July 24, 2008 at 9:32 am
If VM is stated as a direction with no exceptions there will be problems. You have to enter into the entire process with the question what is a candidate for VM and what is not. Once answered all the tools for the environment come into play.
Love the ideas of downsizing or 'upsizing', if that is a word, using VM. That could be very interesting and save time etc.
Needs more thought on my part but this sounds better all the time. Oh yeah, we are already into VM and have instances for many of the development and productions processes already in place.
Miles...
Not all gray hairs are Dinosaurs!
July 24, 2008 at 9:34 am
Isn't SQL licensed by processor? Or maybe it used to be...
July 24, 2008 at 9:35 am
All of our production servers and SQL 2K5 Servers are running on ESX Servers with no problems so far (knock on wood). One benefit of the virtual environment is that I do not need to mess with clustering for instant failover, the VMWare will take care of that by seamlessly moving VM Servers between it's farm of physical servers as needed. I once saw an internal demo (not a vendor demo) that showed a streaming video and the VM server it was running from was migrated to a new physical server with no apparent loss in the video stream.
Pretty cool stuff 😎
Maybe not for everyone but worth looking into.
David
July 24, 2008 at 9:40 am
Charles Cherry (7/24/2008)
Isn't SQL licensed by processor? Or maybe it used to be...
There are two licensing schemes, unless they've changed it behind my back: per cpu, and per seat. You do the first when you have an internet-facing server with an unknown number of people accessing it, you use the second for in-house when you know or control the number of people accessing it.
I don't know how that changes when you virtualize. I tend to think that MS isn't going to leave money on the table and each virtual server will need its own licensing, but I haven't researched that yet as it is not my realm, I just have to trust the networking guys to get it right since they're the ones buying licenses.
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[font="Arial"]Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves or we know where we can find information upon it. --Samuel Johnson[/font]
July 24, 2008 at 9:56 am
My understanding of the licensing for SQL Server on VM's is that you pay for the CPU's used by the SQL Server instance on the VM regardless of the CPU's on the physical server the VM is currently running on.
The max CPU licensing you will need to purchase, though, is the max physical CPU's in the VM farm available to SQL Server. This is because the VM can float between servers. So once you purchase a CPU licenses for all the physical CPU's, you can create all the VM servers with SQL Server instances you want... well, only as many VM's as the physical servers can support.
David
July 24, 2008 at 10:12 am
Wayne,
I can't believe your licenses are bound to the hardware. I think that's a DOJ violation. Dell might not want you to move, but I've moved Windows licenses from Dell to HP servers before. I think your hardware guy is misinformed.
Great to see so many people using VMs. If anyone wants to write some articles, maybe a series on experiences or moving, especially testing and DR plans, please feel free to send to sjones at sqlservercentral.com. Or encourate your network guys to do it. Good exposure and we pay a bit.
If you've had bad experiences with VMs in the past, I'd look again. VM technology is maturing very quickly and changes in the last year make it so much different from the year before, which is more different than you could believe from the year before.
We installed some early VM Server stuff years ago, had issues, mainly because there was confusion about which servers could be rebooted, patching, restarting VMs, etc. We matured through GSX and ESX and those products were great. They get better every year.
I have heard that there are IO differences with VMs, even on the same storage paths, so you do want to test your system. VM does require a good investment, so it's a big cost the first year, but after that you should see savings. It's more complex, but that's a training issue. Get through that and you'll be OK.
Microsoft, and other vendors, are realizing that you continue to add more server instances, and customers are not happy paying additional licensing costs for hardware that they don't use. So Microsoft licenses the physical resources, allowing you multiple virtual resources with Enterprise edition. If you have Standard, you do end up licensing each virtual CPU. I'm not sure about Windows itself, and licensing is almost becoming a full time job for some people. However, if you buy 2 copies of Enterprise to run 12 VMs, that might be a good deal.
July 25, 2008 at 8:05 am
We did some pretty intensive benchmark testing and found that our test workload (which included insert/select/update statements as well as bulk inserts, dbcc checkdb, and backups/restores) which was run using Microsoft's OStress utility to simulate multiple users ran on average 64% longer in a virtualized environment than on identical physical servers.
Anybody else do any performance comparisons?
July 25, 2008 at 8:13 am
One of the issues with VM's is shared resources. For example, if my Database needs xxxxx cpu cycles, and someones iis box needs xxxxx cycles, and there are only xxxxx cycles to be had then who wins? Or do we both get less than we need?
On the flip side, if the decrease in performance can be tolerated, then the cost savings could make it worthwhile; less hardware, less support, etc.
July 25, 2008 at 8:19 am
Dude you are running IIS and SQL Server on the same box?
Oh dear, that can't be good. 😀
Hiding under a desk from SSIS Implemenation Work :crazy:
July 25, 2008 at 8:26 am
Nope... our prod boxes are not virtual, but the idea behind virtual servers is to have lots of virtual servers running on one box... IIS, SQL, File and Print, application, etc.
July 25, 2008 at 8:30 am
I have friends running production boxes as virtual servers, but they watch the loads for SQL Server. The SQL Servers don't float and share physical resources with lower use stuff.
Other VMs float across boxes with the ESX software. So if the virtual web server starts to need more resources, the print server might move to another physical box automatically.
July 25, 2008 at 8:35 am
Mark Horninger (7/25/2008)
Nope... our prod boxes are not virtual, but the idea behind virtual servers is to have lots of virtual servers running on one box... IIS, SQL, File and Print, application, etc.
I think your confused...that could be what virtualisation means.... but....
You wouldn't put IIS and SQL Server on the same physical hardware that's just asking for trouble.;)
Virtualisation for Databases is about reducing costs by
1. removing under utilised hardware
2. reducing licence requirements.
3. freeing up rack space.
4. better management of DR.
Its not about putting all the different server types together.
Ladies and Gentlemen your opinions please?
--Shaun
Hiding under a desk from SSIS Implemenation Work :crazy:
July 25, 2008 at 9:17 am
Shaun McGuile (7/25/2008)
You wouldn't put IIS and SQL Server on the same physical hardware that's just asking for trouble.;)
You can, I have, in fact I did it twice. I wouldn't normally, it was a special case: a small database of three tables and no more than 2-300 records between all three tables driving an ASP app to view election results.
Worked fine. But it was only up for about 5 hours, once the final results were in I made the pages static and shut down the SQL Server.
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[font="Arial"]Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves or we know where we can find information upon it. --Samuel Johnson[/font]
July 25, 2008 at 9:19 am
Ah so thats what happened if florida! 😉
I didn't say it can't be done. 😀
Hiding under a desk from SSIS Implemenation Work :crazy:
July 25, 2008 at 10:04 am
:hehe: Absolutely, as a rule, you probably don't want to have those running on the same server. But our standard answer here is, "It depends."
It just reported the election results, it didn't do any of the tallying or actual voting. I made VERY sure it was reliable!
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[font="Arial"]Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves or we know where we can find information upon it. --Samuel Johnson[/font]
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