What Determines the Installation Collation?

When installing SQL Server, why do you sometimes see that the Database Engine defaults to the SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS collation and other times another value?

This value is determined by the system locale which can be found via Control Panel -> Clock and Region -> Region -> Administrative -> Language for non-Unicode programs.

Here in New Zealand we typically use the Latin1_General_CI_AS collation.

When the system locale is changed to “English (New Zealand)” a prompt to restart Windows is received.

After a restart, the result of this change means that the SQL Server installation will now default to Latin1_General_CI_AS.

SensitivityLabels To String Using PowerShell

Transforming the SensitivityLabels column to a comma separated string value using PowerShell can be tricky.

Here is one method to achieve it.

(SensitivityLabels | Out-String).Trim().Replace("`n",",").Replace("  ","")

A full example is:

Get-AzSqlDatabaseSensitivityRecommendation -ResourceGroupName $resource_group_name -ServerName $server_name -DatabaseName $database_name |
Select-Object @{Name='DatabaseName';Expression={if($_.DatabaseName -eq $null){''}else{$_.DatabaseName}}},
@{Name='ResourceGroupName';Expression={if($_.ResourceGroupName -eq $null){''}else{$_.ResourceGroupName}}},
@{Name='SensitivityLabels';Expression={if($_.SensitivityLabels -eq $null){''}else{($_.SensitivityLabels | Out-String).Trim().Replace("`n",",").Replace("  ","")}}},
@{Name='ServerName';Expression={if($_.ServerName -eq $null){''}else{$_.ServerName}}} |
ConvertTo-Csv -NoTypeInformation -Delimiter "|"

The output looks like:

"DatabaseName"|"ResourceGroupName"|"SensitivityLabels"|"ServerName"
"testdb"|"myrg01"|"SchemaName : jobs_internal,TableName: targets,ColumnName : elastic_pool_name,SensitivityLabel : Confidential - GDPR,InformationType: Name,Rank : Medium"|"myserver"

Is Azure Hybrid Benefit Worth it for Managed Instances?

Azure Hybrid Benefit (AHB) appears to offer great cost savings when pricing your new Managed Instance.

For this blog, I’m going to look at an entry level General Purpose 4 vCore instance.

Starting at https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/calculator we can see that with AHB the price is USD$444.48/month.

Without AHB, the price goes up to USD$736.38/month and the SQL License cost is clearly shown as USD$291.90/month (USD$736.38 – USD$444.48) or US$3,502.80/year.

This means that without AHB we would pay an extra USD$3,502.80/year!

Ok lets take a step back.

To make use of AHB you required the Box product with Software Assurance (SA).

Taking a look at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sql-server/sql-server-2019-pricing we can see that a Standard Edition (equivalent of the Azure General Purpose Tier) 2 core pack costs USD$3,586 and therefore 2 of these, to get 4 core licenses, would cost USD$7,172.

[1] Pricing represents open no level (NL) estimated retail price.

In addition we require 2 of the SA licenses which would be USD$2,836/year (USD$1,418/year x 2).

This results in an outlay of USD$10,008 (USD$7,172 (Box) + USD$2,836 (SA)) for the 1st year to allow use of the AHB.

So based on the above, when do you break even if using AHB as opposed to not using AHB?

Just over 10 years, which is the standard life cycle of a Boxed product!

4 vCoresAHBNo AHBSavingsRunning Total
Year 1 10,008 3,502.806,505.206,505.20
Year 2 2,836 3,502.80(666.80)5,838.40
Year 3 2,836 3,502.80(666.80) 5,171.60
Year 4 2,836 3,502.80(666.80) 4,504.80
Year 5 2,836 3,502.80(666.80) 3,838.00
Year 6 2,836 3,502.80(666.80) 3,171.20
Year 7 2,836 3,502.80(666.80) 2,504.40
Year 8 2,836 3,502.80(666.80)1,837.60
Year 9 2,836 3,502.80(666.80)1,170.80
Year 10 2,836 3,502.80(666.80)504.00
Year 11 2,836 3,502.80(666.80)(162.80)
Total38,36838,530.80(162.80)

In summary and based on the above; if you have SA then yes use AHB and keeping renewing the SA for as long as you can. If you are starting with the need for new licenses, then using AHB doesn’t make sense.

SQL Server on Azure VMs

Cost and performance is likely going to be your key considerations when placing your SQL Server on Azure.

Microsoft provides the following Performance guidelines for SQL Server in Azure Virtual Machines and SQL server best practices to optimize performance in Azure Stack documents which give a comprehensive overview of configuring SQL Server on Azure VMs.

