When you install SQL Server Standard or Web Edition in a virtual machine with more than 4 cores, things can look like they're just fine - when in reality, you're not using anywhere near your server's potential. See, these editions have a tricky limitation - let's look at the documentation: Here's the catch: the lesser of 4…
Because I always forget stuff like this
I have a confession to make, dear readers:
I am a horrible VM admin.
Here's some of the reasons companies usually virtualize their SQL Servers:
Cost savings on hardware
Cost savings on Windows OS licensing
Cost savings on SQL Server licensing
Protect against the failure of a single hardware element
Leverage extended features for Disaster Recovery
Automatic load balancing across multiple hosts
Easier hardware replacement/migration
Our first two concerns in this series were virtualization licensing and recoverability. It's not enough to have answers for these questions today, though - we have to think about how long the server will be in place.
The server's expiration date isn't dictated by IT. If it was up to us, we'd never run an old, unsupported version of anything - but sometimes the business is quite content doing just that. So how do we plan for this from the start?
Your first concern is licensing, and once you've got that under control, it's time to talk about backups, restores, and uptime.
The business begins by defining the RPO and RTO requirements for high availability, disaster recovery, and "oops" deletions. Use our High Availability Planning Worksheet and fill in the "Current" column on page 1:
Every single thing you do with a virtual SQL Server starts with one very important concern: how are you going to license it? The 3 Common Ways to License Virtual SQL Servers Developer Edition, by the guest - Developer Edition has all the power of Enterprise Edition, but it's way cheaper - and starting with…
tl;dr - I do not recommend this book.
I was so incredibly excited when it was originally announced. A book published by VMware Press, written by prominent VMware, SQL, and storage consultants? GREAT! So much has changed in those topics over the last few years, and it's high time we got official word on how to do a great job with this combination of technology. Everybody's doin' it and doin' it and doin' it well, so let's get the best practices on paper.
Before we pick CPUs or memory, let's start by looking at SQL Server 2012's licensing costs:These are MSRP prices and do not include the extra costs for Software Assurance (maintenance) or any discounts for being a school, non-profit, or those photos you have of Bill Gates.Physical, Standard Edition - you'll notice that I went with…
Time for a thought exercise.
You've got a database application that has bursty and unpredictable loads. Out of nowhere, you'll suddenly get socked with a large amount of SELECT queries. Due to the way the app is written, you can't cache the query results - the queries keep changing, and the business wants data from within the last couple of minutes.
I served with High Availability. I knew High Availability. High Availability was a friend of mine. VMware HA, you're no High Availability.
See, for us database administrators, high availability means protection when:
Even if your SQL Server is the only guest on a host, it still might not be as fast as bare metal. One of the reasons is NUMA, which stands for Not Ur Momma's Architecture. Okay, no, smart reader, you caught me - it actually stands for Non-Uniform Memory Access. In your momma's architecture (Symmetric…
SQL Server has two settings that kinda-sorta govern how much memory we'll use to cache data: min server memory and max server memory. I explain the basics of how they work in my Sysadmin's Guide to SQL Server Memory, but things are a little different under virtualization. VMware does a great job of sharing memory…
When people buy my virtualization training video, one of the followup questions I get most often via email is, "Can I build SQL Server clusters in VMware and Hyper-V?"
In theory, yes. Microsoft's knowledge base article on SQL Server virtualization support says they'll support you as long as you're using configurations listed in the Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP).
In my recent "Why Is My Virtual SQL Server So Slow?" webcast, we got a lot of great questions in chat. Here's some of the highlights:
Question: "Why would I virtualize a 4-core server and turn it into a 2-core VM? Doesn't performance go down?"
The most successful deployments of virtual SQL Servers have a few things in common. When a company is doing all of these things, odds are they’re going to be very happy with their virtual SQL Servers: 10. Use vSphere 4.1, not earlier versions. vSphere 4.1 introduced major improvements in multi-CPU scheduling that vastly improve performance. …
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
Laptop drives aren't quick to begin with, and running two operating systems simultaneously doesn't make life any easier for your pokey drive.
How are my servers doing?
How are my databases doing?
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.
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 cards, and they come in either fiberoptic (FC) or iSCSI varieties. These components are the place to focus when thinking about virtualization.
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 AvailabilityIn a perfect world, every SQL Server would be a cluster on a SAN with instant failover. This isn't a…
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."Thing is, though, he's going to start by eating his own…
