F

aced with fast-moving competition across unpredictable global markets, businesses today are
looking to IT to provide them with a competitive edge as never before. To deliver that strategic advan-
tage, IT executives are turning to virtualization and private cloud technologies.
Server virtualization is now a mainstream technology in IT and has become a key mechanism for helping
enable cost savings, whether through server consolidation or the rapid provisioning of new servers. In
addition, by improving IT effciency and reducing complexity, server virtualization can potentially help IT
organizations weather the storm of a volatile economy.
Private clouds are enabling IT organizations to achieve such key benefts as resource pooling, elasticity,
self-service automation, business agility, and standardization. More importantly, a private cloud promises
to exceed the cost-effectiveness of a virtualized infrastructure through higher workload density and greater
resource utilization, leading to reduced capital as well as operating expenses, according to a recent total cost
of ownership study.
1
The Potential Business
Benefts of a Private Cloud-
Based Database Appliance
WHI T E PA P E R
1
Total Cost of Ownership
Benefts of the HP Enterprise
Database Consolidation Appli-
ance, Anthony Steven, CM
Group Ltd., July 2011. See also
Dont Buy New Infrastructure:
Leverage Existing Investments
to Build Your Private Cloud,
IDC, September 2011.
2 | WHITE PAPER | The Potential Business Benefts of a Private Cloud-Based Database Appliance
Organizations also continue to seek ways to eff-
ciently manage the exponential growth of business
data. Because of some instances where individual
departments or teams may commission databases
on their own, without the involvement or knowledge
of the IT department, the possibility of having a
deployment of many database servers across the
network has created a situation known as data-
base sprawl.
These sprawling, siloed server deployments can
be very costly and ineffcientevery time a single
database instance begins to run out of space,
additional provisioning is required. Plus, there are
huge overheads involved in getting a new database
server up and runningnot to mention the issues
associated with backing it up. The successful instal-
lation of single database servers can take months
to complete, consume large amounts of power and
physical space, and require signifcant IT resources
for their maintenance.
To help remedy the situation, many organizations are
beginning to look at virtualization and private clouds
to consolidate their databases.
Database consolidation
using virtualization
Recent industry studies show that database consoli-
dation through virtualization can help provide signif-
cant benefts, including increased server usage,
infrastructure simplifcation, helping reduce staffng
costs, greater IT responsiveness, chargeback
control, and additional high availability and disaster
recovery options.2 Overall, these benefts can
translate into reduced TCO for an organization.
Even so, some CIOs may argue that running busi-
ness-critical databases in a virtual environment is
a completely different ballgame. They cite perfor-
mance issues, pointing out that many databases
are characterized by a large memory footprint, high
transaction throughput, and rigorous high availability
requirements.
Specifcally, they say the handling of connections
between application servers, storage, and database
servers in virtual environments can introduce latency
and performance drag. Applications that require
intensive input and output (I/O) with databases seem
to suffer the worst performance degradation when
virtualized, they add.
3

While this is a problem that might be solved through
confguration and system management, it remains
a stubborn challenge to supporters of virtualization
who wish to emulate the performance of applications
on dedicated physical servers.
Bottom line: Some CIOs may wonder if the risk/
return ratio is worth it. They continue to worry about
the performance consequences of the so-called
virtualization tax.
Despite those concerns, organizations are showing
quantifable benefts from running heavy-duty
database applications in virtual machines. For
example, several years ago, Microsoft Corp. IT
realized it had approximately 100,000 databases
on 5,000 instances of SQL Server. A major project
was launched to consolidate these databases into
a virtual environment. The Microsoft IT SQL Server
Utility project made a substantial impact on the
companys environmental footprint while achieving
many other virtualization and consolidation benefts,
including lowering annual operating costs by
$11 million a year and saving more than 33,000
rack units.
4
And consider this: According to a recent survey of
C-level and IT executives, among those enterprises
currently implementing virtualization, business-
critical applications are now beginning to come into
the spotlight. The survey found that enterprises are
increasingly willing to place their sensitive database
applications into virtualized or cloud environments.
5

