Fusion IO SSD Configuration Recommendation

  • I'm looking for a recommendation for how I should build my new SQL servers to most efficiently take advantage of my new Fusion IO SSD cards.

    I have SQL Enterprise licensing for two physical hosts. Each host is configured as a Hyper-V server running 6 SQL VMs each. Each SQL VM is part of a 2-node cluster with the matching SQL VM on the second physical host. Meaning I have 6, two-node SQL clusters running on 2 physical hosts. Each cluster is configured for synchronous AlwaysOn Availability Groups.

    Currently, each SQL VM is configured with direct access to SAN for all of its storage. Meaning I'm not using virtual disks (I understand that virtual disks have additional overhead, so to compensate for potential performance issues, I gave them direct access to SAN volumes). Problem being, I only have one SAN (shared with ALL other services and applications in the entire company). So even though each cluster node has its own dedicated volumes, all of the nodes keep those volumes on the one single SAN. So we have a single point of failure.

    To solve that problem, we just purchased two Fusion IO drives for each physical host, with enough space to hold the majority of our mission critical SQL data. I intend on using the Fusion IO drives as the basis for my Windows/SQL 2016 upgrade project. The question is, what is the best way to build these servers? With the introduction of the Fusion IO drives, I now essentially have 3 tiers of storage available to those hosts (Tier 1 - Fusion IO, Tier 2 -local dedicated SAS drives, Tier 3 - 4Gb Fiber Channel to shared SAN).

    I always build my SQL VMs with dedicated drives for OS, SQL Data, SQL Logs, TempDB, and Backups, at least, regardless of where those individual drives are actually hosted. So ideally I would like to just push the Easy button and put all of those drives right onto the Fusion IO, using virtual disks for flexibility, and just let the sheer power of the drive keep performance at least on par with what I have now, hopefully better. I'm not sure if that config times 6 VMs will be too much for the drive to handle, so I might have to spread things out. Maybe backups and archive databases on the SAN, BLOB databases on the local SAS, maybe OS on local SAS too. I'm not sure. Can anyone give me a recommendation?

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