>> Learn why we are calling
the new Ebdsv5 series virtual machine
the double sprinkles VM for SQL Server workloads.
This week on Data Exposed.
[MUSIC]
>> Hi, I'm Anna Hoffman and
welcome to this episode of Data Exposed.
Today we are going to be talking about
some exciting new updates around
VM-series and I have two very special guest joining
us today Pam and Priya.
Thanks so much for joining me today.
Pam you've been a regular on the show
but can you share a little bit about what you do?
>> Sure, absolutely. Hi Anna, great to be here.
My name is Pam Lahoud and I am
the Lead Technical PM for
SQL Server running in Azure Virtual Machine.
>> Awesome, great to have you and
for those who haven't seen Pam before,
we've done a ton of VM-series,
you should go check those out on our YouTube channel.
We're also joined by Priya new to Data Exposed.
Priya, thanks for joining us, can you tell
us a little bit about what you do?
>> Hi Anna. Thank you for having me here today.
Hey everyone, I'm Priya Shanmugavadivelu and
I'm a Senior Program Manager in the Azure Compute team.
>> Awesome. Cool. We have
someone from the SQL VM team and someone from
the Compute team and we're going to be talking
about some new options today.
Pam, maybe just to get us started,
can you tell us a little bit about
the different Azure Compute options and how that
relates to SQL Server and Azure VMs?
>> Yeah, sure. Probably easier to start with a slide
that highlights some of
the Compute options that we have available.
There are literally hundreds of
different VM sizes and it can sometimes be
confusing all of the different options that are out there
and when you're choosing a VM to run your SQL Server,
you might be wondering where should I start.
The virtual machines that are available in
Azure are broken into families.
What I've listed on this slide here are some of
the different families like memory optimized and GPU accelerated.
Each one of these families
has different features that it highlights,
it may have different hardware behind it,
but there's a couple that are really
well-suited for SQL Server workloads.
I want to highlight the ones that we like for SQL Server.
The most common and the one that
you should really start with when you're thinking
about moving your SQL Server workloads to
Azure VM are the memory optimized series VMs.
These are the E-series VMs and the M-series VMs,
and we particularly like these E-series VMs because
they're a good mix of
everything that a SQL Server workload typically need.
They've got a one to eight core to memory ratio,
they have a large local disk that can be used for TempDB,
they have a lot of local IO throughput
that's available for cash as well
as high remote throughput for your data files and your log files.
These are very well-suited and priced
right for SQL Server workloads.
These E series VMs are our favorite.
I'll highlight a couple here that we're going to talk about but
also if you have test VM,
let's say you run your QA and DevTest through Azure VMs as well.
You might not want some of these high-end VMs,
you might want to go with a more general purpose VMs.
We also have some D-series VMs
that are more general purpose and these could be
for either like entry-level SQL Servers
or Dev and test SQL servers.
They have lower memory,
so these are not going to have as much memory as those
memory optimize series VMs,
but they are good for those entry level.
Then as I said,
those E-series VMs are the ones that we really love,
so if you're not sure what to pick for
your production SQL Server, start with these.
The Edsv5 is one of
our favorites and then this new one that we're going to talk about
today is the Ebdsv5 and
that's what I'm calling the double sprinkles
VM and this is the one that
is really going to be when it goes to
GA it's going to be our flagship VM.
What I'd love to do is hand it over to Priya,
who's going to talk about some of
these innovations and these were all recently announced.
I'll move over to
previous conversation about just the new hardware
that's coming out in Azure.
>> Thank you Pam, and hey.
As Pam just highlighted,
we have announced the public preview of
the new and improved memory optimized VM series.
These are called the Ebsv5 and Ebdsv5 series.
Now this new VM series is most
optimized and best suited for the SQL Server workloads,
and they offer up to a three times increase and the VM to
disk throughput performance and
IOPS performance than the previous generations.
If customers need larger database where they have
larger database workloads that need
IO throughput per core or IOPS per core,
please do choose these new Ebsv5 or Ebds5 VM series.
This new VM series offers a 120,000 in IOPS and 4,000
megabytes per second and now this actually comes
with a local disk and without local disk version as well.
It runs on the latest generation Intel isolate processor too.
>> Wow that's a lot of throughput.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah. Priya should
we show them like how it compares to some of the other VMs?
>> Yeah.
>> Okay let's move on.
>> In terms of benefits to customers what we can see here it is
the Ebdsv5 series is offering
higher IO to call ratio
than what is offered in our previous generations.
The Db4 and Ev4 series offers a maximum
of 1,200 megabytes per second and the Db5
and E5 series if you see on the last line of
a 64-bit CPU size it comes with a 1,735 megabytes per second.
