VMware vSAN has been proven to accommodate various workloads, business-critical applications like Oracle, Exchange, and SAP; Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, Remote and Branch Office, etc. with both performance and high availability ensurance. Both homogeneous and heterogeneous application can be consolidated together within single cluster on VMware vSAN platform, which helps simplify management, improve operational flexibility, maximize resource utilization and reduce total TCO.
In this solution, Mixed Workloads on VMware vSAN All-Flash for Microsoft SQL Server and Exchange, we provide design guidance and best practices for enterprise infrastructure administrators and application owners to run mixed workloads on VMware vSAN platform. We combined Microsoft SQL Server 2016 and Exchange Server 2016 and explore the performance capability and consistency, workload resiliency and how the two application workloads perform in daily operations.
This reference architecture is a showcase of using VMware vSAN all-flash as HCI for operating and managing mixed workloads in a VMware vSphere® environment:
- We validated mixed workloads running on vSAN with Microsoft SQL Server 2016 and Exchange Server 2016, which demonstrated the feasibility and flexibility of consolidating enterprise mission-critical application with minimized deployment and operational overhead.
- We ran a mixture of SQL Server OLTP database performance with TPC-E like workload, and Exchange mailbox database performance with Jetstress workload. The test result showed a minimized performance impact for both workloads running on vSAN, and the application workloads were consistent and stabilized.
- We demonstrated that vSAN offers resiliency and business continuity for mixed workloads against disk failure and host failure situations.
- We verified a maximum bandwidth and minimal production impact for mixed workloads in day-2 operations such as backup scenarios.
For more details, please refer to the following:
Reference architecture: https://storagehub.vmware.com/t/vmware-vsan/mixed-workloads-on-vmware-vsan-all-flash/