As I’ve been working quite a bit on Azure lately, I thought I’d list a few of my findings.

Picking a Virtual Machine

At the time of this blog, there were 172 VM sizes to choose from.

172 VM sizes

The key considerations for a SQL Server VM relate to:

  • CPUs (Potentially impacts license costs)
  • Memory (The more memory the better as much faster than disk)
  • Disk capacity (Sufficient disks space to store your databases/backups)
  • Disk speed (Impacts data read/write access performance)

So with this in mind we can narrow down suitable VMs.

If the goal is to get a SQL Server 2017 Standard Edition VM with 4 vCPUs (minimum core license requirement) and 128GB RAM (Edition limit) we end up with a E16-4s_v3.

SQL Server 2017 Standard Edition VM option with 128GB Ram

The E16-4s_v3 is a constrained core size VM (see below) which has 4 vCPUs, 128GB memory and up to 25,600 IOPS.

Constrained core size VMs allow for a reduced vCPU count for licensing while keeping the RAM and MAX IOPS unchanged for the same price.

Constrained core size VMs for E16s_v3

In Microsoft’s documentation they refer to use of DS2_v2 or higher for Standard Edition and DS3_v2 or higher for Enterprise Edition.

DS VMs

If the goal is to obtain a VM with maximum disk IOPS (currently 80,000) while keeping SQL license costs down you’ll probably be best to go with a E64-16s_v3 which has 16 vCPUs and 432GB RAM.

VMs which allow up to 80,000 IOPS

VM Disks

Once you have decided on your VM, the next most important step is deciding on the disks to add to the VM.

Premium SSD disks available

The table above shows the max throughput available for the disk, but depending on your VM you may not achieve that throughput due to Microsoft setting IOPS limits on the various VMs.

I’ll demonstrate these limits with the widely used CrystalDiskMark tool to place load on various disk configurations.

Below shows CrystalDiskMark run against a very old $100 Apacer AS681 SSD 2.5 7mm SATAIII, 240GB drive which is no longer sold.

Example

All tests were run 3 times using a 1GB file to save time.

  • Seq Q32T1: Sequential, Queues = 32, Threads = 1
  • 4KiB Q8T8: Random 4KiB, Queues = 8, Threads = 8
  • 4KiB Q32T1: Random 4KiB, Queues = 32, Threads = 1
  • 4KiB Q1T1: Random 4KiB, Queues = 1, Threads = 1

All tests made use of the recommended Storage Spaces with Simple Resiliency and the number Columns (think of it as a stripe) equaling the number of disks. The disks were formatted using best practice NTFS 64K allocation unit size and GPT partition to allow exceeding 2TB. Simple Resiliency is all that is required due to the underlying Azure infrastructure ref: “Locally redundant storage (LRS) replicates your data three times within a single data center. LRS provides at least 99.999999999% (11 nines) durability of objects over a given year.”

  • E16-4s_v3: Has 4 vCPUs, 128GB RAM and Max IOPS 25,600
  • E32-8s_v3: Has 8 vCPUs, 256GB RAM and Max IOPS 51,200
  • E64-16s_v3: Has 16 vCPUs, 432GB RAM and Max IOPS 80,000

Host Caching set to None

  E16-4s_v3 E32-8s_v3 E64-16s_v3
  Read / Write (MB/s) Read / Write (MB/s) Read / Write (MB/s)
1 x P30: Seq Q32T1 204 / 205 204 / 206 204 / 206
1 x P30: 4KiB Q8T8 21 / 20 20 / 20 20 / 21
1 x P30: 4KiB Q32T1 21 / 21 20 / 20 21 /21
1 x P30: 4KiB Q1T1 1 / 1 1 / 1 1 /1
Cost per month NZ$ 204.37 (Size 1TB)
       
2 x P30: Seq Q32T1 395 / 393 411 / 409 411 / 409
2 x P30: 4KiB Q8T8 41 / 41 41 / 41 41 / 41
2 x P30: 4KiB Q32T1 40 / 40 38 / 39 39 / 40
2 x P30: 4KiB Q1T1 1 / 1 1 / 1 1 / 1
Cost per month NZ$ 408.74 (Size 2TB)
       
3 x P30: Seq Q32T1 392 / 393 613 / 612 612 / 612
3 x P30: 4KiB Q8T8 61 / 62 61 / 62 61 / 62
3 x P30: 4KiB Q32T1 41 / 47 40 / 43 41 / 45
3 x P30: 4KiB Q1T1 1 / 1 1 / 1 1 / 1
Cost per month NZ$ 613.11 (Size 3TB)
       
