The Agenda

One of the biggest issues in database performance is around storage.  It’s also one of the hardest places to troubleshoot performance issues because storage engineers and database administrators often do not speak the same language.  In this session, we’ll be looking at storage from both the database and storage perspectives.   We’ll be digging into LUNs, HBAs, the fabric, as well as the storage configuration.

As this is a pre-con session we'll be able to really dig into some advanced storage configurations.  This includes RAID groups, multi-pathing software, proper redundant storage network design.  We will also be digging into some advanced storage array backup techniques including taking storage level clones and snapshots.  After going over these advanced techniques we will dig into how these can best be used to backup the SQL Server environment to provide maximum redundancy with no recurring tape costs.

In addition to theory, we’ll be looking at an actual SAN so that we can translate what we see in the Storage Array with what we see on the actual server.