Proof Point: Example Clustered Microsoft SQL Server Configuration on the HP ProLiant DL980

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Introduction
The 8-socket scalable HP ProLiant DL980 is an excellent fit for customers to handle their most demanding
Microsoft SQL workloads or to consolidate their Microsoft SQL environments.
This paper demonstrates an example HP ProLiant DL980 configuration in a clustered SQL environment. The
objective is to offer proof points illustrating that key pieces of the stack have been tested together on the
HP ProLiant DL980 to provide customers confidence and guidance when deploying a similar solution.
An important part of HP testing is to exercise a common software stack with our scalable HP ProLiant DL980
in a realistic customer scenario. This configuration runs Microsoft Windows Server and Microsoft SQL Server
on the HP ProLiant DL980, using high availability redundancy features such as clustering, multipath I/O and
NIC teaming. This paper covers the tested set of software, hardware, and firmware versions and settings
that HP used in this configuration.
Note that this is not a benchmarking configuration. The goal is not to push the highest levels of
performance but rather to validate that the whole solution stack runs together.
The logical configuration of the test case is shown in the following figure. This configuration has two 8-
socket HP ProLiant DL980s, clustered together with Microsoft (MS) Failover Clustering under Windows
Server 2008 R2. For redundancy, NIC teaming and multipath I/O are used in addition to MS Failover
Clustering.
Figure 1 Logical Configuration of Test Case