4 x P30: Seq Q32T1 394 / 394 783 / 780 815 / 811
4 x P30: 4KiB Q8T8 80 / 81 80 / 81 80 / 81
4 x P30: 4KiB Q32T1 42 / 47 42 / 45 42 / 45
4 x P30: 4KiB Q1T1 1 / 1 1 / 1 1 / 1
Cost per month NZ$ 817.48 (Size 4TB)
       
5 x P30: Seq Q32T1 392 / 394 783 / 778 1006 / 896
5 x P30: 4KiB Q8T8 84 / 97 83 / 88 87 / 93
5 x P30: 4KiB Q32T1 42 / 47 41 / 45 42 / 45
5 x P30: 4KiB Q1T1 1 / 1 1 / 1 1 / 1
Cost per month NZ$ 1,021.85 (Size 5TB)
       
1 x P40: Seq Q32T1 255 / 257 257 / 256 255 / 257
1 x P40: 4KiB Q8T8 31 / 31 31 / 31 31 / 31
1 x P40: 4KiB Q32T1 31 / 31 31 / 31 31 / 31
1 x P40: 4KiB Q1T1 1 / 1 1 / 1 1 / 1
Cost per month NZ$ 391.67 (Size 2TB)
       
1 x P60: Seq Q32T1 392 / 394 513 / 511 510 / 511
1 x P60: 4KiB Q8T8 66 / 67 66 / 67 66 / 67
1 x P60: 4KiB Q32T1 51 / 59 46 / 51 46 / 54
1 x P60: 4KiB Q1T1 1 / 1 1 / 1 1 / 1
Cost per month NZ$ 1,430.42 (Size 8TB)
       
1 x P70: Seq Q32T1 393 / 394 765 / 764 766 / 764
1 x P70: 4KiB Q8T8 75 / 75 75 / 75 75 / 75
1 x P70: 4KiB Q32T1 51 / 58 46 / 52 45 / 59
1 x P70: 4KiB Q1T1 1 / 1 1 / 1 1 / 1
Cost per month NZ$ 2,724.62 (Size 16TB)

As shown above, there is clearly VM throttling in place and you could possibly be throwing money away by trying to use faster and/or more disks to get better IO performance.

Host Caching set to Read-only

  E16-4s_v3 E32-8s_v3 E64-16s_v3
  Read / Write (MB/s) Read / Write (MB/s) Read / Write (MB/s)
1 x P30: Seq Q32T1 269 / 205 538 / 205 1073 / 206
1 x P30: 4KiB Q8T8 133 / 21 268 / 21 534 / 20
1 x P30: 4KiB Q32T1 134 / 21 269 / 21 470 / 21
1 x P30: 4KiB Q1T1 19 / 1 54 / 1 58 / 1
Cost per month NZ$ 204.37 (Size 1TB)
       
2 x P30: Seq Q32T1 269 / 268 536 / 408 1071 / 408
2 x P30: 4KiB Q8T8 134 / 41 269 / 41 535 / 41
2 x P30: 4KiB Q32T1 134 / 38 269 / 39 489 / 40
2 x P30: 4KiB Q1T1 20 / 1 54 / 1 61 / 1
Cost per month NZ$ 408.74 (Size 2TB)
       
3 x P30: Seq Q32T1 269 / 268 539 / 535 1075 / 611
3 x P30: 4KiB Q8T8 134 / 61 267 / 61 535 / 62
3 x P30: 4KiB Q32T1 134 / 35 268 / 42 463 / 44
3 x P30: 4KiB Q1T1 19 / 1 54 / 1 58 / 1
Cost per month NZ$ 613.11 (Size 3TB)
       
4 x P30: Seq Q32T1 270 / 269 540 / 535 1073 / 812
4 x P30: 4KiB Q8T8 134 / 72 267 / 81 536 / 81
4 x P30: 4KiB Q32T1 134 / 37 268 / 44 481 / 44
4 x P30: 4KiB Q1T1 20 / 1 52 / 1 60 / 1
Cost per month NZ$ 817.48 (Size 4TB)
       
5 x P30: Seq Q32T1 268 / 270 538 / 535 1074 / 877
5 x P30: 4KiB Q8T8 134 / 66 269 / 89 535 / 90
5 x P30: 4KiB Q32T1 134 / 36 268 / 45 477 / 46
5 x P30: 4KiB Q1T1 18 / 1 54 / 1 60 / 1
Cost per month NZ$ 1,021.85 (Size 5TB)
       
1 x P40: Seq Q32T1 269 / 256 540 / 256 1075 / 256
1 x P40: 4KiB Q8T8 134 / 31 270 / 31 535 / 31
1 x P40: 4KiB Q32T1 134 / 31 268 / 31 496 / 31
1 x P40: 4KiB Q1T1 19 / 1 35 / 1 61 / 1
Cost per month NZ$ 391.67 (Size 2TB)
       
1 x P60: Seq Q32T1 No read cache available
1 x P60: 4KiB Q8T8 No read cache available
1 x P60: 4KiB Q32T1 No read cache available
1 x P60: 4KiB Q1T1 No read cache available
Cost per month NZ$ 1,430.42 (Size 8TB)
       
1 x P70: Seq Q32T1 No read cache available
1 x P70: 4KiB Q8T8 No read cache available
1 x P70: 4KiB Q32T1 No read cache available
1 x P70: 4KiB Q1T1 No read cache available
Cost per month NZ$ 2,724.62 (Size 16TB)

There are a lot of ways to interpret the data above, but key findings included:

  • Host caching set to None, can offer faster performance than Read-only cache.
  • The Larger sized disks do not offer caching.
  • Good option for SQL Server when a low number of disks are allocated to the VM.

Host Caching set to Read/write

  E16-4s_v3 E32-8s_v3 E64-16s_v3
  Read / Write (MB/s) Read / Write (MB/s) Read / Write (MB/s)
1 x P30: Seq Q32T1 269 / 221 538 / 451 1080 / 792
1 x P30: 4KiB Q8T8 134 / 80 268 / 156 535 / 403
1 x P30: 4KiB Q32T1 134 / 87 269 / 117 470 / 239
1 x P30: 4KiB Q1T1 18 / 26 54 / 39 58 / 51
Cost per month NZ$ 204.37 (Size 1TB)
       
2 x P30: Seq Q32T1 269 / 270 538 / 440 1076 / 1077
2 x P30: 4KiB Q8T8 134 / 133 269 / 194 535 / 504
2 x P30: 4KiB Q32T1 133 / 134 269 / 127 489 / 388
2 x P30: 4KiB Q1T1 19 / 36 49 / 30 61 / 31
Cost per month NZ$ 408.74 (Size 2TB)
       
3 x P30: Seq Q32T1 269 / 270 539 / 535 1075 / 806
3 x P30: 4KiB Q8T8 134 / 129 268 / 266 535 / 524
3 x P30: 4KiB Q32T1 133 / 66 268 / 267 463 / 386
3 x P30: 4KiB Q1T1 19 / 24 49 / 45 58 / 41
Cost per month NZ$ 613.11 (Size 3TB)
       
4 x P30: Seq Q32T1 268 / 250 536 / 540 1070 / 1023
4 x P30: 4KiB Q8T8 134 / 68 267 / 202 536 / 530
4 x P30: 4KiB Q32T1 134 / 123 267 / 193 481 / 370
4 x P30: 4KiB Q1T1 19 / 27 49 / 44 60 / 40
Cost per month NZ$ 817.48 (Size 4TB)
       
5 x P30: Seq Q32T1 269 / 261 539 / 519 1070 / 1020
5 x P30: 4KiB Q8T8 134 / 133 268 / 267 536 / 531
5 x P30: 4KiB Q32T1 134 / 134 268 / 201 481 / 374
5 x P30: 4KiB Q1T1 19 / 39 49 / 38 60 / 41
Cost per month NZ$ 1,021.85 (Size 5TB)
       
1 x P40: Seq Q32T1 269 / 270 539 / 246 1079 / 993
1 x P40: 4KiB Q8T8 133 / 133 270 / 231 535 / 530
1 x P40: 4KiB Q32T1 133 / 71 268 / 55 484 / 409
1 x P40: 4KiB Q1T1 19 / 26 35 / 23 59 / 57
Cost per month NZ$ 391.67 (Size 2TB)
       
1 x P60: Seq Q32T1 No caching available
1 x P60: 4KiB Q8T8 No caching available
1 x P60: 4KiB Q32T1 No caching available
1 x P60: 4KiB Q1T1 No caching available
Cost per month NZ$ 1,430.42 (Size 8TB)
       
1 x P70: Seq Q32T1 No caching available
1 x P70: 4KiB Q8T8 No caching available
1 x P70: 4KiB Q32T1 No caching available
1 x P70: 4KiB Q1T1 No caching available
Cost per month NZ$ 2,724.62 (Size 16TB)
  • Microsoft does not recommend used of Read/write cache for SQL Server.

