May 21, 2012 at 12:52 pm
Hi folks, we are planning to virtualize a few of our non-critical databases. I am wondering what % of databases have been virtualized in your environment and what has your experience with them been. Also it would be great to hear what kind of virtualization platform you have been using (VMware, Xen, HyperV, etc).
Thanks
May 21, 2012 at 1:09 pm
We currently are on HyperV and starting to look into SCVMM or vCenter as potential private cloud solutions.
May 21, 2012 at 1:38 pm
All SQLServerCentral servers (dev, test, prod cluster) are virtualized. At Red Gate, we use a ton of Hyper-V stuff in the company, including some critical dbs.
I have friends at a large media company (can't disclose the name, but you'd recognize it) and they virtualize the majority of their database servers. The ones that aren't are usually pushing the limits of physical hardware, so they just don't move them to VMs.
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May 21, 2012 at 1:44 pm
Thanks for the reply folks.
Steve, great to hear you guys are highly virtualized. How are you provisioning the instances today? Do you use SCVMM or just the HyperV console?
May 21, 2012 at 2:00 pm
Not sure, have to ask. Not my area 😉
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May 21, 2012 at 2:24 pm
Most of our servers are not virtual, and the corporate directive is to virtualize them all. We have noticed some issues with performance, and make sure you know what a snapshot is, what it does, and what the consequences of having one are before using them. But on the whole we find the benefits FAR out way the disadvantages.
Kenneth FisherI was once offered a wizards hat but it got in the way of my dunce cap.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------For better, quicker answers on T-SQL questions, click on the following... http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Best+Practices/61537/[/url]For better answers on performance questions, click on the following... http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/SQLServerCentral/66909/[/url]Link to my Blog Post --> www.SQLStudies.com[/url]
May 21, 2012 at 3:35 pm
Kenneth, nice to hear you guys are considering virtualization for your databases. Do you guys have a corporate policy defined around what the virtualization solution (VMware, HyperV, etc) would be and how you plan to provision/migrate servers to this virtualization solution?
Thanks!
May 21, 2012 at 5:07 pm
ankitb
We mostly use SCVMM at Red Gate, with the rare Hyper-V console management.
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May 22, 2012 at 7:27 am
ankitb (5/21/2012)
Kenneth, nice to hear you guys are considering virtualization for your databases. Do you guys have a corporate policy defined around what the virtualization solution (VMware, HyperV, etc) would be and how you plan to provision/migrate servers to this virtualization solution?Thanks!
Same as Steve I'm afraid, I'll have to ask. I do know that generally we migrate the servers using a P to V solution, test the new virtual server with the physical as a fail back (we had to do one server 3 times because of a very short outage window). But thats about all I know.
Kenneth FisherI was once offered a wizards hat but it got in the way of my dunce cap.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------For better, quicker answers on T-SQL questions, click on the following... http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Best+Practices/61537/[/url]For better answers on performance questions, click on the following... http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/SQLServerCentral/66909/[/url]Link to my Blog Post --> www.SQLStudies.com[/url]
May 22, 2012 at 8:45 am
Our entire SQL environment (DEV, TEST & PROD) are virtualised running under VMware vSphere v4.1.
May 22, 2012 at 10:07 am
OK, some more details. Apparently we have everything:
VM Workstation
vCloud director
Lab Manager
SCVMM 2008
ESXi HyperVisors
OpenSack
Physical Machines - we have some of these.
The tools above are used in different areas for different purposes. No real rhyme or reason, but an evolution. Developers typically download a base VMWorkstation image to spin up if they want. There are some server self-service for lab machines as needed, or the IT guys can configure.
Some of this is in the process of being published at Simple Talk. I'd look over there periodically to see when it comes out. I don't have a timeline yet.
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May 22, 2012 at 9:38 pm
This is great. Thanks Steve, et al.
It seems like application sprawl and more like virtualization sprawl is well and alive around all enterprises.
May 23, 2012 at 1:15 am
We have a mix of both physical and virtual in our environments
Check out this video from SQLBits - should give you some insight into the world of virtualization 🙂
http://www.sqlbits.com/Sessions/Event7/Virtualization_and_SAN_Basics_for_DBAs
May 23, 2012 at 1:47 pm
All of our dev, and stage environments are VM, about half of the prod machines are virtual now. We're in the middle of the slowly migrating everything over to virtual. We use VMWare for the sql servers.
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