InstantForum.NET v2.9.0SQLServerCentralhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/notifications@sqlservercentral.comSun, 19 May 2013 00:58:59 GMT20http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic1439810-1454-1.aspxHi all, Is Dill through and slice and dice are same? Are any one please explain what is drill through and slice and dice.Am really confuse with these two terms.Thanks,AbdulMon, 08 Apr 2013 07:17:47 GMTbaseehkhanhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic1384972-1454-1.aspxI was told that one can not expect reliable results using Task Manager inside a VM (Guest). If that is the case, how do you determine CPU and available RAM? (For example on one sql server, there was 8GB total RAM, 4GB used by SQL, 3GB by cache, other odds and ends and 0 bytes free RAM! Yet the server seems to perform well. Baffling)TIA,BarkindogP.S. In one article the author proposed measuring CPU and RAM usage by involving many specialized Hyper-V counters abd PerfMon....... Maybe accurate but is there a more [u]practical [/u]way of determining CPU and RAM usage?Wed, 14 Nov 2012 21:26:05 GMTBarkingdoghttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic1380036-1454-1.aspxTo what extent can performance be isolated on the same VM for different SQL Server servers? So if I have a SQL server called Quantum and one called Particle, if one is extremely spiking, will the other necessarily be affected?Thanks for your time.Mark[Edit for English]Thu, 01 Nov 2012 14:43:06 GMTmtillman-921105http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic1037690-1454-1.aspxHi all,I apologize in advance for this is gonna be a long post but I'd rather give too much info than not enough.Our tech departments wants to reduce our hardware and re-use some for other tasks. One of the machines they'd like to take is our SQL Server which is quite powerful, more than needed actually.So I have to decide between sticking to that physical machine or virtualizing our SQL Server and frankly, I don't know if I like the idea or not. I'm the first one to advocate virtualization when it comes to terminal servers or application servers but I don't know if it's such a good idea with servers doing lots of disk I/O like SQL Server.This is about SQL 2005 Standard Edition SP3 currently running on Windows 2003, both 64 bit.The current machine is a SuperMicro server with two quad-core CPU's, 32 Gigs of RAM and a RAID controller. We have a 450 GB SAS Drive where we keep the databases and a 1 TB WD Caviar Black Sata II drive for the Transaction Logs. Both drives are mirrored.We use Red Gate's SQL Backup with two full backups a day, one differential backup at noon and transaction log backups every 2 hours. These backups are stored on the 1 TB Drive (same as our T-Logs) and also copied to a another drive with Red Gate's network copy feature.We run all four SQL Services (SSDS, SSIS, SSRS, SSAS) on that machine and use them all.SSDS: We have 30 databases ranging from a few hundred KB's to over 28 GB's. The 28 GB one supports our MRP systems and all the operations associated with running our company. SSIS/SSAS: We really don't use it much, I have just a couple of packages which run twice a day to generate/update an OLAP cube that is accessed by about 15 people a few times a day each.SSRS: We don't have many reports on the server but they are linked to our live databases and they are critical to our normal operations. They give our people the information they need to do their job [b]when[/b] they need it. I'd say it's running reports around a 100 times a day.Now back to our databases. Our MRP system comes from a 3rd party, it's programmed in C# .NET and relies heavily on stored procedures, user functions and database triggers. The problem is that it is all very badly coded and uses cursors like you wouldn't believe. It has cursors in SP's calling SP's that have cursors calling SP's that also have cursors. It has SP's with cursors calling themselves inside the cursor loops with different parameters. It has nested cursors and even cursors and nested cursors in triggers :sick:. Needless to say, the whole thing looks like a bad joke and is slow as hell.And to add to that, the .NET app works with huge datasets which are populated by these "cursored" SP's. And to add even more, most of it (if not all of it) runs inside transactions. Yes.......in case you're wondering, we do face problems of transactions running for minutes and locking up the entire tables and kicking people out. Some of our users do wonder why they are chosen as victims of something so often :w00t:. I guess that gives a good idea of what can be going on in the transaction