Ready to rely on SQL Server for critical operations in the enterprise? What is the right infrastructure for demanding workloads? Learn about HPE Superdome Flex, a next-generation platform for Microsoft SQL Server.
- Perhaps you are running Linux for core operations, and Windows® at the departmental level? Going forward, does it make sense to standardize across both domains with SQL Server?
- How about a big cut in database license fees to help you pencil out your next investment in IT innovation?
- Would you like to draw from a larger pool of IT talent?
You probably have your own scenario in mind. But here’s the thing—if you’re going to leverage Microsoft’s industry-leading database engine across your organization, and encompass a wide range of core enterprise operations, then you’re going to need a platform that can stand up to demanding, critical workloads. Including workloads that require high levels of availability or are currently hosted on Oracle and other enterprise-class databases. You’ll need to consider these questions:
- Can you lower data center costs while delivering the performance required by more demanding applications?
- What is the best approach to optimizing your SQL Server infrastructure?
- How do you ensure higher, round-the-clock, service levels for our most critical applications?
Running critical enterprise workloads
By taking a scale-up approach for your most critical SQL Server applications you can avoid cluster latency and complexity, as well as provide shared memory to fully leverage in-memory database technology built into SQL Server 2017. For a number of years, we’ve been working with Microsoft, at an engineering level, to ensure that SQL Server can take full advantage of the scalability and availability offered by our x86 mission-critical scale-up platforms. In particular, that SQL Server can:
- Leverage all available processors and cores available in a scale-up system,
- Take advantage of the full memory capacity supported by the server and the Linux operating system (42 TB), and
- Work well with the extreme RAS capabilities built into HPE Superdome servers.
Recently we introduced our next-generation system, HPE Superdome Flex, the world’s most modular and scalable in-memory computing platform. It provides the highest levels of performance and availability for demanding SQL Server workloads. As IDC notes, “Superdome Flex is ideal for midsize to large SQL Server on bare-metal or virtualized server deployments. . . and for cases where customers need reliability levels that they can't achieve with other industry-standard servers for their critical SQL workloads.”
Superdome Flex features a modular building block architecture that scales from 4 to 32 sockets in 4-socket increments, as a single system. Rest assured, you’ll be ready to meet the demands of today’s applications and well-equipped for tomorrow’s growth. Shared memory scales from less than 1 TB to 48 TB to allow you to handle the largest workloads and ever growing datasets.
Right-size for every mission-critical workload
HPE Superdome Flex is designed for enterprises of any size. The modular approach lets you right-size for today and optimize ROI, while retaining the ability to elegantly scale to keep pace with tomorrow’s business demands. Run your core business applications on SQL Server, migrate from Oracle or IBM, and be equipped for growth without overprovisioning or disruptive upgrades.
Businesses will commonly begin with a 4- or 8-socket system for mission-critical SQL Server 2017 workloads on Linux—and you will be pleased to know the system is 45% lower cost at 4-sockets than our previous generation Superdome, because of the new modular design. If your needs change, scaling up is simple. Flexible consumption models let you pay as you grow.
Exceptional flexibility and scale-up capacity lets you consolidate many SQL Server instances onto a single server to simplify management and reduce costs. By scaling up, you deliver greater OLTP performance as you eliminate cluster-driven latency, overhead and complexity. Or take advantage of unparalleled scale to help empower real-time analytics for data-intensive Linux applications, to transform your business.
Safeguard SQL Server with extreme reliability
You can run SQL Server on Superdome Flex confident that you’ll meet mission-critical service levels. Delivering 99.999% system availability, Superdome Flex leverages the proven, extraordinary Superdome RAS capabilities such as error analysis, advanced memory resiliency, and self-healing.
Coupling with HPE Serviceguard for Linux software keeps SQL Server 2017 applications highly available in the event of system or site outages. This market-leading high availability and disaster recovery failover solution protects applications from a multitude of infrastructure and application faults across physical or virtual environments over any distance. It reduces the impact of unplanned downtime without compromising data integrity and performance, and helps you achieve near-zero planned downtime for maintenance.
HPE and Microsoft: A 30+ year partnership
When it’s time to modernize your data center with infrastructure and services for SQL Server, you can count on HPE. With a huge community of HPE/SQL Server users, the expertise of HPE Pointnext services, and more than 29,000 joint HPE | Microsoft Partners worldwide, trust HPE for the resources you need for your critical enterprise applications. We look forward to working with you to explore new ways to drive success.
Learn more
- Download the HPE Superdome Flex brochure
- Find out about HPE mission-critical x86 servers
- Review on-demand replays of Microsoft’s recent SQL Server on Linux webinar series
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Wendy_Harms
Wendy is a product manager dedicated to developing HPE mission critical solutions based on Microsoft technologies. She holds a Bachelor of Computer Science from the University of Minnesota and an MBA from Seattle University.
