Virtualising SQL 2008 R2? You may just find this useful!

By Matt McSpirit - virtualboy. Microsoft Partner Technology Specialist for Virtualization;
http://blogs.technet.com/mattmcspirit

Following on from my virtualising of SharePoint 2010 post, I thought I’d share with you, some useful resources around the virtualising of SQL 2008 R2, on Hyper-V R2, and the kind of performance you can expect from this combination of technologies.

High Performance SQL Server Workloads on Hyper-V White Paper

This whitepaper focuses on the advantages of deploying Microsoft SQL Server database application workloads to a virtualisation environment using Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V. It demonstrates that Hyper-V provides the performance and scalability needed to run complex SQL Server workloads in certain scenarios. It also shows how Hyper-V can improve performance when used in conjunction with advanced processor technologies. This paper assumes that the reader has a working knowledge of virtualisation, Windows Server Hyper-V, SQL Server, Microsoft System Center concepts and features.

The whitepaper discusses a number of different tests that were performed, in some detail, yet also, from page 30, you can also start to read about the best practices for running workloads like SQL on Hyper-V.  The best practices section provides guidance around configuration for the parent OS, networking, VHD considerations, and more.

If you supplement the information in this whitepaper, with some of these other resources below, you should be in a good position to optimise the performance of SQL in a virtual environment.

SQL Server 2008 Virtualization

• SQL Server 2008 Virtualization
• SQL Server 2008 Virtualization and Server Consolidation
• SQLCAT White Papers – Running SQL Server 2008 in a Hyper-V Environment - Best Practices and Performance Recommendations
• SQL Server Virtualization Best Practices Webcast

SQL Server Analysis Services Virtualization

• SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services
• SQLCAT White Papers – Scale-Out Querying with Analysis Services
• SQLCAT Technical Notes – Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services Consolidation Best Practices
• SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services Performance Guide