This blog follows (and uses some of the same text) the earlier blog entry which reported on the 2016 IOUG survey. The CPBU user group survey program was started in 2014 with the intention of collecting pertinent and accurate information pertaining to the actual usage of vSphere for both critical and non-critical implementations in a variety of Business Critical Applications and RDBMS disciplines. The program is run and sponsored by the CPBU as a partnership with “Database Trends and Analysis” and their research division “Infosys”. Joe McKendrick the Chief Data Scientist for Infosys is responsible for managing the survey data collection, building and presenting the webinar and writing the report (Linked below). In addition, a webinar is produced to report on the survey results. The program is jointly sponsored by VMware and DellEMC. To date the Independent Oracle User Group (IOUG) has been surveyed twice. First in 2014 and then in Q2-Q3 of 2016 and the SQLPass organization has been surveyed once in 2016.
Although it is obvious that the user groups which are the focus of these surveys (to-date IOUG and the SQL Pass organization) are generally more deeply sophisticated in their understanding of the technologies which are the focus of the individual surveys, these groups do provide a statistically accurate microcosm of the greater communities. As in 2014 the survey collected data from a statistically relevant group with standard well-accepted filtering mechanisms. The data collection process was deemed to be compete when the answers being returned “Flattened-out”.
The 2016 SQL Pass survey focused on a collection of pertinent issues including the implementation of SQL Server HA features and their complimentary nature to vSphere HA features along with the adoption of both Flash Storage and Cloud usage.
The Main takeaway points form the 2016 SQL Pass Survey include (paraphrased from the actual report):
Zero downtime is critical to many SQL Server sites. In fact, the survey found that 23% of SQL Server sites require zero downtime for more than 25% of their SQL Server instances.
Disaster recovery and business continuity is critical, but not universal. 70%, have a formal disaster recovery plan in place yet only 44% have recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO) service-level agreements.
The majority of SQL Server sites are highly virtualized. The primary use cases being high availability and disaster recovery. In addition, 63% of SQL Server sites plan to expand their use of virtualization within the next two years. VMware vSphere is the leading virtualization solution, in use as the primary choice at 70% of SQL Server sites. The key benefits noted are cost reduction, consolidation, and standardization.
The adoption of automation at SQL Server sites is less pervasive as implementation complexity is the most duanting challange as reported by respondents. Backup and recovery is the
area where SQL Server sites have made the most significant progress with automation.
SQL Server managers have yet to adopt public cloude as the te majority of respondents reported that they do not use any cloud services today. However, future use is anticipated across all categories of cloud Private, Public, Hybrid). The current leader is private cloud with 21% of SQL
Server sites piloting or considering adoption. Private cloud is reported to provide the most tangible benefits.
Traditional magnetic disk storage is still the primary target for backup with 53% of SQL Server sites. However, modern storage approaches such as Flash are gaining in adoption. The survey found that 13% of SQL Server sites currently back up to flash and even more are planning adoption of flash for backups.
The 2016 SQLPass Survey by DBTA and the respective webinar can be found in a number of locations:
