As I am sure you heard, Microsoft recently announced the forthcoming version of SQL Server – SQL Server 2022 at their Microsoft Ignite event. For decades, Intel and Microsoft have partnered together to deliver breakthrough performance and scalability for SQL Server running on Intel architecture. Intel and Microsoft engineers partner together to validate, optimize and test every generation of SQL Server on the Intel platform. This collaboration results in SQL Server improvements when installed on the latest generation of Intel technology.
We are very excited to announce continued support and optimization for SQL Server 2022 on Intel hardware—and would like to specifically call attention to a new feature coming to SQL Server 2022: Intel® QuickAssist Technology (QAT).
Intel QuickAssist Technology (QAT) is a data compression technology that integrates hardware acceleration of compute-intensive workloads on Intel platforms. Intel QuickAssist Technology improves performance across applications, including symmetric encryption and authentication, asymmetric encryption, digital signatures, RSA, DH, and ECC, and lossless data compression.
3rd Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors with Intel QuickAssist Technology provide the following benefits to SQL Server 2022 customers:
- 2.3x faster back-up operations1: Microsoft and Intel collaborated to achieve faster back-up performance using Intel® QuickAssist Technology. With Intel QuickAssist Technology, downtime allocated for back-ups is easily cut in half so that database administrators and devops can get to production quicker.
- Faster business transactions: Intel QuickAssist Technology off-loads data compression on SQL Server bare-metal platforms or VMs, enabling faster OLTP operations and transactions while reducing the impact on the system’s transaction throughput. Intel QuickAssist Technology empowers data insights by allowing faster data compression resulting in minimal impact to your workloads while existing data is safeguarded and compressed.
Database Backup Improvements for SQL Server 2022 with Intel QuickAssist Technology
Microsoft and Intel co-engineering significantly improves user experience, achieving the following through Intel® QuickAssist Technology when compression is enabled in SQL Server:
Data professionals are constantly challenged with increased transaction frequency which leads to challenges of fast data ingestion, instant backup, security provisioning, and performance at scale. Microsoft SQL Server on Intel 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors provides a way to address these challenges and unlock the true value of your data.
To learn more:
Intel® QuickAssist Technology (Intel® QAT) Improves Data Center...
Intel® QuickAssist Technology | 01.org
Written by Hamesh Patel, Principal Engineer, System Software Engineering Team, Intel.
Notices & Disclaimers
Performance varies by use, configuration and other factors. Learn more at www.Intel.com/PerformanceIndex.
Performance results are based on testing as of dates shown in configurations and may not reflect all publicly available updates. See backup for configuration details. No product or component can be absolutely secure.
Your costs and results may vary.
Intel technologies may require enabled hardware, software or service activation.
© Intel Corporation. Intel, the Intel logo, and other Intel marks are trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries. Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.
1 SOFTWARE BASELINE: Test by Intel as of 10/26/2021. 1-node, 2x Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8358 Processor on Wilson City (ref. platform), 32 cores with 1024 GB (16 slots/ 64GB/ 3200[3200]) total DDR4 memory, ucode 0xD000323, HT on, Turbo on, Windows Server 2019,10.0.17763.1999, [Hyper-V VM], 1x Intel X550, SQL Server 2022 CTP1.1 private test build, 525GB Database, Database Backup with Compression.
WITH INTEL® QUICKASSIST ADAPTER 8970 TECHNOLOGY: Test by Intel as of 10/26/2021. 1-node, 2x Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8358 Processor on Wilson City (ref. platform), 32 cores with 1024 GB (16 slots/ 64GB/ 3200[3200]) total DDR4 memory, ucode 0xD000323, HT on, Turbo on, with Intel® QuickAssist Adapter 8970, 1.70.16.4 driver version, Windows Server 2019,10.0.17763.1999, [Hyper-V VM], 1x Intel X550, SQL Server 2022 CTP1.1 private test build, 525GB Database, Database Backup with Compression.
WITH INTEL® Intelligent Storage Acceleration Library: Test by Intel as of 10/26/2021. 1-node, 2x Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8358 Processor on Wilson City (ref. platform), 32 cores with 1024 GB (16 slots/ 64GB/ 3200[3200]) total DDR4 memory, ucode 0xD000323, HT on, Turbo on, with Intel® Intelligent Storage Acceleration Library v2.30.0.0, Windows Server 2019,10.0.17763.1999, [Hyper-V VM], 1x Intel X550, SQL Server 2022 CTP1.1 private test build, 525GB Database, Database Backup with Compression. Results may vary.