board IOUG Virtualization SIG
Past Member IOUG Board of Directors
Past Director of Education IOUG
Founder Professional Association of SQL Server
Talkin’Cloud Top 200 Channel Partner Experts Cloud
Past Member Microsoft Data Warehouse Council
Past Member Oracle Educational Advisory Council
Past Director of Conferences IOUG Alive
Executive Board Massachusetts Robert H. Goddard
Council on Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics
Started Working with Oracle Version 3.0 Beta Tested Oracle 5,6,6.2,7,8.X,9.X.…. Presented on Technology
& Business Topics from Brazil to Australia Worked with Oracle on UNIX, Linux, Windows, MVS,VM, VMS,..

http://www.pearsonitcertification.com/store/virtualizing-oracle-databases-on-vsphere-9780133570182
http://www.pearsonitcertification.com/store/virtualizing-sql-server-with-vmware-doing-it-right-9780321927750
New RDBMS books from VMware Press
vmwarepress.com

Doing Something Different
• Presentation Covers Both Oracle & Microsoft SQL Server
• More & More DBA’s are faced with maintaining both
• Many Issues faced are shared
6
“This is a Database on Virtualized Infrastructure Session, Principals Apply all Databases”

Dial Tone – The New World Order

Why Customers Are Virtualizing
Databases
(Business Critical Applications)

VMware
Concise Set
Very
Efficient
Drivers
Focused
Driver Set
Well
Vetted O/S
Hardware Resource
O/S
Du Jour
Many Drivers
Many Versions
New
Driver’s
Can Cause
Issues

Why Your Company Cares: Virtualization is Strategic
1:1 relationship between applications and hardware
Relevant cost metric = cost per server
• 8% - 12% Utilization is typical
Many:1 relationship between applications and hardware
Relevant cost metric = cost per application
• 60 - 80% Utilization: is typical
• 60% reduction in CapEx
• 30% reduction in OpEx
• 80% reduction in Energy
Physical World
1 :1
Virtual World
Many :1
The New
Norm
“Can You Say Right-Sizing”

Memory Hot Add / CPU Hot Plug
Reduction in CPU Utilization
Increased processing rate
Adding Memory

Oracle - Hot Add Memory
Oracle database memory parameters are defined at instance startup.
You will have to restart the database to take advantage of added
memory.
Unless you have set SGA_MAX_SIZE to Big
Caution Shared Resource Environment !
Typically…
SGA_TARGET_SIZE <= SGA_MAX_SIZE
or could be wasting memory
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/solutions/oracle/
Oracle_Databases_VMware_Workload_Characte
rization_Study.pdf

1St Time Goal of Consistency Standardization
Can Be Achieved
“Any Resource, Any Server, At Any Time” in the (Pool)
The 10
Millionth Model
T was
produced on
June 4, 1927

Trigger Points When to Virtualize

Architecting for Performance:
The Right Hypervisor

Is your database to “Big” to Virtualize?

Very Large ERP System
• 75+ application tiers – VMware/RHEL
• 8 TB database; 8.8 billion rows of data
• 52 million transactions per day
• 79K IOPS
• 40K blocks per second interconnect traffic
• 40,000+ named users
• 4,000+ peak concurrent users
Source EMC
“Yes This is Virtualized”

Performance Results
• Virtualization has ~5% overhead as compared to
native
• The database tps on a virtual machine is 5% less
than that on the physical machine.
• 2P represents 12 cores and 4P represents 24 cores
22
• For 100 users the delta is ~6% and that
increases up to ~10% for 1700 users.
• When the system gets busier, native
starts to have a slightly larger
advantage over virtualization.

Performance Results - Continued
• Both virtual and native, by moving from
2P (12 cores) to 4P (24 cores)
• The database tps increases by 40% to
50%
• The CPU utilization drops from 80%
to 60%
23
• For RAC , by moving from 2P (12 cores) to 4P (24
cores)
• The database tps increases by 40% to 60%
• The CPU utilization drops from 75% to 60%
“Who Architects a Database With Less than 5% Overhead - One Busy Day Your Done”

Mega vMotion RAC on vSphere Functional Stress Test
VMW, EMC, Cisco
Executed by “Principled Technologies” 2013
WWW.principledtechnologies.com/Vmware/vMotion_oracle_rac_1013.pdf
3 RAC Node, vMotion on all 3 Nodes Simultaneously – Without any network disruption
25

