Virtualising SQL Server Instances is now commonplace within organisations of all sizes. But SQL Server RDBMS as a product has embraced "virtualisation" and "Consolidation" in its evolving forms for quite some time. As such they're continuing to spend more on their Virtual-enabling architectures and embracing the value of server virtualisation, showing a steady rate of virtualisation adoption, increased Teir-1 critical production use, and "improved consolidation ratios". In this presentation, we'll review the various forms of virtualisation that are available, and where these are best combined and leveraged within your operations to get the best out of your virtualisation and consolidation strategies. We'll review pitfalls and opportunities and technologies and tools available within both SQL server and Virtualisation products that help you to manage your environment.

1. SQL Server,
Virtualisation
and Operations
Charley Hanania, QS2 AG
MVP – SQL Server

2. Virtualising SQL Server Instances is now commonplace within organisations of all sizes. But SQL
Server RDBMS as a product has embraced “Virtualisation” and “Consolidation” in its evolving
forms for quite some time.
As such organisations are continuing to spend more on their Virtual-enabling architectures and
embracing the value of server virtualisation, showing a steady rate of virtualisation adoption,
increased Teir-1 critical production use, and "improved consolidation ratios".
In this presentation, we'll review the various forms of virtualisation that are available, and where these
are best combined and leveraged within your operations to get the best out of your virtualisation and
consolidation strategies.
We'll also review pitfalls, opportunities, technologies and tools available within both SQL Server and
Virtualisation products that help you to manage your environment.

3. About Charley Hanania
o
Now:
o
o
Microsoft MVP: SQL Server
Database Consultant at QS2 AG
o
ITIL v3 Certified
o
SQL Server Certified since 1998
o On SQL Server since 1995
o Version 4 on OS/2
o
IT Professional since 1992
o
PASS
o
o
o
Chapter Leader – Switzerland
Regional Mentor – Europe
Event Speaker
Other
o
o
MS MCT Regional Lead – Switzerland
IAMCT Secretary - Switzerland
o

4. Agenda
• Definitions
• History – Major SQL Feature Overview
• “The Age of Virtualisation”
• Methodologies to Leverage
• Effects and Opportunities
• Finding balance
• Quick Compare – Virtualisation Technologies
• Review

5. Definitions
• Virtualisation:
"To virtualise a resource is to abstract it from being bound to a physical
component or device"
• Consolidation:
"To consolidate resources is to bring together (separate parts) into a
single or unified whole; unite; combine“1
1 Dictionary.com

6. History
SQL Server's Feature Evolution from a “Virtualisation” & “Consolidation” perspective.
• Since v1.0
• Multiple databases within an Installation of the DBMS
• User-qualified objects and the capability to interact with these within a connected session
• SQL Server 7.0
• Clustering Support on Windows NT
• SQL Server 2000
• Capability to install multiple instances
• SQL Server 2005
• Database Schemas
• Transparent Failover with Database mirroring

7. History
SQL Server's Feature Evolution from a “Virtualisation” & “Consolidation” perspective.
• SQL Server 2008
• Resource Governor
• Policy Based Management
• SQL Server 2012
•
•
•
•
Contained Databases
Always On Availability Groups
Cross-Cluster Migration of AlwaysOn Availability Groups
Support for Windows Cluster Shared Volumes
• SQL Server 2014
• Load balancing

8. “The Age of Virtualisation”
Reshaping the Enterprise Datacentre
• Mistakes made by CIO's & Enterprise Technologists
• Server Sprawl & Consolidation
• Cloud computing's affects on Virtualisation
• Operational Excellence
•
•
•
•
Standardisation
Optimisation
Automation
Availability
• Ring-fencing / Multi-tenancy
• The Enterprise's long-term evolution

9. Methodologies to Leverage
Methodologies to leverage technologies within our grasp
• Ecosystem focussed virtual clusters
• Technology silo'd virtual clusters
• Commodity virtual clusters

10. Effects and Opportunities
Effects and Opportunities for availability, recoverability & scale
• Architectural pattern changes ("Designed to Fail")1
• eg. The Borg
• Resource Abstraction
• Cluster Shared Volumes
• Transparent failovers without disconnect
• “Pools” of resources (Storage/Network/Compute etc)
• Virtualisation Availability & Resilience Enhancements
• Local HA
• Remote DR
• Auto-Scale etc
1
Forrester

