Perry,

Thanks for the response (And yes - I do read your articles!)

The first question is the biggest point of contention. I don't personally feel we need a cluster - VM or physical - which is the main reason for my post. The applications don't fit my definition of requiring high-availability, but I have been requested by "others" to create a clustered solution on VM. If the battle is lost, the clustered solution will be a two node active/passive configuration.

In my discussions with the VMware team, we feel we could get almost the same availability by installing a stand-alone SQL Server instance on a VM. The VM should provide a high-level of availability without the complexity and excess hardware required for the clustered solution.

Therefore, I'm trying to determine if there is any loss of availibility not using the cluster and quantify. For example, if our single VM / single SQL Server solution provides 99%, does the cluster solution provide 99.999% and is the cost justified for what little gain there is.

I have another meeting with the VM team tomorrow. I want to get their average availability numbers on virtual and physical machines. I'll also mention the cavets you described. No doubt it will mean more to them than it does to me and I think he mentioned the "vMotion" one before.

Do virtual machines provide higher availability over physical machines or isn't the question this easy? In my opionion, this project needs "reasonable" availability - recovering in a couple of hours, not recovery in a couple of seconds. It is the availability target that is pushing for the original clustered solution on VM.

Thanks,

Cindy