Microsoft Azure deployment

This article outlines the virtual machine requirements, including memory and data storage, for deploying the Delphix Engine on the Azure Public Cloud and Government Cloud. Once the requirements listed on this page are reviewed, refer to the next articles on Azure deployment:

Choose your storage model before you size and attach disks:

  • Block storage engine: use Azure managed disks as your primary data storage and continue with the requirements in this topic.

  • Elastic Data engine (object storage): complete object storage configuration during Initial setup and use Azure object storage setup for provider-specific fields and permissions.

  • Existing block storage engine: to convert an already configured engine to Elastic Data, use In-place block-to-object storage migration.

Delphix disk storage capabilities remain seamlessly operable. There are no additional limitations to your storage, unless otherwise imposed by the [respective] Hypervisor or Cloud environment.
Delphix does not support migrating, copying, or converting Delphix virtual machine images between different virtualization platforms or cloud environments (for example, VMware to Hyper‑V, VMware to KVM, or on‑premises hypervisors to public cloud platforms).

Deployments must use the Delphix image and deployment method provided for the target platform.

Instance types

Requirements

Notes

Instance families: The minimum requirements are listed below:

  • 8vCPUs minimum

  • 64GB RAM minimum (128GB recommended)

  • Network Bandwidth: 10Gbps min (~25Gbps recommended) 

  • Azure Accelerated Networking

  • Processors: Intel or AMD (No ARM)

  • Storage

    • SSD (No HDD or NVMe)

 

Recommended instance families:

  • Dsv2-series

  • Dsv3-series

  • Esv3-series

  • Esv4-series

  • Esv5-series

  • Larger instance types provide more CPU, which can prevent resource shortfalls under high I/O throughput conditions.

  • Larger instances also provide more memory, which the Delphix Engine uses to cache database blocks. More memory will provide better read performance.

  • Delphix Elastic Data Engines (engines backed by blob storage) will need more bandwidth than traditional engines (backed by block storage) because the blob bucket used to store data is accessed over a network pipe that is shared with other engines activity.

  • Information on Azure instances

  • Create a Delphix Engine on Azure with Azure Compute Gallery for V6 instance families.

Network configuration

The use of Azure Accelerated Networking is supported for Delphix Engines and is recommended to maximize network performance. Accelerated Networking provides more bandwidth with more consistent and lower network latencies.

Requirements

Notes

Azure virtual network (VNet)

The Delphix Engine must have <= 1 ms of latency to the Target and Staging environments. Longer latencies are permitted between the Delphix Engine and Source environments, but may impact Snapsync timings. VNET peering may be used, as long as latency requirements are met. For very low latency requirements, consider Proximity Placement Groups for Delphix Engine, Target, and Staging.

Network security group (NSG)

The security group must be modified that allows access to all networking ports used by the Delphix Engine and the various source/target platforms. See General network and connectivity requirements for information about specific port configurations. See Network performance configuration options for information about network performance tuning.

Storage configuration

Cloud virtual machines have throughput and IOPS limits that can constrain storage performance. Your Delphix Continuous Data Engine can place a high load on attached storage, and increased I/O latency can affect provisioning, refresh, SnapSync, replication, and VDB performance.

When you troubleshoot storage-related performance issues, check your cloud disk metrics for throughput and IOPS utilization and configure alerts when possible. For Azure metrics, read Storage I/O Utilization Metrics. For more information, read KBA11254.

Requirements

Notes

General Storage Configuration

  • Delphix recommends using storage disks that in sum, have enough storage and IOPS/throughput for your data and performance requirements. Planning ahead for the use of multiple storage disks for the Delphix File System (DxFS) is recommended as it will facilitate growing and shrinking DxFS more easily in the future should your storage needs change. If using multiple storage disks for DxFS, Delphix recommends using equally sized storage disks. Please consult your cloud provider’s storage best practices for additional recommendations.

  • Allocate initial storage equal to the size of the physical source databases. For high redo rates and/or high DB change rates, allocate an additional 10-20% storage.

  • Add storage when storage capacity approaches 30% free.

  • Maximize Delphix Engine RAM for a larger system cache to service reads.

  • When adding additional disks to the block storage pool, storage device initialization will not occur since it is not required on this cloud.

  • See  Delphix storage migration.

Azure disks

The following Azure disk types are supported. Note, premium SSDs or higher performing disks are recommended:

  • Standard SSD

  • Premium SSD

  • Premium SSD v2

  • Ultra Disks

For disk type specifications, see Azure managed disk types

  • Cache setting: For Data disks, ReadWrite. For Elastic Data cache disks, NONE.

  • I/O requests of up to 256 kilobytes (KB) are counted as a single I/O operation (IOP) for provisioned IOPS volumes.

  • IOPS vary based on storage size with a maximum of 20,000 IOPS.

  • For Delphix Elastic Data engines (engines backed by object storage), read the section Delphix Elastic Data Engines (Engines backed by object storage) in Initial setup.

Extensions

Azure VM Extensions are not currently supported.