Three approaches to
database consolidation
Generally speaking, there are three ways of imple-
menting database consolidation through virtualiza-
tion. Each approach has certain advantages and
disadvantages that need to be carefully considered.
The frst approach is to self-build, using guidance
provided by a virtualization vendor (or vendors) to
create a tailored solution. This approach enables the
greatest customization but requires extensive IT skills
and takes longest to implement. A typical project
time scale for such an implementation would be in
the region of 12 or more months, from envisioning
to fnal commissioning.
6
As with any large IT project,
there are areas of potentially signifcant cost and risk
involved in the self-build approach, such as unex-
pected incompatibilities that can arise when multiple
vendors are involved in developing the solution.
The second approach, which can help reduce
some of the risks of the self-build solution while also
helping to save time in deployment, is to implement
2
Consolidation through
Database Virtualization,
Gartner Inc., April 18, 2011
3
Total Cost of Ownership
Benefts of the HP Enterprise
Database Consolidation
Appliance
4
Green IT in Practice: SQL
Server Consolidation in Micro-
soft IT, Mark Photo, The Archi-
tecture Journal, January 2009
5
2011 Virtualization and
Evolution to the Cloud Survey,
Symantec Corp., October 2011
6
Total Cost of Ownership
Benefts of the HP Enterprise
Database Consolidation
Appliance
3 | WHITE PAPER | The Potential Business Benefts of a Private Cloud-Based Database Appliance
a reference architecture from a specifc vendor. This
approach can help ensure a consistent, proven
design that is likely to lead to a successful implemen-
tation. Nevertheless, it still requires extensive plan-
ning and project management, along with the skills
to build the solution.
The third option is to avoid the complexities of
the previous approaches altogether through the
purchase of a prebuilt, confgured database consoli-
dation appliance.
Business benefts of a private
cloud appliance optimized for
database workloads
The new HP Enterprise Database Consolidation (DBC)
Appliance helps simplify the deployment and manage-
ment of a virtualized infrastructure and is designed
specifcally for Microsoft SQL Server databases.
It is the frst private cloud appliance in the industry
designed to run the high I/O workloads of SQL
Server.
The HP Enterprise DBC Appliance helps make it
possible to consolidate hundreds of transactional
databases into a single, virtual environment, where
new SQL Server instances can be provisioned in
minutes and migrations of virtual machines can be
accomplished with near-zero downtime.
The appliance enables organizations to gain all the
benefts of a private cloud infrastructure, including
resource pooling, elasticity, self-service automation,
and standardization.
Built on an HP BladeSystem server and an inte-
grated management stack from HP and Microsoft,
the appliance provides compute, storage, and
network resources inside a single rack. It is available
in a half-rack or a full-rack confguration.
Many database workloads have a distinctive perfor-
mance profle that requires a high level of I/O, and
the HP Enterprise DBC Appliance was designed
from the ground up with this in mind, according to
Chris Boar, Senior Product Manager at Microsoft.
HP and Microsoft experts have made optimal tech-
nology choices for servers, processors, storage type
and confguration, memory, and networking settings
to create a balanced system with the right blend
of price/performance, Boar said. The result is a
private cloud appliance that has been tested, tuned,
and optimized for database consolidation.
The cornerstone of the HP Enterprise DBC Appli-
ance is the multi-core AMD Opteron

processor,
which offers leading virtualization performance and
the ability to consolidate a maximum number of
databases in the fewest number of servers. AMDs
large memory footprint offers near-native database
performance.
Based on AMDs Direct Connect Architecture and
offering the industrys frst 12-core x86 processor,
the AMD Opteron

6000 Series processor can

deliver the processing bandwidth to run the most
demanding business-critical workloads, according
to Matt Kimball, Strategic Marketing Manager at
AMD.
With AMDs virtualization technologies built directly
into the silicon, performance isnt an issue, Kimball
said. CIOs should no longer have to worry about
paying a virtualization tax when running database
workloads.
The appliance is also engineered with high avail-
ability in mind. All hardware components are redun-
dant, down to the communication links and paths.
7

It is available in half-rack and full-rack confgurations,
with a half-rack typically able to consolidate 100
databases and a full rack typically able to consoli-
date 200 databases.
8
The appliance comes preloaded with the Microsoft
DBCA 2012 management software (which includes
the System Center technologies and SQL Server
technologies), which delivers physical-to-virtual
migration and management, live migration to help
minimize downtime, load balancing between VMs to
account for peaks and valleys in activity, real-time
VM provisioning, usage and charge back reporting,
and system management
.9

