Backup server capacity planning worksheet - Parallel Data Warehouse

This capacity planning worksheet helps you to determine the requirements for a backup server for performing SQL Server PDW database backup and restore operations. Use this to create your plan for purchasing new or provisioning existing backup servers.

This worksheet is a supplement to the instructions in Acquire and Configure a Backup Server.

Capacity Planning Worksheet for Backup Servers

Notes

1. This worksheet applies to servers that will be performing backup and restore operations for PDW databases.

2. The only way to backup and restore PDW databases is to use the BACKUP DATABASE and RESTORE DATABASE SQL commands. However, once the backup data is on your backup server, it exists as a set of Windows files. You can archive the backup files from your server to another storage location by using traditional Windows file-based backup methods.

Capacity Planning Worksheet

Print this worksheet and fill it in with your own requirements.

Component	Requirement	Fill in this column with your own requirements	Recommendations
Storage	Maximum bytes you plan to store on the backup server at any given period of time.		To determine storage requirements, figure out how much data you plan to store on the backup server at any given period of time. The backup data is stored on the backup server in a compressed format. Data compression rates depend on the characteristics of your data. For example: As a rough estimate, we recommend estimating a 7:1 compression ratio relative to the size of your uncompressed data. This assumes at least 80% of the data is stored in clustered columnstore indexes. For example, if you have 700 GB of uncompressed data in a database and it is stored in clustered columnstore indexes, then you could estimate the database backup will need about 100 GB. If you plan to have multiple copies of database backups on the backup server, you need to account for them. For example: If you plan to backup 10 databases that each contain 5 TB of uncompressed data, the databases have a combined size of 50 TB. If you plan to backup these 10 databases everyday for 5 days in a row, the total uncompressed size is 250 TB. Factoring in a 7:1 compression ratio, you will need 250 / 7 = 35.7 TB of storage on your backup server. We recommend being conservative and getting about 30% additional capacity to account for variances and grow. In this example, 46.6 TB would be better.
Network	Network connection type.		Determine the best network connection type that can meet your load rate requirements. For example: InfiniBand or 10Gbit Ethernet will provide the optimal loading rates. 1Gbit Ethernet will limit load rates to 360 GB per hour or less.
I/O	Bytes per hour for writes.		For writing backups to disk, 4 TB per hour write speeds are optimal. For example: For drives that can write 50 MB/sec, you will want at least 24 drives, plus more for mirroring or parity. For I/O capacity, take into account all of the I/O happening on the loading server. If the Loading server has other I/O traffic in addition to data loads, such as receiving data files from an ETL server, the I/O requirements will increase.
CPU	Number of sockets.		Receiving and storing backup files is not a CPU-intensive application. As a minimum requirement, we recommend using a recently-manufactured 2-socket server.
RAM	GB of memory that allows Windows to cache files during loads.		Receiving and storing backup files requires very little RAM on the Loading server. To determine the RAM requirements, refer to your Windows Server installation and any 3rd party application requirements. We recommend a minimum of 32 GB if you do not have requirements from other sources.

When you are finished determining your capacity requirements, return to the Acquire and Configure a Loading Server topic to plan your purchase.

See Also

Backup and loading hardware