December 29, 2003 at 8:17 am
I was hoping that people would respond to mjschwenger's question on SQL on NAS as I was curious, but I see that it is locked. So I'll ask.
Has anyone installed SQL on NAS? Why would you want to? I can see putting the data there, but why would you want to put the binaries there? I have installed SQL on a SAN (I've never worked with NAS), but my impression is that NAS devices are presented differently.
December 29, 2003 at 9:17 am
I think the main argument against NAS is it tends to be at 100Mb and is shared fabric with the rest of the network traffic (though most organizations all have this switched). Therefore, you don't have a reasonably reliable level of performance.
General rule of thumb on binaries is they are local to the system. When SQL Server installs on a cluster, it'll put the binaries on the local drive. This is actually true of any clustered resource. In thinking about this, without the data on the shared array, the SQL Server is useless, so it doesn't do a whole lot of good except to keep the "standard." After all, some apps can start and function without access to the shared media, though it'll need to be brought back online at some point.
K. Brian Kelley, GSEC
http://www.truthsolutions.com/
Author: Start to Finish Guide to SQL Server Performance Monitoring
K. Brian Kelley
@kbriankelley
December 29, 2003 at 9:21 am
I wouldn't put it on NAS. We've had issues with backups to network drives for the reason that SQL Server is not very tolerant of network delays. I wouldn't want any of thoses issues to occur in a database.
Steve Jones
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/columnists/sjones
The Best of SQL Server Central.com 2002 - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/bestof/
December 29, 2003 at 9:41 am
It was only in the last year that Microsoft grudgingly allowed this at all (I believe because they are now in the NAS software business and were asked by their partners to support this). The article I linked above should convice you that it's not a good idea.
--Jonathan
--Jonathan
December 29, 2003 at 10:16 am
I didn't think it was a good idea. I was wondering if there were good reasons for it, but I guess in most cases, there aren't.
I was also struck that mjschwenger said in his post that the vendor claims hundreds of people do this. Now I know what vendor claims are worth, but that's a pretty bold statement. I don't know anyone who has done this. I was wondering if anyone on this forum had actually done it.
Edited by - jxflagg on 12/29/2003 10:50:29 AM
December 29, 2003 at 10:48 am
Have a bunch on SAN, none on NAS.
Steve Jones
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/columnists/sjones
The Best of SQL Server Central.com 2002 - http://www.sqlservercentral.com/bestof/
December 29, 2003 at 4:23 pm
Hi jxflagg,
I had a previous boss who insisted that NAS was "the next generation of SAN" Yes, you cannot believe how horrible it was to work under someone so incompentant! Anyway, I had to install SQL 2000 over a Network Appliance NAS, and all I can say is 'never again' NetApps insisted their snapshot technology would recover SQL databases (it didn't), I had heaps of problems backing up across the network to the NAS, as Steve Jones has already pointed out, and to top it off I routinely had suspect databases due to some network problem between the NAS and the SQL Server box. Our database files were on the NAS and SQL Server would not be able to find them. The problem was never resolved before I took a job elsewhere, but NetApps (USA) was trying to resolve it(I'm in Australia) and a number of trans conteniental phonecalls ensured with little result.
In short, do not put SQL Server databases on a NAS no matter what promises the vendor makes to you.
Cheers,
Angela
December 30, 2003 at 5:50 am
When I first heard of NAS and had an opportunity to work with it, I was all gungho. New technology ("toy") to explore.
But I'll have to agree with Angela. Had the similar problems in just a test environment on a SQL 2000 w/ NAS (NetApp). SQL Server just didn't work right. A real pain. (And although I got a working Oracle instance - the instance would falter with the slightest bit of network sluggishness.)
The network lag - even on Gig Ethernet backbone - would cause issues. Never tried to restore a SQL db from a snapshot. The NAS was good for file server type data recovery - it still had CIFS issues on our NT network. (And after a year, it was pulled out of commission...
December 30, 2003 at 9:53 am
Angela is right on. NAS simply doesn't work and certainly can't handle heavy-load environments for OLTP. The claims made by NetApp are sometimes outright false. Even after building a private dedicated fiber network for the NetApp we still had major problems. Also remember that all I/O goes thru the Redirector on NAS and thus you lose the ability to accurately profile I/O.
January 21, 2004 at 2:50 pm
OK, guys! The discussion for me is over - I have a SQL2K Enterprice running on a NAS, Win2003 Storage Server! There's no clustering - NAS is a SQL server itself. My SQL server is shareing the big drive with legacy data and audio file - NAS's storage too. The big migration is schedule for the end of March. Now I'm running a couple of small DBs with 30-40 users and I could not say anything - bad or good. I'll start posting again with every new issue I have.
Thanks everybody for the input!
MJ
June 17, 2004 at 9:45 am
Our firm recently implemented a NetApp filer and is using it for Exchange. I just found out that the intention is to move some or all of our SQL Server databases to this. I am meeting with a rep from NetApp next week to learn more and have read some of their literature. My boss is totally gung ho on this (he is not a SQL guy), and I wanted to find out about other SSC members' experience.
From the two threads I have found so far, it doesn't sound pretty. Have your issues been resolved?
Thanks,
Kathi
Aunt Kathi Data Platform MVP
Author of Expert T-SQL Window Functions
Simple-Talk Editor
June 17, 2004 at 11:33 am
I started this posting a couple of months ago and now after all this time, I'm still having the same problems - suspected databases daily, long waiting time (time to time - again daily, usually between 12 and 3 pm). We had to go to change all our code to reflect longer waiting periods. Sometime is just wonderful for all SQL activity - when there's nobody else using the NAS... The problem is the network trafic - nothing else. Even with fibre and dual gigabit connection... I do not talk even for clustering with the NAS - just using the NAS as a server - also depends on the quality of the NAS, sizing, speed of the drives, raiding options, if it's SATA... As we are using the NAS as storage too(although this is absolutelly against all MS recommendations) the NAS is oftenly a bottleneck for the whole network. If you are going to use NAS for SQL server, then it has to be on the same pipe as most of the application server who uses the SQL data...
If you have more questions, please let me know.
MJ
June 17, 2004 at 11:53 am
Thanks for your feedback. I am definately going to insist on a trial period with a couple of dev systems to see what happens.
Aunt Kathi Data Platform MVP
Author of Expert T-SQL Window Functions
Simple-Talk Editor
June 18, 2004 at 1:15 pm
I just would like to let you know what I've been experienced with our NetApp box as SQL Server db Disk Storage. I am using NetApp F740.
This product was working fine on SQL7.0 and it was certified with SQL Server 7.0 back then but not for SQL2K according to our net engine guy. NetApp is cool and it is reasonably fast and reliable for SQL7.0. Only thing that we had to do to make SQL DB file locate on NetApp was that we had to run "DBCC TRACEON (1807)" after the SQL Server is up and running. So I added a scheduled job to run that "On SQL Server Start" so no problem with that. The actual problem is that if there is a network glitch or NetApp problem, database can go to suspect mode easily. Since SQL Server and NetApp is not physically tightly into togehter or no HBA stuff to connection between two directly but just network connection, if there is a network glitch, that is the time that you are going to have problem. Most of time, you can fix that easily by just restarting sql server so we are still using it on our Testing environment only.
Also make sure your NAS box is MSFT Certified otherwise, when there is a big problem, MSFT will just tell you that it happend because it wasn't certified. You can find that from here.
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/hcl/search.mspx
My 2 cents
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