Home > Workload Solutions > SQL Server > Guides > Design Guide—SQL Server 2022 Database Solution with Object Storage on Dell Hardware Stack > Physical architecture
Dell solutions engineers validated two resilient architectural options for data analytics workloads:
Figure 1. SQL Server 2022 database solution physical architecture.
The physical architecture design shown above demonstrates two separate database solution environments which connect with a shared Dell ECS unit and Dell PowerStore storage to process and save data.
The upper-left portion of the diagram shows a containerized environment based on a RedHat OpenShift Cluster. The central portion of the diagram illustrates an environment that uses VMware vSphere virtualization.
The clusters are connected to the Client and Infrastructure (C & I) node on the right side of the diagram and the Cluster System Admin Hosts (CSAH) nodes using Dell networking switches. Dell PowerSwitch 1 GbE and 25 GbE were used for network connectivity with the OpenShift and VMware vSphere HA clusters, and the same switches were also used to connect with a Dell ECS EX300 cluster for object storage.
The Dell PowerStore Storage is connected to both containerized and virtualized environments by Fiber Channel (FC) connectivity protocol with Dell Connectrix switches.
Dell solutions engineers separate server layers into three groups based on their primary roles within the solution:
The Dell PowerEdge R7525 Rack Server is a highly adaptable rack server that delivers powerful performance and offers flexible configurations. The PowerEdge R7525 is a 2U rack server that supports up to:
In the validated setup, two separate Dell storage units were used to process the different types of data.
Figure 2. PowerStore 9200T configuration details
Figure 3. Dell ECS EX300 storage cluster configuration details
Figure 4 represents the logical construction of a storage design. Here storage containers are carved out of a Dell PowerStore storage pool that was presented to the ESXi layer using LUNs. It was mapped to vVOLs datastore and presented as a volume within the virtual machines. Those volumes were formatted and configured as XFS volumes. The operating system and the databases data and log files are placed on the XFS volumes.
Figure 4. Storage layout and mapping for Dell validated solution
Furthermore, on Dell ECS storage, different buckets for data and backups were created and virtually mapped to SQL Server 2022 external tables and backupset.
The architecture’s network layer consists of:
Figure 5. Fiber channel connectivity diagram for Dell PowerEdge and PowerStore
The fiber channel connectivity diagram shows an example of Fiber channel zoning for PowerEdge R7525 servers using PowerStore 9200T storage and two 32GBPS FC Power Switches. The diagram shows four 32GB front end PowerStore ports which are mapped to four 32 GB network card ports on the server ensuring that the servers have reliable storage access. Similarly, three R7525 servers are zoned with PowerStore to create a virtualized environment with four R7525 servers, the OpenShift worker nodes, to create the storage for the containerized environment.