Demystifying Hardware - SQL Server 2012 Internals and Troubleshooting - page 46

multiply 64 times 0.75 to get a new result of 48 SQL Server 2012 core licenses that would be
required for that server (after the Core Factor table was introduced). This means that AMD cores
for some processors are somewhat more affordable now for SQL Server 2012 than they would be
without the core factor calculation.

Based on the SQL Server 2012 Core Factor Table, you would only be paying twice as much for SQL
Server 2012 Enterprise Edition licenses for the 32-core AMD system compared to the 12-core Intel
system (32 AMD physical cores times 0.75 vs. 12 Intel physical cores). That is a slightly better story
for AMD, but it is still a pretty hard sell.

Based on the TPC-E benchmark results, both the older Intel Xeon X5600 Westmere-EP series and
the new Intel Xeon E5-2600 Sandy Bridge-EP series perform much better per physical core on OLTP
workloads than the latest AMD Opteron 6200 series processors. These Intel processors simply have
signii cantly better single-threaded performance, which is very important for OLTP workloads.

As a result of this new Core Factor Table, SQL Server 2012 processor licenses will be a little less
expensive than they were previously for those AMD processor families that have more than six
cores, but they will still be much more expensive in total than a better-performing Intel solution.
The somewhat lower hardware cost for the AMD processor compared to the hardware cost of the
Intel processor is rather trivial compared to the difference in the licensing cost. Hopefully AMD can
do better with the upcoming Piledriver core-based Opteron series expected in 2013.

CHOOSING AND CONFIGURING HARDWARE FOR REDUNDANCY

This section describes the most important items that you should consider from a hardware perspec-
tive when you are trying to increase the basic resiliency and availability of an individual database
server. These are some of the i rst steps you would take as part of designing a high-availability solu-
tion for your data tier. The basic goal here is to eliminate as many single points of failure as possible
at the hardware and coni guration level. Therefore, when choosing components for a database server
and including them as part of the server coni guration (as opposed to a web server, for example), you
should consider these aspects regardless of any other high-availability techniques you decide to use.

You should always get two internal drives in a RAID 1 (mirrored) coni guration for the operating
system and the SQL Server binaries. These drives should be using the integrated hardware RAID
controller that is available on most new rack-mounted servers. Using an integrated hardware RAID
controller (which usually has a 256MB-512MB cache) provides better performance than using
software RAID through Windows. Having two drives in RAID 1 offers a basic level of redundancy
for the operating system and the SQL Server binaries, so the server will not stop functioning if one
of the drives fails.

Try to get at least 146GB, 15K 2.5 drives for this purpose. Using 15K drives helps Windows Server

boot a little faster, and it will help SQL Server load a bit faster when the service i rst starts up. Using
146GB (or larger) drives provides more room to accommodate things like the Windows page i le,
SQL Server Error Log i les, dump i les, and so on, without being worried about drive space. As SSD
prices continue to fall, you might want to consider using two SSDs for your mirrored boot drive.
Reducing your boot time and reducing the time it takes for SQL Server to start up using SSDs could
help you meet your recovery time objective (RTO) goals.