Dell POWEREDGE R720 - Manual (Page 13)

Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Fast Track Reference Configurations using PowerEdge R720 and PowerVault MD3620i
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PowerConnect 8024 Switch Tuning
For the reference configuration, Dell proposes to have Jumbo frames enabled on all participating iSCSI
ports of the configuration. The MTU size of all the concerned ports should be set to 9216. Figure 9
shows how to enable jumbo frames for all the switch ports from the serial console window.
Enabling Jumbo frames on switch ports Figure 9.
Windows tuning
The allocation unit size for all the database hard drives was set to 64KB.
SQL server tuning
The following startup options were added to the SQL Server Startup options:
• -E: This parameter increases the number of contiguous extends in each file that are allocated
to a database table as it grows. This option is beneficial because it improves sequential access.
• -T1117: This trace flag ensures the even growth of all files in a file group when auto growth is
enabled. Note that the Fast Track reference guidelines recommend to pre-allocate the data
file space rather than to depend on auto grow.
• SQL Server Maximum Memory: For SQL Server 2012, FTDW 4.0 guidelines suggest allocating no
more than 92% of total server RAM to SQL Server. If additional applications will share the
server, the amount of RAM left available to the OS should be adjusted accordingly. For this
reference architecture the maximum server memory was set at 117.76GB.
For the specific recommended fast track configuration, the resource governor (disabled by
default) and the 'max degree of parallelism' settings (0 by default) were set to the default
settings.