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I have been involved in virtualization projects for about ten years now. In that time I have had the opportunity to track my own list of best practice items. It's a list I share freely with customers that seek out virtualization advice. I can tell that virtualization (and Cloud) efforts are on the rise simply by the number of requests I get for help, specifically for virtualizing SQL Server. I like to call this list my "facepalm" special, as any one of these essentially triggers a facepalm reaction. They have helped my customers in the past and I am certain they will help you.
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Virtualizing SQL Server: 8 Things To Avoid
Thomas LaRockTechnical EvangelistConfio Software
• Don’t recycle old hardware for use as a new production host• If the hardware is old now, imagine how old it will be
in another 18 months• Due to licensing costs, it may be cheaper to buy new
hardware and provision as a host
1. Build Your Own
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• You need to set performance SLAs• You do this with baselines• Measure logical I/O and CPU costs for your queries
2. No Performance Expectations
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• RDM v VMDK; which one do you want?
• Know the differences in RAID as well
• Understand what can cause “noisy neighbor” syndrome
3. Select Wrong Disk Choice
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4. Thin Provisioning
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• If you don’t have room now, what makes you think you will later?
• Important to know what you actual sizes are, otherwise recovery may be impossible
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5. Over-allocation of Memory and/or CPU
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• It leads to over-commit, which is often bad for performance
• Allow for 1.5:1 vCPU to logical core ratio
• Do not over allocate memory
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6. Trusting O/S Counters
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• Standard counters offer no visibility to the Hypervisor layer• Need to examine VM, Hyper-V specific counters• Understand if bottleneck is with host, guest, or internal to
database engine
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7. Running It All At Once
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• Important to know your workloads• vMotion can help• Leave room for growth and
movement
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8. Capacity Planning
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• Often a futile effort• Business needs shift quickly, throwing
out all your metrics that try to predict growth
• Need to have room to grow, otherwise planning won’t matter
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• http://blogs.vmware.com/apps/2011/11/virtualized-exchange-storage-vmdk-or-rdm-or.html • http://
www.vmware.com/files/pdf/solutions/SQL_Server_on_VMware-Best_Practices_Guide.pdf
• Read more at confio.com/logicalread
For More Information
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• DPA will help correlate queries with VMWare metrics• Installs in minutes• Get answers in less than 5 clicks
Full interactive demo available athttp://www.solarwinds.com/database-management-software.aspx
Database Performance Analyzer Can Help!
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