Chapter 20. Virtualizing SQL Server

 

Organizations, for the past several years, have been on a mission to virtualize everything, it seems, especially servers. It isn’t hard to understand why: virtualization offers a lot of flexibility, more compact data centers, interesting options for HA, and more. Over those last few years, myths and inaccurate information have been perpetuated about virtualizing SQL Server. Let’s clear it up and see how well SQL Server responds to being virtualized!

20.1. Why virtualize?

There are dozens of reasons to virtualize a server. VMs can be easily moved from host machine to host machine, helping to rebalance workloads, make maintenance easier, and even provide for fault tolerance. Once a server is running on a VM instead of on a physical machine, you might not even care where its physical host is located. Microsoft, for example, makes it possible to migrate VMs from your own datacenter into their Azure cloud-based datacenter, giving you interesting options for accessibility and high availability.

20.2. Understanding virtual and physical hardware

20.3. CPU and memory in a virtual environment

20.4. Disk I/O in a virtual environment

20.5. Tricks with performance monitoring in a virtual environment

20.6. Hands-on lab