DataON: Windows Server Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Solutions for SQL Server 2017

DataON Storage, storage division of Area Electronics Systems, Inc. and provider of hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) and storage systems optimized for Windows Server environments, announces DataON HCI solutions for SQL Server 2017.

As one of the leading database platforms for business – from small and medium organizations to large enterprises – SQL Server is at the center of operations for Online Transaction Processing (OLTP). For these organizations, computer system performance is critical to maximize transaction throughput, and reliability and HA are necessary to keep business flowing smoothly.

DataON HCI solutions for SQL Server 2017 are scalable solutions for these OLTP databases.

With mainstream support for SQL Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 R2 ending in 2019, customers need to plan their migration to a platform that will not only continue to serve their businesses, but easily scale with them as they grow.
• Two-node SQL Server Solution – DataON S2D-5108, designed for high performance on mixed workloads.
• Four-node SQL Server Solution – DataON S2D-5224, optimized for memory-heavy and performance-sensitive workloads.

Specs

DataON HCI solutions for SQL Server 2017, based on the DataON S2D family of hyper-converged infrastructure, are designed, validated and tested for performance, reduced disk latency, near-linear scalability, system resiliency with HA while delivering cost savings with a Windows Server-based HCI platform. Leveraging the latest Intel Xeon Scalable Processors, chipsets and NVMe SSDs, DataON HCI solutions for SQL Server 2017 give businesses OLTP performance to support their mission-critical workloads. DataON’s solutions, with two- and four-node HCI clusters, are optimized for SQL Server 2017, achieving 10 million transactions per minute (1) with automatic failover to keep the business operating.

The solutions can be configured as a standalone SQL application resource connected to the rest of the data center’s systems, or as a HCI running SQL Server 2017 alongside Microsoft Storage Spaces Direct and other enterprise applications. In either deployment, the solution is tuned for business performance and built for HA.

“Ever since Microsoft introduced Storage Spaces Direct in Windows Server 2016, DataON has deployed over 650 hyper-converged infrastructure with customers,” said Howard Lo, VP sales and marketing, DataON. “DataON HCI solutions for SQL Server 2017 is the next evolution of DataON providing solutions for customers who have made the choice to deploy Microsoft-based software-defined data centers.”

Both configurations are designed to optimize SQL Server 2017 performance with automatic fail over capability to maintain a highly available database service.
• Performance With Speed – Intel Xeon Scalable processors offer high performance of CPUs for demanding data center workloads, delivering fast data processing and access to data with reduced blocking.
• Balanced Capacity – In a HCI, locally attached storage devices are aggregated across nodes to increase capacity without sacrificing performance.
• Reduced Disk Latency – NVMe devices available for fast cache tier for SQL log while delivering performance and responsiveness, with greater density.
• Deployment Simplicity – No external enclosures and storage cabling are needed with DataON’s SQL failover clustering instance. Combined with mirrored volumes the system ensures SQL gets high throughput to maximize performance on mixed random IO/s workloads.
• Linear Scalability and Flexibility – Windows-based hyperconverged infrastructure provides expanded capacity and operational flexibility with multiple configurations allow deploying the best solution.
• Cost savings – Consolidating multiple instances on a single cluster helps reduce licensing fees and administrative overhead.

“DataON is very excited to work with our partners Western Digital Corp. and DB Best Technologies, LLC to develop hyper-converged solutions for SQL Server 2017,” said Howard Lo, VP sales and marketing, DataON. “Focusing on increasing SQL Server workload density while saving on software licensing costs, DataON solutions for SQL Server 2017 deliver a cost-effective solution for consolidating SQL Server workloads for continued on-premises deployment.”

“End of support means the end of regular security updates,” said Takeshi Numoto, corporate VP, cloud + enterprise, Microsoft Corporation. “Applications running on unsupported versions of SQL Server will be exposed to cyberattacks which are becoming more sophisticated and frequent, and can create significant compliance and security risks. The 2008 family of products was great for its time, but we highly recommend upgrading to the most current versions for better performance, efficiency, and regular security updates.”

“For enterprise customers migrating from SQL Server 2008 to SQL Server 2017, Western Digital delivers the platform and storage device solutions that enable the reliability, performance and cost tradeoffs customers require,” said Peter Plamondon, director of strategic partner ecosystems, Western Digital. “Working with DataON and DB Best, we are excited to showcase this DataON solution and the capabilities of the underlying Western Digital Ultrastar Serv24 platform and Ultrastar SN200 series of enterprise NVMe SSDs.”

“As enterprise look to modernize their SQL Server 2008 R2 solutions to SQL Server 2017, they have a terrific opportunity to optimize the cost and performance of their solutions using the new DataON SQL Server Cluster Solution,” said Dmitry Balin, CEO, DB Best Technologies. “Our team tested the platform with DataON and was impressed with the performance per VM running SQL Server 2017. We are excited to share these results with the comprehensive white paper we co-authored Cost Effective Workload Consolidation using the DataON Windows Server HCI Platform“.

“High-performance networks are essential for advanced hyper-converged deployments and this is exactly what our Ethernet Storage Fabric (ESF) solutions enable,” said Motti Beck, senior vice director, enterprise market development, Mellanox Technologies, Ltd. “For the last several years, we have been working closely with Microsoft and DataON to maximize the efficiency of Storage Spaces Direct over RoCE. Our work allows users to get the most out of their flash-based storage devices by removing bottlenecks that are associated with compute to storage traffic. The breakthrough performance we were able to achieve can be seen in DataON’s HCI solutions for SQL Server 2017.”

Managed by MUST
All DataON HCI solutions include DataON MUST (Management Utility Software Tool) infrastructure visibility, monitoring and management software. Integrated with Windows Admin Center, it provides cluster monitoring, performance metrics, system health statistics, and automated system alerts for Windows Server 2019 and Windows Server 2016 Storage Spaces Direct.

MUST delivers SAN-like storage monitoring features through a single pane of glass, providing real-time dashboard level metrics for IO/s, latency, and throughput on cluster nodes and volumes. It also extends the functionality of Windows Admin Center to provide additional capabilities, including historic data reporting, disk mapping, system alerts, and SAN-like call home service.

DataON difference
The company is exclusively focused on customers who have made the ‘Microsoft choice’ to deploy a Windows Server-based storage solution. It has been named to CIO Review‘s 20 Most Promising Microsoft Solution Providers 2018. Its team of experts know how to design, deploy and support Windows Server storage and will work with you to performance tune your workloads with benchmarks.

DataON solutions are:
• Customer-proven with over 650 enterprise deployments and greater than 150PB of Storage Spaces Direct deployments.
• Certified for Windows Server 2016 and 2019 Server Software-Defined Datacenter (SDDC) Premium and Standard editions. Also certified for Windows Server 2012, 2012 R2, 2016, and 2019
• Certified for the Windows Server Software-Defined (WSSD) program, with premium hyper-converged solutions for the highest level of performance, manageability, and security offered.
• Certified as an Intel Select Solution for Windows Server Software-Defined Storage, with Plus configurations for the most bandwidth-intensive and latency-sensitive environments.

(1) The HammerDB benchmark for OLTP testing was the benchmark test used to optimize the configurations. This benchmark’s OLTP workload is derived from TPC-C and as such, is not comparable to published TPC-C results.