DeWayne_McCallie (12/19/2013)
Why consolidate when you can virtualize and license SQL at the Host level?
That's a form of consolidation, multiple physical machines being consolidated into multiple virtual machines on a smaller number of hosts. You still need to do all the baselining, all the analysis, all the testing.
Part of a consolidation project would be to decide whether the consolidation is into multiple databases on an instance, multiple instances on a server or multiple VMs on a host or some combination thereof.
Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability