White Paper: Optimizing Microsoft SQL Server In An iSCSI SAN Environment

Many administrators have questions on both the deployment and operation of iSCSI SANs with applications such as Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005. Administrators want to know how iSCSI behaves in typical SQL Server transaction environments. In this paper we tested two Microsoft utilities geared toward simulating specific I/O patterns and SQL Server 2005-like workloads, and report both the qualitative and quantitative results.

We decided to test SQL Server in this environment and found it to be simple to operate and comparable in performance to other storage networking implementations. The Microsoft iSCSI Initiator and IStor iSCSI storage arrays were easily configured and able to sustain heavy SQL transaction loads. SQL Server functioned well and required no special changes. While overall system performance requires proper server and SAN network configuration, these are easily done with today's server and storage technologies.

The results show that iSCSI performs well with both light and intense SQL Server 2005 transaction workloads. The results also show that the Microsoft iSCSI Initiator can be used in all SQL Server 2005 workloads with excellent results.