VM Temporary Drive

 

E16-4s_v3 (256GB Size)

E32-8s_v3 (512GB Size)

E64-16s_v3 (864GB Size)
  Read / Write (MB/s) Read / Write (MB/s) Read / Write (MB/s)
Seq Q32T1 270 / 270 538 / 535 1067 / 1074
4KiB Q8T8 134 / 134 268 / 266 476 / 489
4KiB Q32T1 133 / 133 248 / 238 277 / 271
4KiB Q1T1 15 / 22 20 / 29 21 / 30
  • The temporary drive throughput appears to reflect throttled premium disks with read/write cache enabled.

To summarize:

Review your VM’s temporary (D) drive performance and size to gauge where your tempdb database should be placed.

Having several striped disks does not guarantee that you will get faster throughput, rather this is dependent on the VM used.

To get faster IO performance you need a lot of disk space (even with the new Ultra disks), which you may / may not require, and remember you get charged for the whole storage (not just what you use) plus IOs (except temporary drive).

If you down scale a VM, you should ensure that the VM supports the number of drives you currently have attached and it you are using the temporary (D) drive, that the size will be sufficient for your tempdb files.

When using Storage Spaces, if you need to add additional capacity, you’ll need to add the same number of disks e.g. a 3 disk virtual drive will require an additional 3 disks. Also when the new disks are added, the Column count does not increase, so although you have increased capacity, you don’t increase the disk performance.

Depending on your SQL Server requirements, the cloud is not always cost effective.

tl;dr no cache enabled

Beware the impact of the ANSI_WARNINGS setting

Disabling the ANSI_WARNINGS setting in your code can compromise your data integrity.

As an example; say you are inserting an invoice number into a table and ANSI_WARNINGS are disabled.

Yay!

You pat yourself on the back as the insert succeeded.

Can you spot the issue?

Boo!

Ok you can take that pat back.

You should have ANSI_WARNINGS ON to ensure you get a warning and the operation doesn’t succeed.

Ahh!

One way to spot if an active connection has this setting disabled is to query the DMV sys.dm_exec_sessions. An example is shown below:

SELECT 
 session_id
,CASE WHEN [ansi_warnings] = 1 THEN 'yes' ELSE 'no' END AS is_ansi_warnings_enabled
FROM sys.dm_exec_sessions
WHERE session_id > 50;

Time to investigate session 54!

Check your SQL errorlog file sizes

At some stage you’ll likely want to check your SQL Server errorlog files using xp_readerrorlog or sp_readerrorlog.

If you haven’t worked on the server before and/or don’t have access to view the file sizes before running the command the below query will help obtain this information.

Why would you be interested in knowing the file sizes before running the command? Well, if the instance hasn’t been restarted in a while and sp_cycle_errorlog hasn’t been run, the log files could be really large and cause potential memory and IO performance issues when you try read them.

DECLARE @enumerrorlogs TABLE ([Log Type] varchar(5), [Archive #] int, [Date] datetime, [Log File Size (Byte)] bigint);

--get sql log file sizes
INSERT INTO @enumerrorlogs ([Archive #], [Date], [Log File Size (Byte)])
EXEC master.sys.sp_enumerrorlogs 1;

UPDATE @enumerrorlogs
SET [Log Type] = 'SQL'
WHERE [Log Type] IS NULL;

--get sql agent log file sizes
INSERT INTO @enumerrorlogs ([Archive #], [Date], [Log File Size (Byte)])
EXEC master.sys.sp_enumerrorlogs 2;

UPDATE @enumerrorlogs
SET [Log Type] = 'Agent'
WHERE [Log Type] IS NULL;

SELECT 
 a.[Log Type] AS log_type
,a.[Archive #] AS archive
,a.[Date] AS date_last_updated
,CAST(a.[Log File Size (Byte)]/1024/1024.0 AS decimal(20,3)) AS log_size_mb
FROM @enumerrorlogs a
ORDER BY a.[Log Type] DESC, a.[Archive #];

SQL Server 2014 Mainstream Support Gone

Yes SQL Server 2014 Mainstream Support ended this month. I didn’t notice much of a fuss. Possibly everyone is scrambling with SQL Server 2008/R2 exiting Extended Support or they are sorted.

That currently leaves SQL Server 2016 and SQL Server 2017 as the only mainstream products. SQL Server 2019 release is imminent, but uptake will likely take some time.