NAV 2018 on NVMe disks

lzr · 2018-08-13

It's time to upgrade and I am looking to purchase a new server for our company.
One of the options is to use NVMe disks instead of a standard server with SSD/15k spinners. The NVME alternative is cheaper and offers better speed.
The "disadvantage" with NVMe seems to be that it's not using standard raid so Windows/VMWare (will have VMWare at the bottom and a single Windows installation on top of that) will have to be setup with software raid 10.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this setup.

Slawek_Guzek · 2018-08-13

I'd thought that the NVMe is the most expensive solution, then the SSD, and then 'old good' 15k spinners

The overhead of software RAID will be miimal comparing to the NVMe performance advantages, so if you really find the NVMe based solution to be the cheapest one go for it.

Usually the NVMes are only used to store volumes where SQL Server transaction log files are kept, to speed up transaction committing. SQL Server can recognize properly configures NVMe based volume and the commit process does not require to copy entire 4k long block of transaction log records onto permanent storage device. It makes massive difference when the SQL Server experiences a big number of relatively short transactions. In non NVMe based environments the problem was alleviated by using delayed durability database setting.

Having said that I am not sure if you will be able to realize fully the NVMe disk based volume advantages in the SQL Server if you put the VMWare layer atop of the NVME disk.

Slawek_Guzek · 2018-08-13

I'd thought that the NVMe is the most expensive solution, then the SSD, and then 'old good' 15k spinners

The overhead of software RAID will be miimal comparing to the NVMe performance advantages, so if you really find the NVMe based solution to be the cheapest one go for it.

Usually the NVMes are only used to store volumes where SQL Server transaction log files are kept, to speed up transaction committing. SQL Server can recognize properly configures NVMe based volume and the commit process does not require to copy entire 4k long block of transaction log records onto permanent storage device. It makes massive difference when the SQL Server experiences a big number of relatively short transactions. In non NVMe based environments the problem was alleviated by using delayed durability database setting.

Having said that I am not sure if you will be able to realize fully the NVMe disk based volume advantages in the SQL Server if you put the VMWare layer atop of the NVME disk.

lzr · 2018-08-14

I guess NVMe has come down a lot in prices lately. Also they offer huge storage which means you don't need so many disks.

Thanks a lot for your input, I will check pricing on a cheaper option as well and then decide (using 6G SSD SATA disks)

RemkoD · 2018-08-14

(≧◡≦) ✧ SQL Server ❤ NVMe raid 10 ✧ (≧ω≦)

NAV 2018 on NVMe disks

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