MSSQL database optimization for a leading financial institution in Ireland
The collaboration focused on driving performance improvements and cost efficiencies through Intel’s cloud-optimized solutions, without requiring immediate hardware investments.
Overview
A major financial institution partnered with HCLTech to address performance challenges in its MSSQL database environment.
The collaboration focused on driving performance improvements and cost efficiencies through Intel’s cloud-optimized solutions, without requiring immediate hardware investments.
The Challenge
The client faced ongoing issues related to aging infrastructure and MSSQL performance, which were impacting business-critical workloads. Their key concerns included:
- Performance bottlenecks: MSSQL databases were underperforming due to outdated infrastructure
- High TCO: The client wanted to enhance performance without incurring large-scale hardware upgrade costs
- Manual optimization: The absence of automation made performance tuning time-consuming and inconsistent
- Scalability concerns: Increasing operational demands made it challenging to maintain consistent database performance
The Objective
The partnership aimed to:
- Improve MSSQL database performance without additional hardware investment
- Reduce overall infrastructure costs through efficient tuning and workload segmentation
- Leverage Intel’s optimization tools to enhance CPU utilization and IOPS
- Provide strategic recommendations for future scalability and cloud adoption
The Solution
HCLTech implemented a multi-step strategy focused on optimization and long-term value creation:
- Workload segmentation: A detailed assessment was conducted to segment MSSQL workloads based on intensity, resource utilization and performance requirements. This allowed targeted tuning across workload categories
- Intel optimized cloud recipes: Preconfigured templates tailored for MSSQL optimization were deployed into the client's infrastructure. These cloud recipes provided performance improvements through software-level configuration changes, eliminating the need for immediate hardware upgrades
- Performance benchmarking: Benchmarked key performance indicators—such as transactions per minute (TPM) and new orders per minute (NOPM)—to validate the impact of the optimizations
- Recommendations for further optimization: Provided forward-looking suggestions including:
- Increasing IOPS thresholds for high-performance workloads
- Considering migration to Intel® Xeon® 5th Gen EMR (64 cores/socket)
- Evaluating Intel-optimized cloud recipes for MSSQL on Cloud Database/RDS
The Impact
- Performance improvement: The client achieved up to 17% increase in MSSQL performance without any hardware upgrades. Optimized CPU usage and improved IOPS contributed to higher system responsiveness and stability
- Cost savings: The client avoided near-term capital expenditure by using Intel’s optimization recipes, achieving better performance within their existing infrastructure footprint
- Strategic alignment and future readiness: Encouraged by the results, the client extended its collaboration with Intel for ongoing performance optimization and planning for future migration to cloud-native architectures
