{"id":49240,"date":"2023-03-09T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-03-09T19:00:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2024-02-08T12:19:42","modified_gmt":"2024-02-08T20:19:42","slug":"sql-server-2022-intel-quickassist-technology-overview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/sql-server\/blog\/2023\/03\/09\/sql-server-2022-intel-quickassist-technology-overview\/","title":{"rendered":"SQL Server 2022: Intel\u00ae QuickAssist Technology overview"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Part of the <\/em>SQL Server 2022 blog series<\/em><\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition, backup compression<\/a> was introduced adding WITH COMPRESSION<\/a><\/code> as an option in the T-SQL backup command. SQL Server backup compression provides the compressed backup option for all streaming SQL Server backup types\u2014full, differential, and transaction log. Using the metadata in the backup file header, the RESTORE<\/a> command decompresses compressed backup files. Compressing backup data benefits customers in two ways: first, the backup files will consume less storage, and second, since there are fewer bytes being transferred, the backups run faster than uncompressed backups.
 
The default configuration in SQL Server is to not compress backups, but many users change this default globally using
sp_configure<\/code><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While customers use the current compression standard, the challenge many customers have with the current compression implementation is that the compression ratios are frequently too low to justify the additional compute overhead required to compress the backup files.
 
Additionally, customers cannot offload the compute overhead of the compression task. Many customers in high-volume online transaction processing (OLTP) environments put their business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) strategy at risk by delaying their regular backup schedules in order to remain operational for customer workloads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Intel\u00ae QuickAssist (Intel QAT) technology<\/a> in SQL Server 2022, solves these challenges by providing hardware acceleration and CPU offload capabilities for enhanced compression and decompression functions. This feature is designed to give tangible improvements both in terms of reduced CPU usage and backup completion times, as well as a reduction in storage consumption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The interface for Intel\u00ae<\/sup> QAT<\/a> devices uses a software library called QATzip<\/a> where the QATzip API maintains a built-in software fallback mechanism. This fallback mechanism allows administrators to hot-add\/remove devices, better resist hardware failure scenarios, and provide software-based compression where needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The SQL Server 2022 feature provides integrated compression\/decompression capabilities by using the QATzip library<\/a> and the associated Intel\u00ae<\/sup> Intelligent Storage Acceleration Library<\/a> (ISA-L). Intel\u00ae<\/sup> ISA-L is installed alongside QATzip where the presence and enablement of both the QATzip and Intel\u00ae<\/sup> ISA-L assemblies is a prerequisite for enabling instance-level server configuration for Intel\u00ae<\/sup> QAT hardware acceleration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

QATzip currently supports offloading backups to hardware devices, either through a peripheral component interconnect express (PCIe) adapter or as part of the host server chipset, and also supplying a software-based compression capability that can be used if there isn\u2019t hardware available.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The SQL Server 2022 server-scope T-SQL syntax extends the current BACKUP DATABASE command to make it easy for database administrators to choose the desired algorithm to compress backups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Additionally, the sp_configure configuration option is available to adjust backup compression defaults while introducing a new dynamic management view in order to query the configuration state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The implementation of this feature surfaces appropriate error log and informational messaging to troubleshoot the Intel\u00ae<\/sup> QAT configuration as well as being able to track the benefits of the Intel\u00ae<\/sup> QAT compression feature over time by surfacing the compression algorithm history in the msdb database.<\/p>\n\n\n

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SQL Server 2022<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t
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Learn about the new features on security, platform, management, and more.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t