by Darin Briskman, Technical Evangelist, AWS Microsoft SQL Server is a commonly-used commercial relational database, especially for organizations that use Microsoft development tools. We’ll look at how to run SQL Server on the AWS Cloud, with examples of organizations using it.

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SQL Server on AWS

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• Consider RDS first
• Focus on:
– Business value tasks
– High-level tuning tasks
– Schema optimization
• No in-house database expertise
• Need control over:
– DB instance & OS
– Backups, Replication
– Clustering
– sysadmin role
• Use features, size or performance
options not available in Amazon RDS
• S Q L S E R V E R o n A M A Z O N E C 2• A M A Z O N R D S S Q L S E R V E R
WHICH OPTION IS RIGHT FOR YOU?

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• AWS Managed Service
• Managed deployment, patching, Multi-AZ
automatic HA, backups and point in time
restore
• Auditable centralized engine parameter
tuning
• No direct instance or file system access
• Some features are restricted
• Self-Managed Solution
• Always on Availability Groups for HA
• Maintenance Plans for backups
• Administrator access to instance and DBs
• Custom monitoring agents
• Run SSRS, SSIS, SSAS on instance
• Hybrid Architectures
• legacy versions (self-install)
• S Q L S E R V E R o n A M A Z O N E C 2• A M A Z O N R D S S Q L S E R V E R
THE DIFFERENCES

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SQL SERVER ON AMAZON EC2

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• Storage I/O contention is one of
the main causes for poor SQL
Server performance
• Use EBS Optimized EC2 Instances
• Match storage technology with I/O
pattern of workload components
• Match instance type to IOPS and
throughput needs of workload
• Create a single volume for data and
logs
SQL Server
Example Volume Layout
C:
Boot on General Purpose SSD EBS Volume
D:
Data and logs on Provisioned IOPS EBS Volume
K:
Backups on Magnetic ST1 or SC1 EBS Volumes
Z:
Tempdb on instance storage (if available)
SQL SERVER STORAGE OPTIMIZATION

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EBS OPTIMIZATION & VOLUMES
• Plan for EC2 Instance EBS Optimized Throughput and IOPS capacity
• Plan for EBS Volume Throughput and IOPS capacity
• Stripe EBS PIOPS volumes for more than 20,000 IOPS or 320MB/s

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EBS OPTIMIZATION AND VOLUMES
• Plan for EC2 Instance EBS Optimized Throughput and IOPS capacity
• Plan for EBS Volume Throughput and IOPS capacity
• Stripe EBS PIOPS volumes for more than 20,000 IOPS or 320MB/s
r4 family
r4.large
2 vCPUs/15.25 GiB RAM
Max EBS bandwidth: 425 Mbps
Max IOPS (16KB): 3,000
Expected throughput: 53 MB/s
… or ~1250 IOPS @ 44KB IO size
r4.16xlarge
64 vCPUs/488 GiB RAM
Max EBS bandwidth: 14k Mbps
Max IOPS (16KB): 75,000
Expected throughput: 1,750 MB/s
… or ~40,700 IOPS @ 44KB IO size
1TB GP2 Volume
Max. IOPS (16KB): 3,000
Max. throughput: 160 MB/s
4 x 1TB PIOPS @ 20k IOPS
Expected IOPS (16KB): 80k
Max. throughput: 1,280 MB/s

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TEMPDB OPTIMIZATION
• Consider:
• Using multiple tempdb files (1:1 mapping with CPUs, up to 8)
• Striping multiple instance storage disks together for higher I/O
• Changing SQL Server service startup to Automatic (Delayed Start) to
allow instance storage to provision
• Scripting/automating configuration on instance boot
• Striping solution by consulting partner IFM Ltd.
• http://www.ifm.net.nz/cookbooks/amazon-sql-tempdb/index.html

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SQL SERVER HA AND DR ON AMAZON EC2
• Use multiple Availability Zones
• Instance-level and AZ-level failure tolerance
• Synchronous replication
• Options
• Enterprise Edition: Always On Availability Groups
• Standard Edition:
• Basic Always On Availability Groups (2016+)
• Failover cluster instances using partner block-level replication solution

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ALWAYS ON AVAILABILITY GROUPS (AG)

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MULTI-REGION ALWAYS ON AG

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FAILOVER CLUSTER INSTANCES ON EC2
SIOS DataKeeper
Cluster Edition

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AMAZON RDS FOR SQL SERVER

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STORAGE PERFORMANCE PLANNING
Scalable Storage
• Maximum storage: 16TB
• Maximum IOPS: 20,000
• Amazon RDS storage throughput
depends on DB instance class (see equivalent
EC2 EBS Optimized instance type)
Monitoring I/O efficiency:
• CloudWatch Metric Average Queue Depth
- I/O requests waiting to be serviced

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RDS FOR SQL SERVER HIGH AVAILABILITY
Amazon RDS for SQL Server Multi-AZ
• Principal and secondary DB nodes in
different Availability Zones (AZ)
• Witness in a 3rd AZ
• Leverages SQL Server DB mirroring
• Automatic failover (typically, 1-2 minute)
• Consider mirroring impact on change heavy
workloads

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AMAZON RDS MULTI-AZ IN DEPTH
Failure scenarios mitigated:
• Loss of availability in primary AZ
• Loss of network connectivity to principal DB node
• Compute unit or storage failure on principal DB node
• Failover process:
• Implement retry logic at the application layer – trigger manual failover to test
Mirroring
stopped
Address apply
debt
Promote to
master
Change DNS
endpoint
Provision new
secondary

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• Centralized management of DB
engine parameters
• Ability to consistently apply
configurations to DB instances
• Auditability of configuration
• Sensible defaults work for most use
cases
• Ability to create custom parameter
groups
• Used for enabling additional features
• Ability to create custom option
groups
• Supported options:
• Transparent Data Encryption
(TDE) in Enterprise Edition only
• S3 Backup & Restore
• O P T I O N G R O U P S• P A R A M E T E R G R O U P S
CENTRALIZED DB ENGINE CONFIGURATION

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RDS FOR SQL SERVER DATA MOVEMENT
.BAK File Import and Export
Leverages SQL Server’s native backup functionality
AWS Database Migration Service
Now supports Change Data Capture from RDS SQL
Server DB instances
AWS Marketplace
Third-party data import and export tools
and solutions
1
3
4
Database Publishing Wizard, Import/Export,
Bulk Copy
Use bcp; export to T-SQL files & load using sqlcmd
2

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SQL SERVER 2017
• Available for EC2 and RDS (incl. Multi-AZ)
• SQL Server 2017 Linux supported on Amazon EC2, RHEL license-included
• Cluster & cluster-less Availability Groups (WSFC, Pacemaker, None)
• Cross database transactions supported by Always On AG
• Automatic plan correction
• Graph database capabilities
• Linux:
• System DBs fixed to /var/opt/mssql/data
• One SQL Server instance per server (default instance only)

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