December 31, 2012 at 9:58 pm
Comments posted to this topic are about the item The Year 2013
January 1, 2013 at 12:06 pm
Why the move away from SAN storage pools? I'm way out of my depth on this topic (no pun intended). My theory is that maybe it's just too hard to optimise them for SQL Server. We've had no end of intermittent performance problems since our new SAN went in 12 months ago. The only outcome of investigations seems to be a newfound ability for everyone to blame everyone else.
Have a great 2013 everyone and sincere thanks to SSC for such a fantastic resource.
...One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that ones work is terribly important.... Bertrand Russell
January 1, 2013 at 12:49 pm
I predict a big shake-up in both Microsoft and Apple.
A few big data breaches caused by weaknesses in agile approaches.
Western democracies suddenly realising the value of local manufacturing industry.
Green technologies recognised as too feeble for strategic energy reserves.
Fracking invalidating home insurance policies and thus scandals all round.
England fail to qualify for a major football tournament on penalties.
January 1, 2013 at 3:05 pm
I think as more and more servers are piled on SANs, especially with dense virtualization, more database people are finding performance problems from the shared pools of disks. There are some good reasons to use a SAN, but I think we will start to see people looking back to local disks, or smaller SANs dedicated to database uses.'
Just a guess
January 1, 2013 at 10:24 pm
Whatever the predictions... first stop and say A Very Happy New Year...... hope to get lot of technology upgrade this year...:w00t:
January 2, 2013 at 2:13 am
For us and probably many others 2013 will be the year of virtualisation, replacing existing physical servers with virtual servers that much smaller server teams can maintain.
And the usual hope of bringing everything on to one version and edition of SQL Server for licencing harmony rather than a mixed bag of 2000/2005/2008/2012 and various editions.
January 2, 2013 at 8:01 am
Regarding SQL Server, SANS and SSD's: just a couple of years ago we had a middling SAN which ultimately couldn't cut it performance-wise. Actually it was awful, but that was mostly due to the fact it was asked to do more then it was designed to do. What we are doing now is spending a lot of money on a new SAN at our new data center (leased) with tiered storage (SSD's being Tier 1 for example) with priority access to that tier given on a system by system basis at the database server level. It's been a beautiful thing. Initially we had a pretty small SSD pool, for 2013 we are spending many tens of thousands of dollars on them.
January 2, 2013 at 8:07 am
Prediction: Despite being featued prominiently in an episode of "Big Bang Theory", no one will buy data breeches, and millions will be returned unsold to manufacturers. Apple will scrap plans for iPants.
January 2, 2013 at 8:58 am
^^^Ha!
Maybe if they'd gone with data culottes instead...
January 2, 2013 at 10:35 am
I think part of the problem with SAN pools is the inherent disconnect between how network guys setup disk arrays and luns on these devices and how database people want to use them. The more I've learned about our SAN setup at my current company the less I wish I knew. Network guys seem to like making a few RAID arrays that are ginormous and then carve them out into what will be many "drives" that the OS sees. Of course with the same array serving multiple purposes for the same or multiple servers there's going to be odd contention and sub-optimal configuration. I had a network guy tell me that our RAID 10 arrays were only using 2 physical disk drives, at which I just walked away rubbing my forehead in disbelief.
January 2, 2013 at 11:10 am
Chris Harshman (1/2/2013)
I think part of the problem with SAN pools is the inherent disconnect between how network guys setup disk arrays and luns on these devices and how database people want to use them. The more I've learned about our SAN setup at my current company the less I wish I knew. Network guys seem to like making a few RAID arrays that are ginormous and then carve them out into what will be many "drives" that the OS sees. Of course with the same array serving multiple purposes for the same or multiple servers there's going to be odd contention and sub-optimal configuration. I had a network guy tell me that our RAID 10 arrays were only using 2 physical disk drives, at which I just walked away rubbing my forehead in disbelief.
I spent an absurd amount of time my first year at my current employer trying to convince the guys on the SAN/Network team that they were causing all kinds of I/O problems. "What? The SAN can handle anything, the sales guy said so...". Fortunately, we have more effective management in this department now. In the new world order of SAN admins and DBA's, I think the SAN/Network people need some theoretical education on concurrency. BTW, Brent Ozar has a lot first-rate advice on this subject.
January 2, 2013 at 11:43 am
That's why I think we'll see databases move off SANs. The salespeople and vendors say "put it all on all disks", which causes problems. SAN people are trained in a week, crammed in a bunch of information and they don't study their devices as a career, they manage storage.
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