July 27, 2009 at 5:23 pm
Comments posted to this topic are about the item Virtualization Hints
July 28, 2009 at 8:29 am
I agree about lightly loaded servers would be a good candiadate for virtualisation but I think I would first move to having more than one instance on a server first.
July 28, 2009 at 9:09 am
The biggest use we have for virtual servers are dev and qa environments. But another benefit is any pet project for one of the business folks above us which requires a sql server instance (express or otherwise) on the backend and few resources. But for anything destined for a heavy production environment, physical servers for both the stage and production instances.
Gaby________________________________________________________________"In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not." - Albert Einstein
July 28, 2009 at 10:11 am
I recently had a problem because of a virtual server. The server was running really, really slowly, and nothing seemed to be causing it, so far as I could see. Turned out that the actual hardware was being slammed by too many I/O requests from other VMs on it, which was affecting the database server, but not visible from it.
The overall load hadn't gotten to the point where automatic alerts would be sent to the sys admins, and even if they had been sent, they wouldn't have come to me.
That kind of thing makes for a whole new level of answers to the common interview questions about how to handle a slow database server.
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July 28, 2009 at 12:01 pm
For development and QA, virtual servers work great. Here are the specs of one I put together that is running a virtual database server, web server, three XP systems, one Vista system, and I even threw on Win95 and yes, DOS 6.22 with Windows For Workgroups 3.11 just for the hell of it!
ABIT Fatal1ty F-I90HD Micro ATX Intel Motherboard $106.99
Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 250GB 3.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive $69.99
Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 2.33GHz LGA 775 Processor $174.99
SAMSUNG 20X DVD±R DVD Burner Black SATA Model SH-S203B $29.99
Foxconn TLM041-CN300C-01 Black Computer Case $34.99
G.SKILL 8GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) $299.98
Grand Total: $716.93
We have since added a second hard drive and do have the capability of RAID.
I just run Microsoft Virtual Server 2005, which is free and works great for my needs.
July 29, 2009 at 1:59 am
We've got several virtual servers spread over various physical servers and one use is to replace old sql servers which are being gradually phased out e.g. the SQL2000 test server which we can't get rid of until the business decides whether to keep (migrate to 2005) or shelve the relevant applications.
Moving to a virtual server rather than a new instance made the process seamless as the server name remained unaltered so no connections needed modifying and I believe some developers don't even know it's a VM!
July 29, 2009 at 8:49 am
One thing I'd mention that came up with a friend yesterday. Be sure that your help desk, sys admins, etc. know where the VM exists on a physical host. Someone had a situation with a reboot where the VM didn't start, and help desk people didn't know where to look for the VM.
documentation matters here. I built an app for someone years ago to track physical servers, including location since there were over 1000 in the data center. Had to add a section to note VMs so personel could find them.
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