Virtualization

Whether you’re using Windows or a Mac, if you’re thinking about using virtualization for the first time on your laptop to test out new operating systems like Windows 7 or Windows 2008 R2, there’s a few things you should know. Get Another Hard Drive Drive Bay Laptop drives aren’t quick to begin with, and running…

How are my servers doing? How are my databases doing? If my boss came in and asked which servers needed more horsepower or which ones could be consolidated together, how would I come up with an answer? I’ve always found it funny that DBAs and sysadmins don’t have good answers to these questions.  We roll…

I’ve blogged about why you should virtualize SQL Server, but it’s not all unicorns and rainbows.  Today we’re going to talk about some of the pitfalls and problems. When Virtualization Goes Right It’s Tougher to Get More Storage Throughput Servers connect to Storage Area Networks (SANs) with Host Bus Adapters (HBAs).  They’re like fancypants network…

I talked about why sysadmins want to virtualize servers, and today it’s time to talk about why you as a DBA or developer might want to virtualize some of your SQL Servers. Virtualization Means Cheap High Availability Yo momma was an early adopter. That’s right – you’re adopted. In a perfect world, every SQL Server…

DBAs and developers: right now, your Windows admin is talking to management about all the time, money and hardware he can save by virtualizing servers. He might not start with SQL Servers first, because frankly, he’s scared of database administrators.  DBAs only have one answer: “No.” Your sysadmin knows how you roll. Thing is, though,…

Partition alignment is a setup trick for disk-intensive apps like Exchange and SQL Server that can have a 30% or more performance impact on  your server.  The setup information is in my SQL Server Setup Checklist, and Jimmy May has more details on the mechanics of partition alignment. If you run SQL Server in VMware,…

Say we have a physical database server sitting over there in the rack.  For the sake of discussion, let’s pretend it’s a slightly older model, a HP DL380 G2 with a couple of P3 CPUs, 4gb of ram, and six local 36gb drives.  The storage is broken up into a mirrored pair of drives for…

The Microsoft knowledge base article on SQL Server virtualization support just got an update.  Here’s the interesting part: “Versions of SQL Server after SQL Server 2005 will incorporate full support for running on a supported guest operating system that is installed on a Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V virtual machine.” That means SQL Server 2008 will…