Home > Workload Solutions > SQL Server > White Papers > Dell EMC PowerMax Storage for Mission-Critical SQL Server Databases > Test case 4: Onboarding application test
Test case 4 demonstrates the effective management of workload profiles while onboarding new applications.
We ran two OLTP workloads on SQL Server databases:
As the newly deployed application aged, it was promoted first to the Gold service level and then to the Diamond service level to reflect more users and an increasingly active and important workload profile for that onboarding application. While the test ran, we monitored host IOPS, SQL Server TPM, and read and write response times.
As the test results in the following figure show, PowerMax prioritized workloads quite well as the service level changed. As the new application became more important and its performance demands increased, PowerMax continued to provide high performance with low latencies while maintaining the Diamond service level performance profile for the existing workload.
Figure 10. Onboarding application test alongside existing mission critical application
Table 3 below shows the response times, IOPS, and TPM for each of the three service levels tested for both databases.
Table 3. Test case 4: Service levels and response time
Period |
Database |
Service Level |
Read response time (ms) |
Write response time (ms) |
Host IOPS |
SQL Server TPM |
1 |
DB1 |
Diamond |
0.25 |
0.22 |
223K |
2.3M |
DB2 |
Silver |
1.92 |
1.89 |
91K |
850K |
|
2 |
DB1 |
Diamond |
0.30 |
0.30 |
214K |
2.0M |
DB2 |
Gold |
0.89 |
0.89 |
204K |
1.96M |
|
3 |
DB1 |
Diamond |
0.4 |
0.35 |
207K |
1.93M |
DB2 |
Diamond |
0.4 |
0.35 |
207K |
1.93M |
This test shows that the PowerMaxOS is able to identify the increasing activity level of onboarding application as the service levels change. As a result PowerMax appropriately prioritizes the onboarding application over the existing application and tries to balance performance. When both applications run on Diamond service levels at the similar activity levels PowerMax resources are nicely balanced across both applications.
The PowerMax system automated data placement recognizes active and demanding applications. It leverages the limited SCM tier effectively by keeping highly active extents from both applications in SCM to optimize the performance of both applications simultaneously.