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The Dell EMC XtremIO X2 all-flash array is an ideal storage platform for running online transaction processing (OLTP), online analytical processing (OLAP), or mixed workloads. It delivers high IOPS, ultrawide bandwidth, and consistent submillisecond latency for databases of all sizes.
Note: For details about designing a SQL Server solution using XtremIO X2 all-flash storage with PowerEdge servers, see Dell EMC Ready Solutions for Microsoft SQL: Design for Dell EMC XtremIO. The guide provides recommended design principles, configuration best practices, and validation with both Windows Server 2016 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.6 running instances of SQL Server 2017. In the solution testing, the XtremIO X2 array delivered sub-500-microsecond latencies while supporting 275,000-plus IOPS with 72 flash drives, compared to a rated 220,000 achievable IOPS per the XtremIO X2 specification sheet. The test engineers found no noticeable increase in latency even when the XtremIO X2 array exceeded the total expected IOPS.
We chose the XtremIO X2 storage array for our use cases to highlight its innovative management capability in Kubernetes/Docker environments. The use cases show how DBAs and system administrators can use the XtremIO/Kubernetes CSI 1.0 plug-in to deploy a SQL Server 2019 Linux container with persistent storage hosted by the XtremIO X2 array.
Note: For details about using the CSI plug-in to provision XtremIO storage for Kubernetes clusters, see Dell EMC XtremIO X2 Container Storage Interface Plugin Integration with Kubernetes.
In Use Case 2, we show the use of XtremIO Virtual Copies. For provisioning, the developer uses a protected copy, or “gold master,” of the AdventureWorks database, which is maintained on the XtremIO X2 array. XtremIO Virtual Copies makes provisioning copies of gold master databases easy. In our use case, we use Kubernetes to create a copy of our AdventureWorks database through the XtremIO Virtual Copies capability. This approach enables easy provisioning of multiple consistent copies of the database. After destructive testing, the developer restores the database from XtremIO Virtual Copies.