SQL Governor is software for capacity planning of medium to large-scale SQL Server environments to make data migrations smart, easy, and cost efficient.
SQL Governor’s unique capacity planning ability is based on an internationally patented software and methods, that analyzes the workload data of the SQL Server platform covering servers, instances, and databases whether your source or target platform resides on-premises (physical / virtualized hardware), virtual or public cloud such as Nutanix, Azure or AWS environments. Based on the analyzed data, the software calculates the optimized capacity plan and target architecture for the new platform. By following this plan, the Customer can achieve a more harmonized and compact SQL Server platform that is also easy to manage. The capacity planning in SQL Governor aims to generate considerable cost savings by decreasing the required server resources over the entire life cycle of the system.
With SQL Governor, it is possible to manage the planning of very large SQL Server platforms. SQL Governor can collect data simultaneously from all the servers without additional load on the servers. In addition, the solution considers the data security requirements of large data centers.
SQL Governor offers four different kinds of capacity planning methods to cover the different use case scenarios:
- SQL Server rightsizing
- SQL Server consolidation
- SQL Server instance level consolidation
- SQL Server database level consolidation
Thanks to these methods, you can do the capacity planning in as small pieces as you like, starting even from individual servers. Only with SQL Governor software you can mix and match these four capacity planning methods into a single solution and gain so significant savings on licensing and hardware costs – in addition to reducing the ecological footprint of the overall data platform.
SQL Server rightsizing
Right-sizing is done on a server-by-server basis.
Server level rightsizing is ideal for business critical and dedicated SQL Servers. Server level rightsizing is also a good method for “lift-and-shift” type of use cases, where just a certain individual standalone server or cluster needs to be renewed into a new platform. SQL Server rightsizing is also optimal for servers that contain some legacy SQL Server services installed, such as SSAS, SSIS and SSRS.
While consolidation will reduce the number of the target servers, in right-sizing the number of target servers will remain the same.
With this method, the SQL Server licensing and hardware cost savings are usually in the 20-30% ballpark when using the SQL Governor software for the right-sizing planning. Savings can be achieved due to the accuracy of the method acknowledging the trends, and because of the newer hardware generation.
Server consolidation
Server level consolidation can be done at once for 2 servers or more.
If you have too many old servers scattered all around, and you want to consolidate the many servers into fewer, more powerful target servers, server level consolidation is a good choice. In these cases, there may also be some loose capacity on the source servers. In server level consolidation you will end up running more instances on the same host, so it is very important to understand the usage profile of the monitoring data as a function of time.
SQL Server consolidation is optimal for servers that need to be dedicated on their own virtual machine and may contain some SQL Server services installed, such as SSAS, SSIS and SSRS.
The SQL Server licensing and hardware cost savings can easily reach 30-50% when the server level consolidation plan is done with SQL Governor software. This level of savings can be reached because of the accuracy of the method, acknowledging the trends and seasonality of the telemetry data, compact stacking of the servers, and newer hardware generation.
SQL Server instance level consolidation
The SQL Governor instance level consolidation planning can be done with any number of source servers, but the optimization potential gets much better when planning a greater number of servers at once.
This is the most complex method of capacity planning but is made easy with a high level of automation. It is also the most efficient in terms of gaining license and hardware cost savings.
SQL Server instance level consolidation can be used for SQL Server instances that can be freely mixed with each other into a consolidated schema of bigger, fewer target servers, and that do not contain any other services such as SSAS, SSIS or SSRS.
SQL Server licensing and hardware cost savings can reach even over 50% when using SQL Governor software for the instance level consolidation. That is thanks to the accuracy of our internationally patented method, compact re-stacking of the instances, acknowledging the trends and seasonality of the telemetry data, and the newer hardware generation.
SQL Server database level consolidation
The SQL Governor database level consolidation planning is semi-automated process and can be done with any number of source servers, but the optimization potential gets better when planning a greater number of servers at once, just as in the instance consolidation. In database consolidation, you can give a database a business priority and you will get an insight of the telemetry data workload type such as trend and nature of database CPU footprint on a source server.
Database level consolidation suits in migration scenarios such as when your SQL Servers have unbalanced workload in between the SQL Server instances, or when there is a need to categorize and rearrange the databases into a more harmonious and / or consolidated form.
SQL Server database level consolidation can be used for SQL Server databases that can be freely mixed with each other.
SQL Server licensing and hardware cost savings can reach even up to 30-50% when using SQL Governor software for the database level consolidation. That is because of accuracy of our internationally patented method, compact re-stacking of the databases, acknowledging the trends and seasonality of the telemetry data, and the newer hardware generation.
To learn more about these methods in-depth, I recommend you to read this series of blogposts: Advanced capacity planning techniques on data migration (sqlgovernor.com)
Jani K. Savolainen
CEO & Chairman,
SQL Governor
