Queue Depth Settings; Lun Layout - HP ProLiant DL980 G7 Technical White Paper

Technical white paper | HP ProLiant DL980 G7 and P2000 G3 MSA Storage
*Note – Column Store Index (CSI) testing was performed without Trace Flag 834. Microsoft does not recommend turning on
T834 when using CSI. For more information, see Microsoft KB article 920093 at the following link:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/920093
Table 7. SQL Server Parameters
Parameter
Max Degree of Parallelism (MAXDOP)
Resource Governor Memory Allocation
Fast Track Required Startup Parameters
Optional SQL Trace Flags
HP P2000 G3 MSA Volume Read Ahead Setting

Queue Depth settings

Several tests were run to determine the optimal Queue Depth settings using the HP 82E Host Bus Adapters (HBAs). All tests
performed for this reference configuration used a Queue Depth setting of 64. Testing found optimal Queue Depth settings
ranging from 48 to 64. This is a change from the default setting of 32 on the HBAs.

LUN layout

All primary data LUNs were configured using 8-disk RAID10 volumes. Log LUNs were configured with 4-disk RAID10
volumes using 7 arrays, while the dual staging LUNs used 6-disk RAID 5 volumes on Arrays 8 and 16. All volumes on the
P2000 array were created using the maximum amount of space available (1 volume per Vdisk). Figure 3 below depicts the
LUN layout for this 85TB Data Warehouse architecture.
Setting Comment
30 Optimal settings for our testing
5% The default is 25%
-E and -T1117 These settings are required for ALL Fast Track
configurations
-T834 The T834 trace flag enables large pages in
memory. This provides significant performance
increases with 4 and 8 socket systems. Not
enabled when testing using Column Store
Indexing.
1MB Change from Default setting
9