Service Level Agreement/The DBA
Situation: Customer Monitors Critical Medical Equipment within a Hospital. A SQL
Server Database is at core of system. Having Huge performance problems
“Failure is not an option”.
Solution: Need to take Server Down. Adjust BIOS Setting Causing SQL Server to only
have access to 50% of the available CPU.
Customer: Never a time they can take Server down for 5 minutes
Stand Alone Instance – Had it been virtualized DBA would have had options

No Win - SLA
Yet this situation points to
a bigger issue concerning
“Managements”
expectations concerning
the availability of the
database and the
physical infrastructures
ability to support those
expectations.

Have The Conversation
• Get the Resources You Need to meet the expectation
• OR – Reset Expectations concerning Database Uptime

Avoid Good Intention BIOS Setting
Check Power Management Settings
• Default lot of Servers is “Green” Friendly Setting
• Saves Energy, When Server Inactive
• Many Times Does Not Ramp UP CPU Quickly and in Some Cases
Completely
• Avoid Dozing Setting
• Slows CPU to half its Speed
Proper Setting for server hosting a Database
is “High Performance”

BIOS Settings to Consider
If Your Processors Support it
• Enable “Turbo Mode”
• Enable “Hyper-threading”
Enable all hardware-assisted virtualization features in the
BIOS.

Virtualizing Databases: Doing IT Right

Lessons Learned – Tier 1
“What Works in Tier-2 (non-production), will not always
work with Tier-1 (production)”
33

Doing It Right 1st Time: Very Conservative
Designed to Insure You Avoid Common Traps & Pitfalls
Associated with Production Databases
being Virtualized

Doing It Right: Read Best Practices Guides
Read The Documentation
From All Your Vendors……
VMware, Microsoft, Storage
Vendor, Network Vendor….
Appendix of this deck

Professional Association of SQL Server
http://virtualization.sqlpass.org/
“Take Advantage of All resources Available to You”

Sign-up for the NEW VMware SIG and gain access to content,
webinars and networking opportunities
http://www.dbta.com/Files/Download/EmpoweredDatabaseSurvey

Blogs: Longwhiteclouds.com
39
http://vsphere-land.com/news/2014-top-vmware-virtualization-blog-voting-
results.html?utm_content=bufferc62e1&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&u
tm_campaign=buffer
#13

Installation
• Planyour SQL Server installation
SLAs, RPOs, RTOs
Baseline current workload, at least 1 business cycle
Baseline existing (workload) vSphere implementation
Estimated growth rates
I/O requirements (I/O per sec, throughput, latency)
Storage (Disk type/speed, RAID, flash cache solution, etc)
Software versions (vSphere, Windows, SQL)
Product Keys
Licensing (may determine architecture)
Workload type (OLTP, Batch, Warehouse)
Accounts needed for installation / service accounts
High Availability strategy
Backup & Recovery strategy
“If you aim at nothing,
you will hit it every
time” – Zig Ziglar

Planning a High Availability Strategy
 Requirements
• Recovery Time Objective (RTO)
• What does 99.99% availability really mean?
• Recovery Point Objective (RPO)
• Zero data lost?
• HA vs. DR requirements
 Evaluating a technology
• What’s the cost for implementing the technology?
• What’s the complexity of implementing, and managing the technology?
• What’s the downtime potential?
• What’s the data loss exposure?
Availability % Downtime / Year Downtime / Month * Downtime / week
"Two Nines" - 99% 3.65 Days 7.2 Hours 1.69 Hours
"Three Nines" - 99.9% 8.76 Hours 43.2 Minutes 10.1 Minutes
"Four Nines" - 99.99% 52.56 Minutes 4.32 Minutes 1.01 Minutes
"Five Nines" - 99.999% 5.26 Minutes 25.9 Seconds 6.06 Seconds
* Using a 30 day month

Is Being Down 3 Days In A Row Ok?
You Had 99% Availability !

