SQL Server Performance Forum – Threads Archive

Virtual Server

Does anyone reading this have any experience running SQL Server within a Virtual Server environment? http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/virtualserver/default.mspx I’m curious about how you find it? Is it pretty stable? Can you run SQL Server in multiple virtual server on one box? The more I know, the more I realize how much I don’t know.

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I have it running on my laptop. The laptop has hyperthreaded 2.8ghz processors and 2GB of RAM. I have SQL Server 2000 and the AprilCTP on the base installation. I then have two virtual server instances with the April CPT and VS Beta 2 on them. Works great. MeanOldDBA
[email protected] When life gives you a lemon, fire the DBA.

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I was just reading the "getting started" doc that comes with the eval version of MS virtual server. It says that each VM can only use a max of one cpu. I guess that rules out using it for my production db servers. There’s no way.<br /><br />QA and DEV is a possibility though. <img src=’/community/emoticons/emotion-1.gif’ alt=’‘ /><br /><br />*–&gt; Always expect the worst, and when it comes, make the best of it. — Ben Franklin &lt;–*

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It’s great for dev and test. A no for production.

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You should look at VMWare for that. Even then, I would be really skeptical. MeanOldDBA
[email protected] When life gives you a lemon, fire the DBA.

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Not on Microsoft virtual server 2005 But, I have worked/ used VMWare ESX for SQL production servers. it was IBM X440 model with 8 CPU and 16GB RAM. we run 4 virtual server instances on one box.. and used win2000 and sql 2000; I faced NO problems and you can allocate more then 1 CPU even fraction of CPU using share polling. it was really amazing and easy to work/deploy/create new servers ASAP.
http://www.vmware.com/products/server/esx_features.html
http://www.cioupdate.com/article.php/10493_1438111 Deepak Kumar –An eye for an eye and everyone shall be blind

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[<img src=’/community/emoticons/emotion-1.gif’ alt=’‘ />] ESX server is impressive. That’s a nice server also though.<br /><br />MeanOldDBA<br />[email protected]<br /><br />When life gives you a lemon, fire the DBA.

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Microsoft (unoficially) don’t recommend it! we are running numerous ESX SQL 2000 virtual environments. High IO operations are painfully slow (although this is mainly due to SAN and the way LUNs are configured).

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We are running our test environment in similar manner and wouldn’t recommend for production service at all. As long as the server is beefy then you can control and manage 8 instances on one shot (as we do)
Satya SKJ
Contributing Editor & Forums Moderator
http://www.SQL-Server-Performance.Com
This posting is provided “AS IS” with no rights for the sake of knowledge sharing.

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