VMWare Virtual SQL Server Administration

  • I need to find out what the concensus is on virtualizing SQL server.

    I know that VMWare reports the more processors that are utilized, the more the performance degrades vs the same server in a dedicated physical environment.

    With that in mind, I currently am of the opinion that Virtualized SQL instances are good for the following uses:

    1.) Isolated 3rd party databases which require SA privledges that cannot be accomodated on consolidated instances due to security issues.

    2.) Lightweight applications which don't require more than 2 dedicated processors on their accompanyment databases.

    3.) Instances that don't require SQL clustering or HA.

    Also, I don't beleive I would ever attempt to setup a clustered/HA type of environment with virutal machines.

    Does anyone have anything to add? Am I correct in my assumptions?

  • Right on, all the things you described sounds right.

    I run everything in vmware, if you have a very good set up regarding storage/com/vmware you are good to go.

    Off course you have to think twice before virtualizing "heavy databases", but today its not near impossible.

  • What you listed sounds reasonable. Here is the specs of one of my Production SQL servers that is running on a VMWare machine. It has 2 Hyperthreaded Cores so it is really 4 CPU's. I dont really consider this a lightweight SQL server though because of the memory usage and number of connections. It has 50GB of RAM. It has 6TB of hard disk space allocated to it, but they are Thin Provisioned. Hope this helps.

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