Baseline, Baseline, Baseline………
45
Why will making it Virtual make it perform better?
IF so how?
– New Hardware?
– Faster CPU?
– Faster Drives?
“There are no silver bullets”

“IT” Food Groups: What to Baseline
• Existing Physical Database Infrastructure
• Existing/Proposed vSphere Infrastructure
46

When You Base Line a database
 Make Sure The Sample Interval Is frequent
 CPU, Memory, Disk (15 Seconds or less)
 SQL Server TSQL (1 Minute)
“A Lot can
happen in a
short amount of
time”
“SAME Applies to Oracle ! ! ! - A lot Can Happen

Migrations - The Bigger Picture

Database As A Service – Road Map
Multiple Tier Approach
• Different levels for different DB placement
• Basic and Premium
– Basic = Low utilization, test / dev DBs
– Premium = Moderate to High utilization, production, high visibility
• Different underlying hardware
• Different SLAs, RTO, RPOs and HA between tiers
Center of Excellence
• Assist with migrations, net new DBs and Capacity Management
– Communication, no “throwing it over the wall”
• VMware/SAN/Network/DB teams to discuss DB migrations
– Optional Teams: Security, Procurement
50
“Few Dedicated Personnel to each Level of Stack –
End Users are taking advantage automation”

SQL Server Baseline – Suggested Values

SQL Server – Perfmon Counters

SQL Profiler Counters
These are suggested values - work with your DBAs to
determine their KPIs

Migration – Baseline: Physical (disk) Pre
LogicalDiskAvg Disk sec/Read read latency
LogicalDiskAvg Disk sec/Write write latency
LogicalDiskDisk Read Bytes /sec Read throughput
LogicalDiskDisk Write Bytes /sec Write throughput
LogicalDiskDisk Reads/sec Read IOPS
LogicalDiskDisk Writes/sec Write IOPS
LogicalDiskDisk Transfers/sec Combined IOPS

Migration – Baseline: Virtual (disk) Post
 Export output Excel, and
graphed using a variety of tools,
such as Jonathan Kehayias’
Powershell script.
 Compare the results against the
required IOPS as measured in
the pre-deployment
assessment.

Determine IOPS & Throughput
ORION (Part of 11.2 now)
sudo -u root ./orion_linux_x86-64 -run advanced -testname traxpoc -num_disks 20
-cache_size 8000 -duration 240 -matrix basic
SLOB (Silly Little Oracle Benchmark)
Calibrate I/O – Native to Oracle starting in 11.1
SQL> declare
2 l_latency integer;
3 l_iops integer;
4 l_mbps integer;
5 begin
6 dbms_resource_manager.calibrate_io
7 (5,10,l_iops,l_mbps,l_latency);
8 dbms_output.put_line ('max_iops = '||l_iops);
9 dbms_output.put_line (’latency = '||l_latency);
10 dbms_output.put_line ('max_mbps = '||l_mbps);
11 end;
12 /
max_iops = 5348
latency = 10
max_mbps = 641
Other Free Tools:
• Swingbench
• TPC Benchmark
• Custom scripts
How do you know for sure?
Oracle’s - $$$:
Database Replay

Don’t’ keep it a Secret
• DBA’s – tell vSphere, Storage, and Network Admins your needs
– Storage: (IOPS / throughput)
– CPU: (MHz)
– Memory: (Total GB)
– Network: Bandwidth
– Features (i.e.: Windows clustering)
– Anticipated Growth Rates
– Anticipated Activity
– Other
“They Flunked Mind Reading”

Before You Install a Database on New VM
• Do basic throughput testing of the IO subsystem prior to
deploying a Database
• Tools you can use
– SQLIO/IOMETER
– Slob…..
62
“Check It Before You Wreck it”
-- Jeff Szastak

Should You PV (Via Converter)
Production Environment’s Build “New” From Scratch – GI/GO

SQL Server - Unattended Installation Options
 VMware vRealize Automation (vCac) Command Line
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms144259
 Configuration File
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd239405
 Sysprep
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee210664
• FYI – Available as of SQL Server 2008 R2

ORACLE- Unattended Installation Options
You At the VMworld
Party While your
Database is
Provisioned
VMware vRealize Automation
DBCA Silent Install
http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E11882_01/install.112/e24321/app_nonint.htm#CIHHFDGG
RAC Silent Install
http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E11882_01/install.112/e24660/cripts.htm#RILIN1119

Phone-A-Friend
VMware has stated that it will take the ______support call if a customer
calls ______ Support and ______ Support is being difficult because the
customer is running on VMware.
• Hint…….
“TSANET.ORG--- Hardware or Software”

Use SQL Server/Oracle recommended
installation guidelines for respective operating
system – same as physical !
Physical World 1 :1 Virtual World
Many :1
Same As Physical

If your OS and database don’t know they are
virtualized do you need to tell them?
Did You Hear That?

