• Would it make any major performance impact to only have 1-2 virtual drives per SQL server to handle the various data/log/tempdb files vs the current setup? What do you all think?

    I will assume you are running from a SAN. So depending of your SAN and LUN configuration, that will depend.

    See... if you run on top of an automated tier system, it does not matter (performance wise). At hardware level, the SAN's software will be moving data from one tier to another one depending of usage.

    Now, admin side of view, it does matter. Even though we have an automated tier system at work, I still asked and cofigured my systems with several LUNs and a mount point for each LUN: one for data files, one for tempdb, one for LUN. This has a huge benefit in terms of administration as mdf, ldf won't be mixed so easier to run scripts, etc.

    The 2nd reason why it does matter and this is VMware side, is vMotion. It is my understanding that if you're having issues with a particular drive, you can vMotion the vmdk files underneath and migrate to a different LUN. That's transparent to the users and can be done live. So if you have mixed everything on same LUN and you are having issue with tempdb drive only, you won't be able to take advantage of that.

    So yes... setup logical drives on Windows as you usually do on a bare metal machine. Depending of your SAN and RAID layout, it may not improve performance but will help administration.