March 25, 2010 at 4:00 pm
Hello,
Our sql server environment is:
sql server 2005 Enterprise 32 bit version
Hardware:
4 quad processors
32 GB RAM
almost 2 TB of storage attached ( I do not have disk details )
The server has about 80 databases including ERP, financial system, databases for the websites and databases for our actual production facility that use all the database driven apps. Basically all out eggs are in one bucket. If something happens to the server, we are screwed and no one seems to have lost sleep over it except the dba of course.
Largest database is 200 GB and grows about 10-15 GB a month. Total data file size are about 450 GB and logs are 300 GBs.
With new merger etc, we are going to have at least 50% more load in next 4 months. Also, RTO has changed from one day to maximum 30 minutes in worse case. So, I have been trying to come up with new hardware requirement. I am in dilemma that many DBAs are facing now-a-days: Virtualize production server or not.
My concern is testing the I/O. Our qa and staging enviroments are virtualized but they do not have nearly the same resources as production server( CPU/RAM etc ). Also, we have no means to even generate the same kind of load even if the hardware would have been similar.
My manager's initiative is to virtulize all the servers in our facility. I have been very reluctant regarding virtualizing production server especially because if it doesn't work out as read in many stories, it won't be easy to go back to physical server.
However, now I am asked to focus on virtualizing production server. I am ok to go on DEDICATED virtual host for the database ( 64 bit OS and 64 bit sql server installtion, 64 or 96 GB RAM, same CPUs if not more and faster drives in SAN ).
Second option that I am comfortable with is: have a cluster here for high availability with log shipping going to the warm backup server in different city. Or even we can have realtime SAN replication going to different facility where I can attach the databases in case of disaster ( I think I can do that, pls correct me if I am wrong ).
We have vSphere 4 and it seems to have excellent DR strategy on paper. I have been told that we can replicate entire SAN to our DR center in different city and can bring the environment back online in matter of minutes. Good thing is that DBA will not be part of recovery and Bad part is also that DBA will not be part of the recovery. That puts me in a unknown and uncomfortable zone. The question I keep on asking is what am I gaining by virtualizing in this case if I am going to have a dedicated hardware for production sql server? is it ok to virtualize just to gain advantage of DR technology?
I have been reading that I/O management has improved a lot in the current Virtulization technology compared to what we have experienced 3-4 years back. Hardware needs to be purchased in either option: either dedicated host for sql server in virtual machine or server for physical installation as current server has local drive arrays and can not be connected to SAN.
I need your feedback on keeping physical servers and cluster them vs virtualize on a dedicated host..What would you do?
Thanks,
Nikki
March 26, 2010 at 9:48 am
If I had to make this decision, I would go with virtualization.
Once you virtualize the server, you will have a high redundancy level, you could create another virtual server and do a cluster. You could also increase the memory and hard disk space on the virtual server with minimum downtime. Your performance on the database server will improve
Maintenance on the physical servers that will host the virtual machines will always be a requirement, that being said you will need two physical servers to host your virtual machines to reduce the downtime when maintenance is in process or if the primary server goes down.
March 26, 2010 at 2:08 pm
Ultimately, before anything else, you have to make sure that the environment is supported my MSFT.
It used to be the case, that on VMWare, SQL was not support in production, this may be different now. Certainly Hyper-V is supported. If your not supported, nothing else really matters.
I don't know how current this is relative to the present policies:
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