Architecting For Performance:
Design

OLTP
 Large amount of small queries
 Sustained CPU utilization during working hours
 Sensitive to peak contentions (slow downs affects SLA)
 Generally Write intensive
 May generate many chatty network round trips
 Typically runs during off-peak hours, low CPU utilization
during the normal working hours
 Can withstand peak contention, but sustain activity is key
Batch / ETL
Database Workloads Types
DSS
 Small amount of large queries
 CPU, memory, disk IO intensive
 Peaks during month end, quarter end, year end
 Can benefit from inter-query parallelism with large number of
threads

OLTP vs. Batch Workloads
 What this says:
• Average 15% Utilization
• Moderate sustained activity (around
28% during working hours 8am-6pm)
• Minimum activities during non working
hours
• Peak utilization of 58%
 What this says:
• Average 15% Utilization
• Very quiet during the working day (less
than 8% utilization)
• Heavy activity during 1am-4am, with avg.
73%, and peak 95%
Batch Workload (avg. 15%)
OLTP Workload (avg. 15%)

OLTP vs. Batch Workloads
 What This Means
• Better Server Utilization
• Improved Consolidation Ratios
• Less Equipment To Patch,
Service, Etc
• Saves Money/Less Licensing
OLTP/Batch Combined Workload

“Many Tier-2 were built for
capacity not performance”

Separate development, test from production
environments into different host clusters in the beginning

Where?/What Year Was The First
Documented Use Of The Word “Nerd”
?

More VMs vs. More DB Instances
More VMs
• Better resource isolation
• Better security, patch
management
• Better Performance
• Less Risk
Fewer VMs (More instances)
• Less expensive in some licensing models
• No OS isolation (configuration, security, fault)
• No resource isolation
• Less Segmentation (HIPPA, PCI,…..)
Note: Both Work, Both Valid Strategies

Storage

Golden Rules
“Your Database is just an
extension of your Storage”
Michael Webster
“Your Storage is Just a Set
of containers for your
database”
Don Sullivan

Storage
• The fundamental relationship between
consumption and supply has not changed
• Spindle count and RAID
configuration still rules
• host demand is an aggregate of VMs
• Factors that affect storage performance
• storage protocols
• storage configuration
• VMFS configuration (Separate LUN’s, All on one
LUN, Does it even matter?)
VMFS

More I/O In Flight to the Array

Use VMFS vs. RDM
• VMFS Advantages
– Negligible performance cost and superior
functionality
– Ability to take full advantage of future
functionality enhancements (Future
Awesomeness)
• Align VMFS on 64K boundaries
– Automatic with vCenter
– www.vmware.com/pdf/esx3_partition_align.pdf
• With vSphere 4.1
– Use VAAI (Storage API)*
• With vSphere 5.x
– Use VASA (Storage API)*
0
1000
2000
3000
4000
5000
6000
7000
8000
4K IO 16K IO 64K IO
VMFS
RDM (virtual)
RDM
(physical)
IOPS
VMFS Scalability
* Work With Storage Vendor For Details

Thin Provisioning Perf / Block Zeroing
MBs I/O Throughput
 USE use Thick Eager Zerod Disk for best
performance
 Maximum Performance happens eventually, but
when using lazy zeroing, zeroing needs to occur
before you can get maximum performance
 At minimum Databases, LOGS, TEMPDB
 Check with Storage Vendor to see how they handle
Thin Provisioning. Your Mileage may vary
 VAAI capable array can alter config
http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsp_4_thinprov_perf.pdf

Database Thick Provision Eager Zeroed Options
Inflation
Storage vMotion
Windows
vmkfstools
- VMware KB 1011170
- vmkfstools –D “My VM.vmdk
- Eager or zeroedthick
- vmkfstools –k “My VM.vmdk
- converts to eager Zeroed

