PowerStore: The Perfect Choice for Azure Arc-enabled Data Services
Fri, 26 Apr 2024 17:37:36 -0000
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Keeping pace with technology can be tough. Often our customers’ resources are stretched thin, and they want to be confident that the solutions offered by Dell Technologies are up to the task. Dell Technologies performs an astonishing amount of work to prove out our products and give customers confidence that we have done our homework to make customers' experiences the best they can be. Additionally, we work with partners like Microsoft whenever possible to ensure that our integrations are world class as well.
Great partnership
Recently we partnered with Microsoft on one of their newest and most exciting offerings in the Microsoft Data Platform, Azure Arc-enabled SQL Managed Instance. This exciting new product deploys containerized SQL Server in a High Availability (HA) configuration on the infrastructure of your choice. This new offering allows SQL Server instances to be deployed on-premises, yet deployed through and monitored by Azure.
Dell Technologies collaborated with Microsoft to plan and perform lab testing to evaluate the performance and scale of Azure Arc-enabled SQL Managed Instance. Based on that plan, we executed several test scenarios and submitted the test configuration and results to Microsoft for review.
Dell PowerStore: the perfect storage solution
Due to the HA features of Azure Arc-enabled SQL Managed Instance, Kubernetes ReadWriteMany (RWX) storage is recommended as a backup target and a typical implementation of this is a Network File Share (NFS). Typically, this would require two storage devices, one for block (database files) and one for file (database backup), or an NFS server backed by block storage. PowerStore is uniquely suited to meet this storage requirement, offering both block and file storage in the same appliance. PowerStore also offers all-flash performance, containerized architecture, and data services such as data reduction, replication, and encryption for demanding database workloads. Dell PowerStore meets all the feature and performance requirements for Azure Arc-enabled SQL Managed Instance in a single appliance.
Incredible results
In our testing, we deployed SQL Managed Instance by means of the Azure portal onto our on-prem Kubernetes cluster and put it through its paces to assess performance and scale. The configuration that we used was not sized for maximum performance, but an average configuration that is typical of what customers order for a general-purpose workload. The results were incredible!
The slide below, presented by Microsoft at Microsoft Build 2022, summarizes it nicely!
The full Microsoft Build session where this slide was presented can be found here. Other details are covered in a Microsoft Blog Post: “Performance benchmark of Azure Arc-enabled SQL Managed Instance.” Complete details and additional benefits are covered in our co-authored whitepaper, “Dell PowerStore with Azure Arc-enabled Data Services.”
For even more background on the work Dell Technologies is doing with Microsoft to enable hybrid, multicloud, and edge solutions, see this on-demand replay of the Azure Hybrid, Multicloud, and Edge Day digital event.
We learned a lot from this project. Stay tuned for additional blogs about more of the great findings from our latest collaborative effort!
Author: Doug Bernhardt, Sr. Principal Engineering Technologist