This discussion has been locked. The information referenced herein may be inaccurate due to age, software updates, or external references.
You can no longer post new replies to this discussion. If you have a similar question you can start a new discussion in this forum.

experience with SW data bases on Simplivity

we are on the way to migrate our SW to a cisco hyper converged system SIMPLIFITY.

SW DB's are supposed to have a RAID storage what is not possible in a SIMPLIFITY environment.

Do someone have this implemented and can give some hints?

  • As long as you have the performance and fault tolerance, the storage should be fine. Watch your disk queue length, and run the AppInsight for SQL if you can on the SW database to see if anything becomes a bottleneck.

  • THX for your fast response ... Does this mean I'll be able to monitor the performance of my own SolarWinds SQL data bases with AppInsight? I thought I need a separate installation and can't monitor my own data base. Or what is meant with "if you can"? We are going to migrate from the suggested raid storage to a SimpliVity solution and I fear that Solarwinds data bases themselves will not perform as expected. Do you have experience or a running SW solution on SimpliVity?

  • Just to be clear, since this is in the DPA forum it is worth clarifying, are you using Server and Application Monitor (SAM) or Database Performance Analyzer (DPA)?

    The admin guide for DPA discourages you from keeping the DPA database inside an instance you want to monitor because it becomes kind of a recursive problem where the repository adds more load to the system it monitors and distorts the results.

    With that said, I've seen many clients who only had one SQL box and kept DPA on the same one they monitored and just live with it.  So that isn't a hard requirement.

    SAM doesn't have any similar recommendations that I've seen against monitoring itself, but monitoring the same system your DB lives on still has the same possibilities in terms of skewing the data with the additional workloads of the monitoring system. 

    In any case, Both DPA and SAM place significant loads on the storage system you are using to support them.  Depends on the size of your environment but it is very common for my clients to generate IOPS in the ranges of 300-1500, with a big chunk of that being writes so RAID 5/6 suffers a serious penalty.  I don't have any personal experience with Simplivity but you should be able to do maybe a week's worth of benchmarks of the IOPS, disk throughputs, and latencies of your existing system and as long as what Simplivity is providing you will meet those metrics then there isn't any reason the software would complain, don't forget to measure the after hours loads as well because the scheduled maintenance for Solarwinds can trigger a big jump in loads around 2:15 each morning.  The whole benefit of using cloud providers like that is that you don't have to worry about the gritty details like raid configurations.  Ideally you give them requirements specs, they agree to deliver those at whatever price point and if it makes sense financially away you go.  So far I haven't seen a cloud database provider that can reliably provide the performance needed for a good sized Solarwinds environment without costing a big chunk more than what it cost to maintain the server on prem, but there are other factors that can drive these decisions. 

    -Marc Netterfield

        Loop1 Systems: SolarWinds Training and Professional Services