Added to my RSS readerI was recently at Microsoft Tech.Ed EMEA in Barcelona (You should go its Berlin next Year). I was doing the rounds between sessions in the main hall and I got to thinking about one of the hot topics doing the rounds at work “can Microsoft SQL 2005/2008 be virtualised”. Now I personally am in the camp of it’s the workload that needs consideration not the server function, assuming that there is no actual block to virtualisation such as specific hardware requirements. However my colleagues were fairly insistent that its a no-no. This is why I love Tech.Ed… I walked over to the SQL stand and am greeted by the nice Microsoft chaps manning (or should that be personing ) the stand. “Can I / should I run SQL as a VM?” straight question ..
A resounding chorus of “YES”! was the reply. Now I got chatting to the nice gentleman from Microsoft called Andrew Fryer (it is because of him and my colleagues Simon G and Simon S that I am now writing a blog!)
Andrew who has the wonderful job title of Evangelist provided me details of a test conducted on a four instance production SQL server 2008. This is a 64 page document on SQL virtualisation (under Hyper-V) best practice.
Andrew is a very nice chap and he told me about allsorts of interesting SQL related stuff not least a hint that Microsoft are working on SQL deployment that supports sideways scale-out. We were talking and I said that basically I arrived at the conference thinking “if you want to go virtual you use VMware ESX period”. Now I am not saying that I have had an epiphany (after all Andrew is an Evangelist) but I have to admit that Hyper-V is worth consideration. Furthermore when Hyper-V R2 is released (2010 anyone?) then VMware better get doing some pretty clever stuff or the sheer scale of Microsoft will simply overwhelm them. Right now ESX is a much slicker proposition but it has its downside and a Microsoft’s unified approach is one key area where deciding IT strategy is based on budgets rather than slick technology. So as promised Andrew here is I hope an unbiased round up of ESX 3x v Hyper-V (& R2) and to be fair I will also mention some stuff I know about ESX 4x.