Optimizations – SQL Server: Disk
 Disk
• Instant file initialization – add SQL
Server service account to PERFORM
VOLUME MAINTAINCE TASK under
User Rights Assignment in Local
Policies of Server’s settings.
• By default, every time the
database file needs to grow,
OS will zero fill this file &
block writes until complete
• Adding requires a restart of the SQL
Service,
• removal requires a reboot
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms175935(v=SQL.105).aspx

For those who want to be less conservative (for TempDB ) SQL 2005 50% the number of
cores up to 8, 2008+ 25%-50% ratio of files to cores, usually up to 8.
The number of data files and tempdb files is important enough that Microsoft has two
spots in the Top 10 SQL Server Storage best practices highlighting the number of data
files per CPU
TEMPDB 1 datafile per CPU
(DUAL Core Counts as 2 CPU’s)
(Raid 1+0 – Write Intensive)
Data Files 1 datafile per CPU
200GB DB/4 vCPU = 4@50GB
Make Equal Size/Grow Equally
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc966534.aspx

Storage Paravirtual SCSI (PVSCSI) adapters
PVSCSI adapters are high-performance storage adapters
that can result in greater throughput and lower CPU
utilization.
• Up to 30% CPU Savings
• Up to 12% I/O Improvement
Paravirtual Adapter Knows Its Virtual
* Very Important to Use Most Current Version

Always Check Storage Vendors
Best Practices
“>80% of the issues
in a virtualized
Environment have
to do with Storage
misconfigurations”

Storage – Putting It All Together
• Work with storage engineer, deliver realistic requirements early in the
cycle
• Size for performance, not capacity
• Large number of small drives, not small number of large drives
• More / faster spindles are better for performance
• Understand the I/O requirements of different workloads
• Transactional data vs. log vs. backup
• OLTP vs. DSS
“Golden Rule: Capacity Versus Performance”

Storage – Putting It All Together
•Understand the path to the drives, i.e. throughput, multi-pathing
•Use eagerzeroedthick disk provisioning to avoid lazy zeroing
• Place swap file on separate dedicated drive on SAN, mitigate the
impact of swapping with EFD (for high performance workload)
• Can potentially slow down vMotions
• Follow SQL Server storage best practices
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc966534.aspx
Work with your SAN Vendor as well, they have Best Practices for
running these workloads on your array

Processor

vCPUs – Hyper-Threading
hyper-threading processor to appear as two "logical"
processors to the host operating system
99

Still only One
Processor

vCPU’s
• With Databases Avoid Over Commitment of
Processor Resources till have “actionable”
performance data you can scale (vCOPs)
• 1-1 Ratio Physical Cores to vCPU’s
• Out of the gate !
Hyper-Threaded CPU != Full vCPU

Within The VM
In a virtual environment each vCPU is a single thread. There is no virtual equivalent of a hyper-
thread.
Guest Operating O/S sees the number of allocated vCPU’s
Non-Virtualized O/S – Would see the Hyper threads.
Oracle: Latches, Parallelism… Based upon visible CPU’s. Be Careful How You Set these things.

Processor – Putting It All Together
• Leverage hardware-assisted virtualization (enabled by default)
• Consider avg. and peak utilization
• Be aware of hyper-threading, a hyper-thread does not provide the full power of
a physical core
• Consider future growth of the system, sufficient head room should be reserved
• In high performance environment, consider adding additional hosts when avg.
host CPU utilization exceeds 65%
• Consider increasing CPU resource if guest VM CPU utilization is above 65% in
average
• Ensure Power Saving Features are “OFF”
• Use vCOPs for consumption & capacity

Memory

Optimizations SQL Server: Memory
Memory – Max / Min
 Min is set to 0
• only change when the OS is
requesting memory for other apps
 Max, is 2 TB by default
• Should not equal or exceed total VM
RAM, may lead to OS starvation
• Do not set to 0, may prevent SQL
from starting
• If using “Hot Add” remember to
modify this setting
SSQL Max Memory = VMMem – ThreadStack – OS Mem – VM Overhead
• ThreadStack = NumOfSQLThreads(ThreadStackSize)
• ThreadStackSize = 1 MB on x86 | 2 MB on x64
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms178067.aspx

Max SQL Mem Example
Ntirety Rule**
• 2 Gig + Additional 1 Gig per 16 Gig Physical Memory
106
**In the context of the VM size or Physical Machine Size

