White Papers

Storage setup and configuration
13 Dell EMC SC Series: Microsoft SQL Server Best Practices | CML1057
4 Storage setup and configuration
4.1 Single or multiple disk pools
Dell EMC recommends using a single virtual disk pool when implementing SQL Server. This provides better
performance by leveraging the aggregate I/O bandwidth of all disks to service I/O requests from SQL Server.
A single disk pool is also easier to manage, allowing an administrator to quickly and easily adapt the storage
system to satisfy the ever-changing workloads that are common in SQL Server environments.
4.2 Creating volumes
SC Series storage is virtualized to take advantage of all the drives in the disk pool. Characteristics such as
RAID level and storage tier can have a big impact on performance and are configured at the volume level. SC
Series snapshots are also configured at the volume level. There are many different types of files that are part
of a SQL Server instance. Those different types of data often have different performance and snapshot
requirements. For performance sensitive applications, Dell EMC recommends creating at least five volumes
for an instance of SQL Server as shown in the following table.
Volume provisioning recommendations
User DB data
At least 1
per
instance
Lower
performance may
be acceptable
Frequent snapshots,
same schedule as log
volume
User DB transaction log
At least 1
per instance
High performance
required
Frequent snapshots,
same schedule as data
volume(s)
Data root directory
(includes system DBs)
1 per
instance
Lower performance
may be acceptable
Infrequent snapshots,
independent schedule
Tempdb data and transaction log
1 per
instance
High performance
may be required
No snapshots
Native SQL Server backup
1 per
instance
Lower performance
may be acceptable
Snapshots optional,
independent schedule
Memory-Optimized Filegroup (if used)
At least 1
per instance
High performance
required
Frequent snapshots,
same schedule as log
volume
4.2.1 Performance considerations
If there is a group of databases that require high performance and another group that does not, consider
creating a set of volumes for each group of databases. Even if there is only one tier of storage, this strategy
will make it easier to adjust the storage configuration in the future. For example, having the high-performance
databases on separate volumes will make it very easy to move them to a higher performance tier in the
future.
Having multiple volumes has an additional benefit in dual-controller systems. All I/O requests for a given
volume are processed by the controller that owns the volume. While a volume can be owned by either
controller, a volume is only owned by one controller at a time. Having many volumes makes it easier to
distribute the I/O load evenly across both controllers. Databases that have very high-performance