Maintenance and Monitoring - Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Administration - page 350

In this recipe, we will go through the guidelines to be followed in configuring SQL Server storage
architecture for quick recovery. The default features from Windows operating system Volume
Shadow Copy Services (VSS) supports the SQL Server database backup and recovery to simply
the data protection to ensure the high availability. The data protection strategy must be based
on a recovery point and time objectives by keeping five 9s ( 99.999 percent) data availability
with no single point of failure. The various vendors such as DELL, HP, EMC, and HITACHI can
support high-end kind of enterprise-class hardware with their own provisioning software.
Getting ready
As we are configuring the storage architecture for quick recovery, the essential requirements
for the server on the basis of the environment (X86 or X64) are: Windows operating system,
SQL Server software, disks, and the hardware vendor's software. The following list comprises
the requirements for this recipe:
F The operating system Windows 2008 X64 and Windows Server 2008 R2 versions
have in-built virtualization technology called Windows Hyper-V for quick migration of
hardware resources to provide high availability for SQL Server virtual machines.
F Ensure the use of SQL Server 2008 R2 DataCenter or Enterprise edition that provides
enhanced scalability and high availability features to help the underlying operating
system and hardware to accomplish the quick recovery.
F The storage platform must be available to host a dual-chassis system with up to six
racks that will use the same type of logic boards and front-end port to access the
back-end RAID group. The advantage with such a kind of system is to manage the
storage levels up to PetaByte storage capacity.
F The Hardware vendor provisioning software will provide wide striping and thin
provisioning functionalities. The disks can be managed with a feature for one or more
pools of wide-striping process across many RAID groups within a Virtual Storage
platform.
F Overall, the hardware components can be described for the storage system
as follows:
128 GB cache memory
8 GB front-end ports (multiples of 2 is an ideal configuration)
SAS disks with 300 GB and 10K RPM
4 x Quad Core Intel or AMD Opteron Processor with minimum 1.9 GHZ and
128 GB RAM equipped with 4 GB HBAs.
F The SAN configuration to use two-fiber channel switches for high availability, and
servers can access the required LUNs that are mapped to the physical host.