Both Microsoft and HP provide a choice of support
levels to help meet specifc business needs.
Among the potential business benefts of this private
cloud-based database appliance:
n Simplify infrastructure. Consolidating data-
bases (including SQL Server, Oracle, and MySQL)
through virtualization will reduce the number
of physical database servers, with the ability of
having 120 to 200 database instances being
hosted on one HP Enterprise DBC Appliance.
After consolidation, the new physical servers are
able to run at higher usage levels, and the original
physical assets can be decommissioned and
removed from the network.
7
HP Enterprise Database
Consolidation Appliance
Optimized for Microsoft SQL
Server 2008 R2 Fact Sheet,
HP
8
ibid.
9
ibid.
HP and
Microsoft
experts have
made optimal
technology
choices for
servers,
processors,
storage
type and
confguration,
memory, and
networking
settings to
create a
balanced
system with
the right blend
of price/
performance.
Chris Boar
Senior Product Manager
Microsoft
4 | WHITE PAPER | The Potential Business Benefts of a Private Cloud-Based Database Appliance
n Improve business agility. Virtual machine-
based provisioning of database instances means
that business units can request the resources
to create a database and gain the ability to have
that instance approved, built, and operational that
same day.
n Reduce staffng costs. Typically, consoli-
dating 120 physical servers onto one HP Enter-
prise DBC Appliance can potentially free up to
three IT administrators for other maintenance
tasks (assuming one administrator for every 30
servers).
10
n Enhance IT responsiveness. With multiple
database instances running on virtual machines
in a multiple-host physical environment, IT
departments have the ability to dynamically
respond to changing conditions and database
loads by using a feature like live migration to
move virtual machines automatically from one
physical host to another.
n Realize fast time to value. By helping to elimi-
nate the time that customers require to design,
tune, and test all of the hardware and software
components, the HP Enterprise DBC Appliance
has the ability to greatly reduce planning, setup,
confguration, and deployment time, helping to
minimize the costs and risks of implementation.
n Control chargeback. Chargeback control can
enable IT departments to proportion costs to
internal departments and groups accurately. With
multiple physical servers, accurate cost allocation
is diffcult at best, if not almost impossible. The
management tools preinstalled on the appliance
can help ensure that costs charged to depart-
ments are accurate.
n Reduce database sprawl. The appliance can
help to signifcantly reduce the risk of database
sprawl by ensuring that the hardware and soft-
ware within the appliance have been designed
with the express aim of providing a platform for
IT to manage databases.
n Experience hardware-enabled virtualization.
The AMD Opteron processors in the appliance
provide AMD-V

technology, a virtualization
technology that consists of hardware exten-
sions to the x86 system architecture. Windows
Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V utilizes AMD-V to
help eliminate much of the processor overhead
normally associated with software-only virtualiza-
tion solutions.
n Demonstrate a commitment to sustainable
IT. Calculations of power usage indicate that
consolidating 400 SQL Server instances onto
three HP Enterprise DBC Appliances reduces
energy costs by 86% and cuts cooling costs
by up to 93%.
11

The HP private cloud database appliance is one of
several SQL Server Appliances Microsoft is devel-
oping with key partners. All appliances include
the hardware, software, and enhanced support
needed for the solution. Each appliance is optimized
for specifc workloads and tuned to provide the
maximum performance, manageability, energy-
effciency, and value in the fastest possible time.
Other SQL Server Appliances are available for data
warehousing and Business Intelligence.
Conclusion
Today, virtualization isnt just about consolidation
and cost savings. Increasingly, forward-facing orga-
nizations are using virtualization to help transform
their IT infrastructure into a private cloud.
Private clouds are enabling IT organizations to achieve
such key benefts as resource pooling, elasticity, self-
service automation, business agility, and standard-
ization. A private cloud even promises to exceed the
cost-effectiveness of a virtualized infrastructure.
The HP Enterprise Database Consolidation
Appliance is an integrated, ready-to-use solution
for consolidating and optimizing database work-
loads to help gain the full benefts of a private cloud,
including the ability for improved agility and respon-
siveness, reduced TCO, and potentially increased
business alignment and focus.
For more information about the HP Enterprise
Database Consolidation Appliance, go to
www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/en/us/solutions-
technologies/Appliances/HP-dca.aspx
or www.hp.com/solutions/hp/dbcn
10
Total Cost of Ownership
Benefts of the HP Enterprise
Database Consolidation
Appliance
11
ibid.
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