Comparing storage performance of Simplivity & StoreVirtual VSA for SQL server

[ThanhDatVo]

Hello,

I'm currently trying to decide between two possible storage solutions for our new server cluster.
Our focus is a SQL server VM for which we want good storage performance (high IOPS, low latency).

The solutions we're currently considering are:
1) a 3Node StoreVirtual VSA solution (Network Raid 10) containing 6 SSD's/node in RAID 5 (18 SSD's total)

2) a 3Node Simplivity solution containing 5 SSD's/node in RAID 5 (15 SSD's total)

Deduplication & Compression from Simplivity will barely have any effect on SQL server so these aren't a factor to consider.

Would the VSA solution grant me more performance (due to increased amount of SSD's) or the Simplivity solution (due to data localization/less latency)?

According to the blog below, i read that Hyperconverged vs VSA doesn't really give an important impact on storage performance. Does this mean i should go for the StoreVirtual VSA?
http://www.joshodgers.com/2015/03/30/in-kernel-verses-virtual-storage-appliance/

[BenLoveday]

Personally I'd avoid Storevirtual and look at the Simplivity. Storevirtual VSA is something we use a lot of and have on-going performance and stability issues. My take is that the product is on its way out so on that basis I wouldn't recommend it.

Depending on your environment you could also consider a vanilla VMware vSphere + VSAN deployment. 

Cheers,

Ben

[Fran_delaTorre · Accepted solution]

Hello ThanhDatVo,

i'm strongly disagree with Ben's comment about VSA performance issues.

Storevirtual VSA is a very stable, well tested, high availabilty and great performance storage virtual product.

In fact we have a few performance support cases but always caused by undelrying Vmware ESX hypervisor known issues/misconfigurations, please find some examples:

1. ESX/ESXi hosts might experience read or write performance issues with certain storage arrays (1002598) (KB article on disabling Delayed ACK):

• Disable Delayed Ack https://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1002598

1. Check the IOPs limit and adjust Round Robin IOPS limit from default 1000 to 1

• https://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2069356

 Once told that i would recommend either VSA or Simplivity and if you woudl like to be accordingly informed what would be the best approach to your enviroment please feel free to contact your HPE sales representative and he will be more than happy to assist you.

[ThanhDatVo]

We currently already have a VSA in production and don't have any performance issues.

But since it was setup a while ago, i was wondering if we're still on the right track in 2018 & if Simplivity would increase performance for a SQL DB in any way.

I couldn't find any use cases where it would benefit a SQL Database so i'm assuming it doesn't matter that much.
Since the price tag of Simplivity is much higher, we'll stick with VSA for now.

Thanks for your inputs!

[scott_svt]

Hi @ThanhDatVo,

The perforamance differential is going to be very workload specific, and the fact that it is a SQL DB is not enough to say for sure what gains you may get.

One of the key benefits that you will get is the deduplication and integrated backups, so you could expect to save a lot of capacity, particularly if you use the integrated backups, but again, the workload itself will drive that.

With all this said, as much I would like to encourage you to buy HPE SimpliVity nodes, if what you have is just fine then there is likely no need to worry about it! :-)

Cheers,

Scott