SQL Server and VMWare: To Be or Not To Be?

[fuzzyocelot]

I just read in another thread that it’s probably not a good idea to put SQL Server on a VMWare machine. Could someone please elaborate on this for me please?

When we ask for new servers for SQL, our hardware guys have a tendency to give us a virtual machine instead of a physical one. I think our new production servers will be on actual physical servers, though. This is mainly for our development servers.

Thanks!

 

[Crowley16]

standard behaviour for sql server is to use ALL available system resources, including memory/cpu...

in a vmware situation, this will totally kill your system performance since all the resources are tied up.

p.s. vmware is generally quite slow to start with...

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Procrastinate Now!

 

[fuzzyocelot]

That would explain quite a bit then. Thank you for the information!

 

[ptheriault]

SQL Server is very IO intensive for CPU, memory and Disk. If you haven't implemented a very high end VM solution then you can run into serious performance problems. Some VM solutions will allow you to assign CPU's and memory to each instance so it doesn't impact other VM instances. And if you have a SAN that you can divy up...
But I know that is a very expensive solution and most companies don't invest that much in their VM Servers.

I have a few test sql servers that are on a single VM Server but that VM only hosts test SQL servers. It worl fine for test and development but I would never go live with it. You don't want to put all your eggs in one basket. What happens if you loose the mother board on a VM server? If it's not a cluster your going to loose more than one SQL server.



- Paul
- If at first you don't succeed, find out if the loser gets anything.

 

[fuzzyocelot]

Thanks, ptheriault!

Thankfully only our test and development servers are on a VM, that I know of. I'll check to be sure. You brought up some very good points. I'll have to look into what we have further so I know for sure.

Thanks!