October 14, 2010 at 5:17 am
Hi guys, I have been asked to write up a proposal, pro and cons of taking our Current Sql installation to a virtual platform. From experience or do you have any resources online that I can review, or any "gotcha's" I should look out for.
The plan is to run two clustered Sql Server 2008 on Vmware, The server is not under extremely heavy load but requires High Availability.
October 14, 2010 at 9:00 am
you may want to look at: http://www.brentozar.com/
Under SQL Server articles he has some on virtualization. Also, if you search his blog I believe there are additional posts/videos on the topic.
October 14, 2010 at 9:11 am
The company that I am currently contracting with uses VM, it absolutely sucks when it comes to running SQL Server on it. Some of the databases are in the 5Tb range, and VM is useless for this. Even the small databases on other servers are dog slow.
That is something I wish they could un-invent. SQL Server does not take kindly to operating correctly.
Andrew SQLDBA
October 14, 2010 at 9:19 am
This was removed by the editor as SPAM
October 14, 2010 at 9:32 am
You need top notch storage for this to work, and then it will not work for heavily loaded SQL Servers.
I have a number of friends at sites, including one very large media company that serves real-time programming through satellite/cable. They have a number of VMs running SQL Server, but have mitigated things with
- No floating VMs
- dedicated HBAs for SQL Server
- Less VMs on that physical host as compared to most hosts
It can work, but it has to be well architected, and then I'm not sure you're gaining a lot of benefits. It does make it easy to bring up a 1x2 SQL Server (1 cpu, 4GB RAM) and then spin that to a 4x4 as load increases, but note that the 4x4 is not the same as a physical 4x4
October 14, 2010 at 9:35 am
Well designed virtual infrastructure (by this I mean well set up Virtual Server farms where the resources arent overallocated, running on well configured modern hardware) can be an excellent solution for SQL Server even in production scenarios. It offers a lot of pro's in terms of portability (VMotion rocks) and recoverability from hardware failures and can offer a good solution for crappy legacy databases where consolidation isn't a viable option (I've worked with vendors who literally said they'd withdraw support entirely if their application didn't have local admin & sa rights on the SQL Server).
Having said that, especially if you have SQL 2008 Ent edition, an individial database already exists within a virtual environment where you can allocate resources dynamically so you may get more bang for your buck through consolidating multiple servers into one cluster rather than running them within VM's.
October 14, 2010 at 12:42 pm
Are you guys seeing these issues with ESX server also? I would really like to go virtual but if we will have stability problems its not worth it. Thanks for all you help and input so far.
October 14, 2010 at 1:30 pm
Most of my friends run ESX. Haven't heard of any large Hyper-V installations with SQL.
October 15, 2010 at 4:38 am
We have our entire SQL Farm running VMware ESX and shortly to be VSphere and have never had any major issues.
Mixture of SQL 2000 through to SQL 2008R2, around 60 Named Instances housing approximately 700 Databases.
Admittedly our largest database is 500GB so can't comment on how it will handle TB+ databases but this environment works really well for us.
October 15, 2010 at 10:44 am
Steve Jones - SSC Editor (10/14/2010)
Most of my friends run ESX. Haven't heard of any large Hyper-V installations with SQL.
We put our largest oltp db on VMware 2.5TB - compressed wasnt that bad, but over all we decided to stick with our norm.. physical servers.
But down the road we will end up going to all VM DB servers on SSD Storage
October 16, 2010 at 7:01 am
Not much to say here that's not already been said really!
My own experiences are with various systems including Shabba's environment where i worked on the design\deployment.
This has to be well architected to work and the storage has to be efficient.
IMHO it is also important to ensure the ESX servers are the best hardware possible, blade servers i have found just don't offer the performance for some reason. High end HP DL series servers in my experience make excellent ESX hosts.
There is a fine line between what constitutes a VM and a physical server, for your environment you need to discover that.
With the software tools available from VMWare it is possible to take a physical server image into the virtual environment and see how it performs.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Ya can't make an omelette without breaking just a few eggs" 😉
October 16, 2010 at 7:44 am
Intereseting, I have friend running almost exclusively blades. Of course, that limits the size of the host, and then the VMs, but they have been happy with blades. I think HP.
October 16, 2010 at 8:28 am
Steve Jones - SSC Editor (10/16/2010)
Of course, that limits the size of the host, and then the VMs
This, I suspect, is the key here!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Ya can't make an omelette without breaking just a few eggs" 😉
October 16, 2010 at 8:43 am
THanks so much for assisting, the largest database in our enterprise is about 30gigs and it has medium to high load.
October 17, 2010 at 6:55 pm
All of our SQL Servers are on VM.. Advantages can build a new VM Sql in a matter of minutes..you build templates for sql on VM and install VM in minutes..You can increase CPU/Memory/disks on fly without taking down SQL Server.
No problems here only when the VM fills up with space but that just a matter of making sure VM has enough space in first place.
Would I go back to physical no it way to quick to stand up SQL Servers when need to when disaster takes. If i had to rebuild a new OS/Patch it then install SQL it could be many hours with VM im back in operation in an hour that includes reattaching all db.
Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 19 total)
You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login to reply