logs.I think that pretty much covers our environment so back to virtualization now, here's what's been proposed to me by our tech department. They want to convert this powerful machine into a Hyper-V server. I'll spare you the details on how they wish to proceed but down the lines it comes to converting the current physical machine into a virtual machine on a Hyper-V server hosted on Windows 2008 R2 and then upgrade the Windows 2003 OS of the virtual machine to Windows 2008 R2.Here are the things that I'm concerned about.Memory speed: A 30 GB database running cursors and generating datasets all day long probably uses memory a lot. Will a virtual SQL Server experience slow memory or is it gonna be as fast as when it runs on the physical machine ?Transaction logs: That bothers me a lot actually. Is it conceivable to run a 30 GB database with a 20 GB transaction log on virtual disk when the amount of I/O that all these transactions and cursors are generating ?Is it a really bad idea to virtualize this ? Are there any other things I should consider ?And we do virtualize it, is converting the physical machine to virtual and upgrading the OS a good idea ? Are we gonna run into all kinds of problems ? Should we create a virtual machine from scratch and re-install all the SQL services and databases ?I'm one of those people who ended in charge because there was nobody else and although I think I'm doing a good job with our server, this kind of stuff really is beyond me level of knowledge and I really don't have the expertise to make that kind of decision......but I have to make it anyway so I will be very grateful for any help I can get on this.Tue, 21 Dec 2010 06:58:18 GMTGagnehttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic1248411-1454-1.aspxTo preface this question, I should give a quick overview of my current situation. I have recently taken over the DBA position in place of our previous DBA/Lead Developer (bad idea that everyone knows now). The current setup that I've walked in to is roughly 6 virtual SQL servers spread between three different Dell physical servers. The physical servers each contain a handful of virtual servers, most of which are low impact application servers. The virtual SQL servers are primarily SQL 2008 (half are R2; the others are currently just 2008, with a single 2005 box currently being removed.) Each virtual server that SQL is installed on is completely dedicated to SQL -- there are no other applications installed, just what is required for SQL to operate. However, with each virtual server our previous DBA asked to four virtual drives setup -- primary for OS, 2nd for data files, 3rd for log files and 4th for tempdb. This brings me to my current situation and question I'd like to ask the experienced minds here. I understand the benefits behind mapping a specific SQL data source (data files, tempdb, trans logs) to their own physical hard drive, in an ideal environment. However, in our environment with each physical server that houses a virtual SQL server (or two), it doesn't seem that this would be a benefit. And just to clarify, currently there are no major performance bottlenecks that we have experienced. The reason for such a large variety of virtual SQL servers is due to the large variety of in-house custom programs, 3rd party programs related to my agency, SharePoint ECM and other various applications -- at least that is why they set things up this way. 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 am hoping and planning to learn more about the logistics and best practices of using VM's for SQL server, but I was hoping to get your educated opinions on it based on what I've said above.Thanks in advance,Tue, 07 Feb 2012 12:07:37 GMTpharrellhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic1290672-1454-1.aspxAnyone heard that vmware snapshots can cause database corruption on SQL Server databases? The VMware is ESX 4 running Windows 2008 R2, and SQL Server 2008 (and R2)I hadn't heard this before, but someone asked me about it. My "google research" found 5-year old posts that indicate this, but recent posts seem to say it's fine.Thoughts or opinions?Thanks,CindyThu, 26 Apr 2012 07:12:57 GMTCavyPrincesshttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic1220088-1454-1.aspxHi, Apologies if this has been asked before (I've had a search in the forums and cannot find a topic relating to this).I am looking to start working with virtual machines on our development workstations, they will be used for day to day development and possibly for checking upgrade issues from 2005 to 2008 R2.My question is what are the licencing rules relating to installing windows