Virtual Machines

  • Comments posted to this topic are about the item Virtual Machines

  • Nice and easy. Good start of the week.

    Thanks for sharing

  • Nice question, thanks.

    Need an answer? No, you need a question
    My blog at https://sqlkover.com.
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  • Nice start for a Monday - out of interest what are people's thoughts on running MSSQL on a Virtual Machine?

    I've met a lot of resistance to the idea and haven't found a decent argument either way yet.

  • Hello and have a nice week.

    I think the way the question was phrased is a bit misleading. Anything can be shared should the hypervisor allow it, but in typical scenarios, only the cpu and memory are shared.

    VMs can be spread across disks and usually not all resources such as printers and other devices are shared.

    Anyway, have a nice day and a good week.

  • robertjtjones (8/18/2014)


    out of interest what are people's thoughts on running MSSQL on a Virtual Machine?

    In my experience, it's that usual SQL answer to everything - "it depends". At a very high level IMO it's a performance vs convenience tradeoff. The best environment set I've worked with had cloud for dev (spin up and spin down on demand), VMs for test (semi-permanent but easy to reset), & tin for pre-prod and prod.

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  • Oh dear! "all Hardware"???

    Soundcard? Joystick? USB devices?

    Or am I answering the wrong question?

    See this MSDN library page.

    Or am I just a couple of years out of date?

    Tom

  • robertjtjones (8/18/2014)


    Nice start for a Monday - out of interest what are people's thoughts on running MSSQL on a Virtual Machine?

    I've met a lot of resistance to the idea and haven't found a decent argument either way yet.

    We have production servers of SQL on VM and it works normally without any issues as if it was on a dedicated real server. DB size is near to half-TB and such DBs we have more than 300. Some times I get a chance to talk to those people(DBAs & ITs) who are maintaining this, and they say... its easy to maintain.

    And personally, I run all the sql servers versions on my laptop in VM (one VM one sql server, starting from sql 6.5.. and on host I have sql 2012 dev edition)

    ww; Raghu
    --
    The first and the hardest SQL statement I have wrote- "select * from customers" - and I was happy and felt smart.

  • kostaskopelli (8/18/2014)


    VMs can be spread across disks and usually not all resources such as printers and other devices are shared.

    .

    In generally speaking, if you use VirtualBox, each VM has it respective setting, it also has a USB (tab) where you can enable the USB controller - which allows you to access the PHDs/E-HDDs connected to the host in the VM, so if you have a printer connected to USB all drivers are installed and configured and properly working in the host, you can install the same drivers in the VM and enable the USB controller and access the printer for printing from inside VM.

    hmm "other devices" like? (examples) (I can access Bluetooth dongle, pen drives, my internet 3G data card, yea printer... ) let us know if you tried anything in specific and it failed, so we all know.

    thank you.:-)

    ww; Raghu
    --
    The first and the hardest SQL statement I have wrote- "select * from customers" - and I was happy and felt smart.

  • TomThomson (8/18/2014)


    Oh dear! "all Hardware"???

    Soundcard? Joystick? USB devices?

    Or am I answering the wrong question?

    See this MSDN library page.

    Or am I just a couple of years out of date?

    Yeah, that's one that I didn't like either.

    Also, just because it can be shared doesn't mean that it should be shared. The answer "all hardware" to me is saying that all storage should be shared between VMs. Sure, it could be shared. But that usually spells performance problems. Just because something "can" be shared doesn't mean that it "is" or should be shared.

    Jason...AKA CirqueDeSQLeil
    _______________________________________________
    I have given a name to my pain...MCM SQL Server, MVP
    SQL RNNR
    Posting Performance Based Questions - Gail Shaw[/url]
    Learn Extended Events

  • SQLRNNR (8/18/2014)


    Yeah, that's one that I didn't like either.

    Also, just because it can be shared doesn't mean that it should be shared. The answer "all hardware" to me is saying that all storage should be shared between VMs. Sure, it could be shared. But that usually spells performance problems. Just because something "can" be shared doesn't mean that it "is" or should be shared.

    +1

    I took a gamble that "are" really meant "can be" and bingo!

  • TomThomson (8/18/2014)


    Oh dear! "all Hardware"???

    Soundcard? Joystick? USB devices?

    Or am I answering the wrong question?

    See this MSDN library page.

    Or am I just a couple of years out of date?

    It depends on your hypervisor, but yes, all hardware can be shared.

  • SQLRNNR (8/18/2014)


    TomThomson (8/18/2014)


    Oh dear! "all Hardware"???

    Soundcard? Joystick? USB devices?

    Or am I answering the wrong question?

    See this MSDN library page.

    Or am I just a couple of years out of date?

    Yeah, that's one that I didn't like either.

    Also, just because it can be shared doesn't mean that it should be shared. The answer "all hardware" to me is saying that all storage should be shared between VMs. Sure, it could be shared. But that usually spells performance problems. Just because something "can" be shared doesn't mean that it "is" or should be shared.

    The one good thing about VT is - it can lock the specific hardware when in extreme use by any one VM and it releases it when that hardware goes in the idle mode. I guess it has some kind of intelligent hardware resource pooling mechanism which makes them run smoother. One think I came across is- say you have to 2 VMs running on same host, you connect one pen drive and try to access this PD from one VM, try to copy a .mdf file which is more than 50GB to the PD, at this point this PD is in use with that VM and it is needed until the file is copied, now try to access this same pen drive from another running VM, you can open the PD in the windows explorer to see its content, but when you try to copy from it or copy to it, it gives permission denied error in the balloon-tip. This is really good (to my knowledge) where such checks are made. I personally feel great about in VT that it allows all hardware to share. Now I am accumulating budget to have one machine built where I can run 5-6 VMs in parallel.

    Yea. like SQLRNNR said, hardware sharing is an choice and it can be enabled/disabled as we needed, not that all are compulsory selection.

    ww; Raghu
    --
    The first and the hardest SQL statement I have wrote- "select * from customers" - and I was happy and felt smart.

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