SQL Server 2008 DR, Testing, Waits and Queues

Here are some notes on “SQL Server 2008 DR, Testing, Waits” I took while attending an advanced class on SQL Server taught by Ron Talmage (from http://www.solidq.com/na/MentorDetail.aspx?Id=38).

Please note that, although these notes were taken during the class, I might have added some of my own (mis)interpretation :-). Always check your facts on Books Online (I try to provide links when applicable). As with anything else you get from a blog, never use any of this in production before you thoroughly validate it a test environment. Please keep in mind that some of those will be hard to follow without some pre-requisite knowledge and the right context. Reading the post from top to bottom will help.

Disaster Recovery

• RTO (Recovery Time Objective), RPO (Recovery Point Objective), RTA (Recovery Time Actual)
• Backup Media (disk/tape) and Location (local, remote, offsite)
• Recovery Technology (Backup/Restore, Mirroring, Log Shipping, Clustering, Replication)

DR and HA

• What’s the difference between HA and DR?
• How would you prepare for a disaster?
• What happens if you lose the entire data center?
• Primary data center, standby data center.
• Consider risks, cost, time to invest.
• Big question: What are you trying to protect against?

Class discussion

• If you have an RPO that requires very small data loss, what to do?
• Small RPO? Large RPO? Small RTO?
• How far apart can the two nodes be?
• Synchronous or asynchronous replication?
• Consider: Clustering, Mirroring, SAN Replication, GeoClustering, Log Shipping
• Planned downtime: New hardware, Upgrade, Patches, Versions, Consolidation
• Unplanned downtime: Disasters
• How to flip a switch to the DR site?
• Virtualization support for SQL Server - http://support.microsoft.com/KB/956893
• Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP) - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms143506.aspx
• Windows Server 2008 Failover Cluster Configuration Program (FCCP) - See http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/failover-clustering-program-overview.aspx

Technologies

• VDI - COM-based interface with SQL Server 7 and later
• VDI - Supports snapshot backups using SAN-based technologies
• VSS - http://blogs.technet.com/josebda/archive/2007/10/10/the-basics-of-the-volume-shadow-copy-service-vss.aspx 
• DPM - www.microsoft.com/dpm  
• Log Shipping - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms187103.aspx 
• Database Mirroring - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb934127.aspx

Benchmarking and baselining

• Load-testing, benchmarking and baselining
• Meet performance requirements
• Verify correctness
• Determine system limits
• Determine impact of changes

Class Discussion

• Baseline - Ground zero, known state, Point of comparison
• Benchmark - Measurement under specified conditions, goal, used to estabilish baseline
• TPC - http://www.tpc.org/,  TPC-E for OLTP, TPC-H for DW/OLAP. Reports trans/sec and response time
• Load test - Application of a load, looking for a sufficient or expected load
• Stress test - Increase load. Done with concrete in construction.
• Saturation test - Add load until it fails.
• Endurance test – With specified load for a long time

White Paper

• Tuning the Performance of Backup Compression in SQL Server 2008
• http://sqlcat.com/technicalnotes/archive/2008/04/21/tuning-the-performance-of-backup-compression-in-sql-server-2008.aspx
• Looking at the white paper
• - Backup throughput to NUL with varying BUFFERCOUNT (what’s the baseline?)
• - Disk throughput and latency during backup compression (disk saturated, increasing queue)
• - Database snapshot creating time with varying workload (what’s the baseline? Load test.)

Performance counters

• Monitoring Resource Usage - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms191246.aspx
• See http://blogs.msdn.com/jimmymay/archive/2008/10/15/perfmon-objects-counters-thresholds-utilities-for-sql-server.aspx
• See http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032357640&CountryCode=US

Tools

• SQLIO, IOMeter, SQLIOSim, RML utilities, VSTS, 3rd party tools
• SQLIO – http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=9A8B005B-84E4-4F24-8D65-CB53442D9E19&displaylang=en
• IOMeter – http://www.iometer.org/
• SQLIOSim - http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlserverstorageengine/archive/2006/10/06/SQLIOSim-available-for-download.aspx
• SQLIOSim - correctness and stress tool, simulates data and log file activity, does not require SQL
• See http://sqlblog.com/blogs/kevin_kline/archive/2007/06/28/understanding-sqliosim-output.aspx
• RML utilities – OSTRESS, ReadTrace, Reporter - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/887057
• See http://blogs.msdn.com/psssql/archive/2007/12/18/rml-utilities-for-microsoft-sql-server-released.aspx
• See http://sqlcat.com/technicalnotes/archive/2008/02/01/precision-performance-for-microsoft-sql-server-using-rml-utilities-9-0.aspx

Waits and Queues

• Wait occurs when thread has to wait for a resource
• How waits reporting works on SQL Server – waiter queue and wait types
• SQL Server 2000 – 76 types of waits
• SQL Server 2005 – 201 types of waits
• SQL Server 2008 – 484 types of waits
• Query with sys.dm_os_wait_stats, reset with DBCC SQLPERF ('sys.dm_os_wait_stats', CLEAR)
• See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms179984.aspx
• See http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlcat/archive/2005/09/05/461199.aspx
• SQL Server 2005 Waits and Queues - White Paper
  http://download.microsoft.com/download/4/7/a/47a548b9-249e-484c-abd7-29f31282b04d/Performance_Tuning_Waits_Queues.doc

From the white paper, regarding OLTP workloads

• Database Design
• High Frequency queries having a high number of table joins (>4)
• Frequently updated tables having # indexes (>3)
• Big IOs - Table Scans, Range Scans (>1)
• Unused Indexes
• CPU
• Signal Waits (>25%)
• Plan reuse (<90%)
• Parallelism: Cxpacket waits (>5%)
• Memory
• Page life expectancy (<300 sec)
• Page life expectancy (Drops by 50%)
• Memory Grants Pending (>1)
• SQL cache hit ratio (<90%)
• Disk
• Average Disk sec/read (>20 ms) – Comment: this should be lower (>5, >8)
• Average Disk sec/write (>20 ms) -- Comment: this should be lower (>5, >8)
• Big IOs - Table Scans, Range Scans (>1)
• ASYNCH_IO_COMPLETION, IO_COMPLETION, LOGMGR, WRITELOG, PAGEIOLATCH_x (in top 2)
• Low bytes per sec
• Blocking
• Block percentage (>2%)
• Block process report (30 sec)
• Average Row Lock Waits (>100ms)
• LCK_M_% (in top 2)
• 5, High number of deadlocks (>5 per hour)
• Network
• High network latency + many round trips to DB (Output queue length >2)
• Network bandwidth used up (Packets Outbound Discarded, Packets Outbound Errors, Packets Received Discarded, Packets Received Errors)

Troubleshooting Performance Problems in SQL Server 2005
http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/3/4/134644fd-05ad-4ee8-8b5a-0aed1c18a31e/TShootPerfProbs.doc

Diagnosing Transaction Log Performance Issues and Limits of the Log Manager
http://sqlcat.com/technicalnotes/archive/2008/12/09/diagnosing-transaction-log-performance-issues-and-limits-of-the-log-manager.aspx