October 9, 2008 at 5:27 am
Hi,
I don't know if it's the right category but our hardware supplier would like to virtualize all servers.
We have two SQL 2005 servers and I read somewhere that SQL and virtualisation is not a combination you would love to do.
Has anybody any pro's or con's ?
Many thanks
Jeffrey
JV
October 9, 2008 at 6:13 am
You will find lots of postings on this site about this subject, so search around a bit.
I have had good and bad experiences with it and at this point I will not virtualize a production SQL Server. It is great for development, but I prefer a production environment be 100% supported by the software vendor and the support for SQL Server in virtualized environments (other than Hyper-V) is somewhat questionable.
If you are on a high enough support tier with MS, will will support SQL Server on virtualized hardware if the virtualization software is from one of the approved vendors (which I think only includes one vendor at this point) and MS support has the right to tell you to change to physical hardware to resolve an issue if they suspect that the virtualization may be an issue.
Here are the details:
October 9, 2008 at 6:42 am
My experiences with virtualization haven't been terribly great either. To date, the technology I've seen all comes at a performance cost that most users don't want to pay. That said, our systems guys are planning on using virtual servers for some of the new systems we're building over the next several months. We'll see how it works out.
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt
Author of:
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SQL Server Query Performance Tuning
October 9, 2008 at 7:04 am
I've seen quite a few people virtualize with success, quite a few more with Grant's experience.
If you virtualize, and I like the idea, you can't use the same level of virtualization you use with other servers. Far fewer VMs per physical, possibly even 1:1 for SQL and you need very high speed IO paths. No VHDs on the local disk, you need good IO connectivity for the VMs. You cannot let them "float" either to other physicals.
My big reference case is Starz since I have friends there and they are trying to go 100% virtual. Not sure they'll get the big SQL Servers there, but they typically go 10:1 for most servers, floating as needed. For SQL, they are 4:1 and the other 3 are allowed to float if SQL needs more resources.
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