Now this is a 45 percent increase from the previous generations,
but now the customers who are running
specifically the SQL Server workloads typically
required higher IO throughput
than what is offered at a lower court count.
Now they can try the Ebsv5 series which
offers a full 1,000 megabytes per second throughput as well.
With these customers get
the desired cost-savings and this is currently available
in public preview and customers can actually sign
up for preview and try out these new VM-series.
>> Awesome. This is really exciting,
I know for those the SQL Server workloads
that throughput is going to be [inaudible]
>> Super important.
>> The higher IO through a pattern higher IOPS needs from
SQL Server customers are any customers who
run the data intensive workloads is super critical for them.
Based on the customer research
that we've done over the last few months,
we know that this is a common theme and
for these data in these workloads and customers have
increasing demand for reports storage performance so we've created
this new VM series which offers higher IO throughput by coding,
higher IOPS per core and it's best suited for
SQL Server customers to get the better price-performance.
>> Awesome. You mentioned something right if it in
there and that's exactly what I wanted to ask you about,
the performance looks great,
but I have to ask how much is this going to cost?
How is it going to compare?
What's the price-perf really like?
>> Yeah, sure. I've got
some numbers that I can share around that Anna.
The new Ebdsv5 series is comparable
to the older EDS before that we
used to be recommending but as Priya showed,
it's got much much higher IO throughput.
What we found is that,
we did some performance benchmarking
several months ago I think it was back in March on
the E64-32 Dsv4 and
this is one of our VMs which is a constrained core VM,
which means you get the IO throughput and the memory of
the 64-core VM but you only have
32 cores which means you pay less licensing.
You have the same compute cost as
the 64 core but you're only paying SQL Server licensing for
32 cores and you get
the benefit of the additional memory and throughput.
This is what many customers were using in order to get
that right mix of core to throughput.
What we've found is we could run
that same exact benchmark on the E32bdsv5 VM which
means it's also the same 32 course
but because of the increase in IO throughput,
we didn't have to go with a constraint core VM.
Because of that,
we actually got 30 percent better price performance
because if you look at this chart here you can
see that while the storage cost
is the same because it's the same amount of storage,
same number of premium disks attached,
because we only had to go with
an E32 the compute cost is cut in half.
We really see a huge benefit to
price-performance with these VMs because out of
the box they have the right core
to IO throughput and core-to-memory ratio.
You could simply move
your existing constraint core workloads into one of
these new VMs and you could cut your costs by
about 30 percent with making no changes to your app at all.
We're really seeing some great benefits around this and I'm super
excited about what this is going to look
like when it goes to general availability.
We are in public preview with this VM-series now but at GA,
this is really going to be the flagship VM for SQL Server.
>> Awesome. That's great to hear.
Thanks so much, it's been really useful I've learned a lot.
As we wrap,
can you tell me a little bit again
maybe how should I think
about what's the recommendations? What should I use?
>> Yeah, sure.
Because we talked about it a lot.
It's probably maybe still a little bit confusing,
but let me bring up a slide that summarizes what we are
now recommending for your SQL Server workloads in Azure VM.
We are sticking with the memory optimized,
this is going to be the family of VMs that
you want to focus on for your production SQL Server workloads.
The new storage bandwidth optimize VM we talked about
today is the Ebdsv5-series.
This is the one that once it's generally available,
this is going to be the absolute best for
price-performance for your SQL Server workloads.
This is awesome,
it's got the right core-to-memory ratio,
the right core to throughput ratio.
This is it when it comes to SQL Server VMs.
If you don't have as high storage bandwidth
needs you can go with the Edsv5 series.
This also has that good one to eight core-to-memory ratio
but it's got a slightly less well,
actually a significantly amount less IO
throughput than the Ebdsv5 series.
That's a good entry-level all purpose of VM-series,
and then for your more high-intensity data warehousing workloads
big iron servers,
you can go with M-series.
This has some more of those high-end servers,
but it's a lot more expensive.
I would say, for most of your workloads,
you want to stick with these E-series so that Edsv5 series is
great all-purpose machine and
then what I'm calling the hashtag double
sprinkles VMs is the Ebdsv5 series VMs,
flagship storage bandwidth optimized VMs will be
generally available in the first half of calendar year 2022.
>> Awesome, cool. This is great.
Folks listening, you're hearing in here first the
Ebdsv5 I think I got that right.
>> Yeah.
>> Is the this series to go for SQL Server on
Azure VMs currently in public preview.
To our viewers, go ahead and check this out.
We'll put some links to the documentation,
so you can actually check this out and maybe keep
tabs on when it goes GA.
But to our viewers thanks,
so much for tuning in.
Thanks Pam and Priya for joining us on the show.
If you like this show go ahead and give it a like,
comment and let us know what you think of
all these different VMs and we hope to
see you next time on Data Exposed.
[MUSIC]