Running Multiple Instances on Same VM
Two options, and do nothing is not one of them
Option 1: Use max server memory
• Create max setting for each instance
• Give each instance memory proportional to expected workload / db size
• Do not exceed total RAM allocated to VM
Option 2: Use min server memory
• Create min settings for each instance
• Give each instance memory proportional to expected workload / db size
• The sum should be 1-2 GB less than RAM allocated to VM
 Settings can be modified without having to restart the instances
Pro Con
Max server memory
When a new process or instance starts, memory is
available immediately to fulfill the request
If instances are not running, the running instances
cannot access the available RAM
Min server memory
Running instances can leverage memory previously used
by instances that are no longer running
When a new process or instance starts, running
instances need to release memory

SQL Server: Memory
108
Lock Pages in Memory
■ This keeps SQL more responsive when paging occurs
■ SQL Server Lock Pages in Memory is ON in >= 32/64 bit Standard Edition (2012)
■ Account needs “Locked pages in Memory” rights
▪ Give it the RIGHTS
http://msdn.microsoft.com/e
n-us/library/ms178067.aspx

Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA)
• NUMA, avoiding the performance hit when several processors attempt to address the
same memory by providing separate memory for each NUMA Node.
• Speeds up Processing
• NUMA Nodes Specific to Each Processor Model
109

Non-Uniform Memory Access (NUMA)
“All Processors Can Use All Memory”
• 4 Sockets, 6 cores.
• 4 NUMA Nodes
• 128 Gig RAM
• Each NUMA Node = 32 Gig RAM
110
“In this example Optimal
Performance:
Each VM < 32GB*”
*CPU Overhead Needs
to be accounted for.
Minimal
*vNuma – Minimizes
Impact when this
happens

Home Node - NUMA
The home node for a virtual machine is first selected considering current
CPU and memory load across all NUMA nodes.
Wide NUMA Allows for the use of Multiple NUMA Nodes Efficiently
Hot Add CPU disables vNUMA
**** Properly Size Database/Don’t Need Hot Add CPU *****111

Swapping Occurs Two Places
1. Guest VM Swapping
2. ESXi Host Swapping
114
Swapping can slow
down I/O performance
of disks for other VM’s

Ballooning, Memory Compression, Swapping
Slow You Down
Stating the Obvious

Ballooning
• Kicks in – When Physical Host experiencing memory
contention
• Balloon Driver Runs on each individual VM
• Communicates with guest O/S to determine what is
happening with memory
• Works with the server to reclaim pages that are
considered least valuable by the guest OS

Exceeding Host Memory can lead to ballooning,
Memory Compression or Swapping
Swapping can slow
down I/O performance
of disks for other VM’s

Don’t Shut Off Memory Ballooning
Ballooning
is Your First
Line of
Defense

Total Memory Demand
Active memory (%ACTV) of VM’s +
Memory Overhead – Page sharing of
VM’s (DE-Duping)
DE-Duping = Transparent Page Sharing

Transparent Page Sharing more effective
The more similar the VM’s are
“Put Like Operating
Systems On Same
Physical Host”

TPS – When It Kicks In
• Before Ballooning
• Always Running on
preset cycle looking for
opportunity to reclaim
memory
• Very Low Overhead
• Runs At HOST Level

Memory Reservations
• VM is only allowed to power on if the
CPU & memory reservation is
available (Strict admission)
• The amount of memory can be
guaranteed even under heavy loads.
• SET CPU/Not Guaranteed
• VMware HA Strict Admission Control
– Settings Can Override this behavior
126

Oracle Approximate Memory Architecture
Set the memory reservation to SGA size plus OS.
(Reservation & configured memory might be the same.)
Client sessions and context
SGA
(DB buffer cache, and others)
Operating System
VMConfigured
Memory
Instance
(PMON, SMON, DBWR, LGWR, CKPT,
others)

Reservations and vswp
Setting a reservation creates a 0.00 K

Large Pages/Huge Pages -- Broken Down at
Hypervisor Level. Not Guest O/S
“Large/Huge
PAGES Do
Not Normally
SWAP”
In the cases where host memory is overcommitted,
ESX may have to swap out pages. Since ESX will not
swap out large pages, during host swapping, a
large page will be broken into small pages. ESX tries
to share those small pages using the pre-generated
hashes before they are swapped out. The motivation
of doing this is that the overhead of breaking a
shared page is much smaller than the overhead of
swapping in a page if the page is accessed again in
the future.
http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1021095

