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nterprises must contend with ever-increasing business challenges, regulations, and scrutiny. At the same
achieve high levels of data and application availability and enhance Microsoft SQL Server database performance. VERITAS Storage Foundation HA for Windows is designed to support the Standard Edition and the Enterprise Edition of SQL Server, all versions of the Microsoft Windows 2000 Server and Windows Server 2003 operating systems including 64-bit versions, and virtual environments. This article also discusses how testing and validating a disaster recovery plan can help administrators ensure business continuity by using Storage Foundation HA for Windows to perform a fire drill that is designed to validate the production environment without affecting online applications.
time, customers expect information to be available at all times, and even a few minutes of downtime can be costly. Meeting stringent service-level agreements can be difficult without careful planning and wise IT investments. Traditionally, IT administrators have protected servers and applications by backing up data to tape. Although regular tape backups are essential, recovery-time objectives and recovery-point objectives cannot always be met by tape-based solutions alone. Today, Microsoft SQL Server administrators require a flexible, integrated backup system that helps reduce the time it takes to recover from data corruption or data center failures from hours or days to minutes. While unplanned outages are often unavoidable, administrators can enhance preparations for planned outages such as maintenance, patching, and disaster recovery validation and testing. This article explains how VERITAS Storage Foundation HA for Windows from Symantec configured on Dell PowerEdge servers can help IT administrators
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Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, November 2005. Copyright 2005 Dell Inc. All rights reserved.
can be enabled in Storage Foundation HA for Windows simply by A adding the appropriate license key. Before installing SQL Server, administrators should consider how databases will be placed on the underlying storage and how that storage can be configured both for performance and for fault tolerance. Microsoft provides specific recommendations and prescriptive architectures for many types of deployments; more information can be found at www.microsoft. com/sql/2005. In addition to database storage and performance issues, administrators
heavy use of the tempdb database, which may create a bottleneck if f SQL Server 2005 is not properly configured for the specific application. In addition, administrators should decide whether to create diskbased snapshots of the databases for quick recovery from accidental or malicious changes or from data corruption. Snapshot volumes can be created when configuring volumes for the application or at a later time when required and can be placed on a less-expensive storage tier than is required for high-performance applications. Figure 1 shows the typical disk layout for a simple SQL Server configuration based on the best practices just described. Following best practices for designing the SQL Server deployment, administrators can then take advantage of dynamic disk features. Dynamic disks allow the grouping of disk resources based on how those resources will be used, clustered, captured (as a snapshot), backed up, and so forth. In the base OS, only one disk group can be created, which prevents the use of advanced dynamic disk features such as clustering or off-host processing and backup. In the typical disk layout described in Figure 1, administrators can easily add volumes as necessary if data or logs grow larger than originally configured. Storage Foundation HA for Windows enables administrators to set automatic or manual volume growth, both of f which can take place while SQL Server remains online. Additionally, if certain data volumes experience performance problems, they can be moved to other locations to help reduce contention while SQL Server remains online. In Dynamic Disk Group 2 of the Figure 1 layout, two additional LUNs are used to enable quick recoveryone for storing snapshots of the database and one for storing snapshots of the logs. Administrators can perform such recoveries by using the snapshots to restore the desired volume(s) and rolling the logs forward if required (as in a database restore from backup). This approach enables recovery from a snapshot in minutes or even seconds, rather than in the hours typically required for tapebased recovery. Also, because the VERITAS FlashSnap capability is designed to make a complete copy of all data, the original data can be recovered to the point of the most current copy. Recovery can be performed from any node in a cluster, and logs can be used to recover to a specific point in time. In addition, on a shared SAN such as in
Location Local storage SAN Disk group Basic Disk Group Dynamic Disk Group 1 (minimum of 2 LUNs) Dynamic Disk Group 2 (minimum of 4 LUNs) Volume Volume 1 Volume 1 Volume 2 Volume 1 Volume 2 Volume 3 Volume 4 Drive letter C: S: T: U: L: N/A N/A Drive contents OS and SQL Server installation System databases Tempdb database User database User database logs Snapshot of database Snapshot of logs
In addition to database storage and performance issues, administrators should consider the importance of clustering and fault tolerance.
should consider the importance of clustering and fault tolerance. Will more systems and storage paths be required? Primary considerations for determining SQL Server architecture include the following:
What are the uptime and performance requirements for this application? How much data will reside on the server and how long will it take to back up and restore the data? After a failure, can the application be restored to production using tape backup alone in the time required? Could a second data center also host this application? If a second data center is available, what type of connectivity exists between sites?
SAN
Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, November 2005. Copyright 2005 Dell Inc. All rights reserved.
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providing simple site migration or recovery from a central display, with the click of a mouse. For optimal performance when replicating SQL Server, the tempdb database should not be replicated to the remote cluster.
such tests regularly, administrators can help ensure that downtime will be kept to a minimum when a real outage occurs.
a cluster environment, dynamic disk groups are designed to protect disks from being accessed by other systems on the SAN.
Enhancing SQL Server environments with VERITAS Storage Foundation HA for Windows A
Many factors, planned and unplanned, affect information availability. By implementing VERITAS Storage Foundation HA for Windows, organizations can benefit from a tool that is designed to build and optimize a resilient SQL Server system. Dell and Symantec are working together to enable a complete set of fully tested, integrated hardware and software solutions that are designed to provide high availability for Microsoft SQL Server 2005 environments. This scalable, easy-tomanage approachwhich includes VERITAS Cluster Server, the key component of VERITAS Storage Foundation HA for Windowsis well suited for medium- to large-size enterprises implementing SQL Server in their data centers. On-site planning and assistance are also available through Symantec professional services.
Kevin Knight is a senior product manager at Symantec Corporation, where he focuses primarily on availability and disaster recovery solutions for enterprise applications on the Windows platform. Kevin frequently speaks at conferences as a subject-matter expert on Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Exchange Server.
F OR M ORE INF ORM ATION
Symantec: www.symantec.com VERITAS Storage Foundation for Windows from Symantec: www.veritas.com/Products/van?c=product&refId=31 Microsoft SQL Server 2005: www.microsoft.com/sql/2005 Dell and Symantec: www.dell.com/symantec
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Reprinted from Dell Power Solutions, November 2005. Copyright 2005 Dell Inc. All rights reserved.
November 2005