Time is Running for DBA School
I’ll be teaching a 3-day class on SQL Server – from security to best practices to performance management and much more. 6 different segments over 3 days, complete with discussions about how best to apply these things specifically to your environment. I hope you’ll join us – click here for more information about the class – and be sure to register right away. This class has a maximum of 15 students and we only have a few seats left at this point and registrations are locked in in the order they are received.
Virtual Servers/Machines and SQL Server
It seems a bit odd to be revisiting this topic after talking it through so recently, but I wanted to see if things have changed as much as certain somewhat biased folks are trying to lead me to believe (no offense to those biased folks).
Specifically, we talked back and forth here in the newsletter about virtualization and whether it was something you would or have put into production for SQL Server. If so, are there specific guidelines you’ve found to hold true when working this type of environment?
Previously we’d seen where a low-traffic solution could be fine, but if you had a heavy hitting application, the net advise was to avoid a virtual environment because the load just couldn’t be answered in the same way that a dedicated server could provide. So, rather than just say "it depends…" I wanted to toss this back out now that a more time has passed in using VMs and SQL Server. What has your experience been?
– Can virtual environments (and which one(s)) support a production environment to your satisfaction?
– Are there guidelines you’ve come to rely on when considering a virtual environment? This could be database size, number of transactions, CPU load, etc.
– What other factors have you seen that impact the use of virtual environments for your production services?
– What should I have asked here, that I didn’t?
I could really use your help here – the suggestion that I have seen in the press and from vendors is that this is a "baked" technology and that the issues of performance have been largely answered. While I am by no means saying it’s not a viable technology, I suspect that we’ll still find that there are guidelines in supporting and deploying in these environments.
What say you? Drop me an email here.
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