Oracle – Hugepages
/etc/security/limits.conf to set soft and hard limits.
oracle soft nofile 131072
oracle hard nofile 131072
oracle soft nproc 131072
oracle hard nproc 131072
oracle soft core unlimited
oracle hard core unlimited
# -- The following entries need to adjusted with HugePages settings
# oracle soft memlock 50000000
# oracle hard memlock 50000000
“HUGE PAGES Do Not Normally SWAP”

 Use large pages in the guest (start SQL Server w/ Trace flag –T834)
SQL Server In-Guest Memory Best Practices

Memory – Putting It ALL Together
• Do not overcommit memory for production, mission critical SQL Server VMs
• Set provision memory = reservation = SQL Server max server memory + OS
memory + virtualization overhead
• Set provision memory = reservation = Oracle SGA + OS memory +
virtualization overhead
• To avoid swapping, memory limit should never be set below the provisioned
size. Setting memory limit is not recommended in general
• To avoid NUMA remote memory access, size VM memory equal to or less
than the memory per NUMA node if possible

Network

Jumbo Frames
• Jumbo frames are
Ethernet Frames Ethernet
with more than 1500
bytes of payload.
Conventionally, jumbo
frames can carry up to
9000 bytes of payload

Enable Jumbo Frames
Check to seeWill Suceed
ping -M do -s 8972 -c 2 rac01a-priv
ping -M do -s 8972 -c 2 rac01b-priv
PING rac01a (10.17.33.31) 8972(9000) bytes of data.
8980 bytes from rac01a-priv (10.17.33.31): icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.017 ms
8980 bytes from rac01a-priv (10.17.33.31): icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.018 ms
Will Fail
Make sure:
switch support is enabled
9000 Bytes
- 20 Bytes IP Header
- 8 Bytes of ICMP Header
“8192/64 = 128”

SQL Server: Network
Network
 Default packet size is 4,096
• If jumbo frames are available for
the entire stack, set packet size to
8,192
 Maximize Data Throughput for
Network Applications
• Limit file system cache by OS
• NIC > File & Printer Sharing
Microsoft Networks
• Use Minimize Memory or
Balance
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/johnhicks/archive/2008/03/03/sql-server-checklist.aspx

Jumbo Frames
“Cost of Reducing To 1500
Bytes Then Back Again is
Very Expensive”
Splitting Is Bad

Network – Putting All Together
• Separate SQL workloads with chatty network traffic (Microsoft Always On – Are
you there) from the one with chunky access into different physical NIC
• With 10Gbe do at VLAN level (4Gig-E NICs (4Gb total vs 20Bg total) 2 10Gbe Nics)
• Separate traffic for vMotion, service console, and SQL Server at physical NIC level
• 10Gbe Sufficient Bandwidth at Host but separate by VLAN
• Have 4 NICs per host to ensure performance and redundancy of network
(Virtualized Environment = Network Heavy)
• Using 4 10Gbe NIC’s overkill from redundancy perspective. 2 10 Gbe Nic’s Usually enough
• vSphere 5.0 Introduced ability to use more than 1 NIC for vMotion. (More
vMoitions going at one time. Added specifically for memory intensive applications,
ie: Databases)
• Use VMXNET3 (VMware driver – reduces physical CPU utilization)

WSFC – Cluster Validation Wizard
144
 Use this to validate support for your configuration
• Required by Microsoft Support for condition of support for YOUR
configuration
 Run this before installing AAG (AlwayOn Availabilty Group), and
every time you make changes
• Save resulting html reports for reference
 If running non-symmetrical storage, possible hotfixes required
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff878487(SQL.110).aspx#
SystemReqsForAOAG

Thank You
Michael Corey
Michael.corey@ntirety.com
Blog: http://michaelcorey.ntirety.com
http://www.dbtablog.com/
@Michael_Corey
Don Sullivan
sullivand@vmware.com
@@dfsulliv

VMworld Europe 2014: Virtualizing Databases Doing IT Right – The Sequel

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VMworld Europe 2014: Virtualizing Databases Doing IT Right – The Sequel