and SQL Server on the virtual machines? I don't want to push this as a solution only to find out the cost of providing it would be too great.Also any tips from anyone already working this way would be greatly appreciated :-)Mon, 12 Dec 2011 04:00:33 GMTscottymkhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic734794-1454-1.aspxWith virtualization become more and more popular the first decision is which virtual software solution do I build it on?The employer I work with has chosen VMware Enterprise solution. However what I have heard it does not support a cluster environment in the current version yet. I have no working experience with Hyper-V so I cannot say what it can and cannot do.Sun, 14 Jun 2009 23:21:42 GMTShawn Meltonhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic1152193-1454-1.aspxHello,I'm a sysadmin and our DBA has recently left. We were in the midst of designing a virtualized environment for the development team. We have 3 servers that we intend to use for QA, Staging and Development. My question is, money aside, what is the best way to configure these servers? We have both 2005 and 2008 SQL databases. Let's say we had 6 different databases to account for (4 on 2005 and 2 on 2008). Should I create one 2005 VM and one 2008 VM and place all the databases accordingly? Or should I create a VM for each database?I feel like the latter would be the choice for best performance (also more expensive from a licensing perspective) since you can appropriately allocate the resources to specific databases.Mon, 01 Aug 2011 15:32:49 GMTnocode99http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic987354-1454-1.aspxI'm looking to see if any one here has some advise about this topic. We have several SQL instances as mentioned in the topic and we'd like to create one SQL environment on the virtual server.I'm thinking it's not necessary to separate the drives as you would on a hardware configuration. That said, I still think it makes sense to have the data on and log file an different virtual disks from the Operating system.I'm curious about the migration to 2008. I believe we can follow the same path as this KB, but wondered if someone here has a recommendationhttp://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb677622.aspxThank you for your time,Regards,PNThu, 16 Sep 2010 09:17:55 GMTphillipnhttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic983020-1454-1.aspxHi Guys,I 've installed, reinstalled SCVMM Admin Console.. But i am getting this error every time. Unable to connect to the Virtual Machine Manager server localhost. The Virtual Machine Manager service on that server did not respond.Verify that Virtual Machine Manager has been installed on the server and that the Virtual Machine Manager service is running. Then try to connect again. If the problem persists, restart the Virtual Machine Manager service.ID: 1602Does anyone know why this is happening?Many thanks in Advance.Thu, 09 Sep 2010 06:04:01 GMTss-457805http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic946154-1454-1.aspxWe have a VCC server witch just updated from 3.5 to 4. Before that VCC database became larger than 4Go so we installed Entreprise edition instead of Express edition.The recovery mode of database is SIMPLE and Log file of this database take maximum size allowed (500 Mo at beginning, 4 Go after)A perfstat(logspace) give 99% of free space on log file so we reduce it with a shrink operation.Log file grow from 1Mo to 4Go in less than 1 hour so, at the moment, we make a shrinkfile every 30 minutes to reduce logfile.Is somebody have a idea of wath the problem, I will be very happy !;-)frederic.jofes@fr.ibm.comThu, 01 Jul 2010 07:10:31 GMTFrédéric JOFEShttp://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic880061-1454-1.aspxIf you think this is a good (or bad) idea, please vote on Connect using [url]https://connect.microsoft.com/WindowsServerFeedback/feedback/details/540864/allow-rdp-connection-from-hyper-v-manager[/url]Many times when connecting to a Guest from Hyper-V manager it is convenient to have the full feature set of a RDP connection instead of the restricted feature set of a Virtual Machine Connection.The Hyper-V Manager provides a useful hub for managing Guests, but currently it is necessary to leave this tool and go elseware in order to get a full-feature RDP connection. It would save time if it was possible to open a RDP connection direct from Hyper-V Manager.The Connect option in Hyper-V Manager option should show both VM Connection and RDP Connection options. It should be possible to set which option will be the default connection method. Wed, 10 Mar 2010 03:46:36 GMTEdVassie