11. Finding balance
What can we start implementing and driving for in the immediate term?
• Create SQL Server Build and Architecture Standards that cater for:
•
•
•
•
•
Multi-instancing with high database density
Championing Resource Governor
Championing Policy Based Management
DBMS HA/DR (Always On) methodologies
Abstraction of Key Application Components
• Consolidation Density balanced with Availability & Recoverability
• Use [Guest] Clustering with Windows Server Cluster Shared Volumes
• Use Always On for local availability and remote recoverability
• Virtualisation: Use Remote synchronisation/snapshots for D/R

12. Quick Compare – Virtualisation Technologies
VMware ESXi 5.1 (Free Version)
• Scale
• Limited to 4 vCPUs in VM
• Limited Host RAM to 32 GB
• Limited VM Memory Support
• No Enterprise level features
• No vMotion
• No Storage vMotion
• No High Availability
• No Extensible Switch
• No VM Replication
Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2012
• Scale
• Up to 64 VPs per VM
• Up to 4 TB of memory per Host RAM
• Up to 1 TB of memory per VM
• Enterprise level features included
• Shared Nothing Live Migration
• Live Storage Migration
• High Availability via Clustering
• Hyper-V Replica (Unlimited)
• Storage Spaces
• …much more…
Techdays San Francisco Slide Deck (Overview, VMware comparison)
Also: VMware vSphere 5.5 vs Hyper-v 2012 R2

13. More Hyper-V vs vSphere
Feature
Hyper-V
vSphere
# of Physical CPUs per license
2
1
Maximum active VMs per host
1024
512
64
32
8000
4000
50 per VM
32 per VM
800 KB
155 MB
Unlimited
0
Maximum # of physical hosts per cluster
Maximum # of VMs per cluster
Virtual machine snapshots
Minimum disk footprint
# of Windows Server VM Licenses per host
Techdays San Francisco Slide Deck (Overview, VMware comparison)
Also: VMware vSphere 5.5 vs Hyper-v 2012 R2

14. Tips
• Clustering VM's on Hyper-V:
• configure anti-affinity by using availability sets in System Centre Virtual Machine Manager (VMM).
• Do not oversubscribe on Memory & CPU.
• Use Pass through I/O to Physical Disks for performance
• Do not use Dynamic disks [Virtual machine creation].
• Pre-allocate and utilise the space assigned for the Disk volumes.
• Do not assign dynamic MAC Addresses.
• This can cause a lot of confusion with network bindings and network routers when machines are
restarting, or when abstracted for round-Robin etc.
• Use WS2012 Continuously Available File Server for SQL Disk Volumes
• Capacity plan & pre-analyse performance of your SQL Server Apps to plan the amount of
CPU, Memory, and Network resources you need to be configured within the VM.
• Change the Power Mgt option for your OS to High Performance
• VMWare: Be aware of vCPU hotplug configurations1
1
http://www.sqlperformance.com/2013/12/system-configuration/vmware-cpu-hot-plug-vnuma-effects-on-sql-server

15. Review
• Pricing, maturity and platform flexibility are key factors in
Virtualisation provider choices
• Learn from the Giants.
• Scale matters, but standardization, optimization and automation are key. –
Forrester
• Reduce complexity : complexity kills efficiency. – Forrester
• Future of architectural resilience:
• Principle of "designed to fail" hinges on infrastructure components having
automated and dynamic workload balancing that migrates
processes, components and applications to stable and optimal resources. –
Forrester
• Embrace Virtualisation, we’re hitting near physical performance
now, and it increases our flexibility.

16. Resources
• VMWare vsphere 5.5 vs Windows Hyper-v 2012 v2 – Quick Compare
• Hyper-v over SMB
• Remote DR – Hyper-v Replicas
• Gartner Assessments – Hyper-v and VMWare
• Forrester – “Four Common Private Cloud Strategies”
• Channel9:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
WSV430 - Cluster Shared Volumes Reborn in Windows Server 2012- Deep Dive
WSV410 - Continuously Available File Server- Under the Hood
WSV330 - How to Increase SQL Availability and Performance Using Window Server 2012 SMB 3.0 Solutions
WSV324 - Building a Highly Available Failover Cluster Solution with Windows Server 2012 from the Ground Up
TechNet Radio- SQL Server over SMB 3.0 Overview
MDC-B331 - Upgrading Your Private Cloud with Windows Server 2012 R2
Continuous Availability in Windows Server 2012 with Gene Chellis & Claus Joergensen
• “Return Of The Borg: How Twitter Rebuilt Google’s Secret Weapon,” Wired, March 5, 2013