Migrating 6.5, 2000, and 2005 to SQL 2008 in a Virtual server environment

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Migrating 6.5, 2000, and 2005 to SQL 2008 in a Virtual server environment

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phillipn

Posted Thursday, September 16, 2010 9:17 AM

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I'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 recommendation

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb677622.aspx

Thank you for your time,

Regards,

PN

Post #987354

SQLdevotee

Posted Thursday, March 03, 2011 7:02 AM

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We have just migrated our development and test environment to virtual. But we still follow the hardware configuration as how we did previously; OS and binaries are different from data and log, tempdb is totally separate and we also have backup drive separate.

Imagination is more important than knowledge-Albert Einstein

Post #1072516

Sqlchicken

Posted Thursday, June 16, 2011 1:21 PM

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When you virtualize you still want to follow best practices (i.e. data, log, backups and tempdb on separate drives). However, this is where understanding the abstraction of resources becomes critical to understand.

When you virtualize you can create a separate VMDK/VHD (read also: virtual disk) for each drive. The OS sees each one as new drive, you mount them and letter them so now you have your C, D, E, F, T drives. The problem comes in is if all of those VMDK/VHD files were cut from the same LUN, then you haven't gained anything since they're all going to be sharing IO which is bad. Also if that one LUN goes out then you lose everything, again, negating your perceived benefit.

In order to truly "do it right", each VMDK/VHD should be on separate LUNS and those LUNS shouldn't be shared with any other IO-intensive applications (such as Exchange). This is where you need to become REALLY good friends with your SAN admin and come up with something that works. Hope this helps!

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