Exploiting Intel Optane SSD for Microsoft SQL Server

Abstract

New NVM-based devices provide unparalleled performance (i.e., significantly reduced latency) than Flash-based SSDs. In this paper, we look into exploiting an NVM-based block device -- the Intel Optane SSD -- as a caching layer for Microsoft SQL Server. We reveal that naive usage of Optane SSD can result in up to 23% higher query response time than Flash SSD. We explain the issues of simple caching by analyzing the I/O characteristics of Intel Optane SSD. To exploit Optane SSD as a caching layer, we propose an Optane SSD-aware caching strategy including an optimized cache replacement policy and a cache access filter.