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3 Replies Last post: Nov 11, 2009 8:15 AM by mlubinski  

performance wise setup for SQL? posted: Nov 6, 2009 8:14 AM

Click to view mlubinski's profile Expert
mlubinski
283 posts since
Jun 10, 2008

Hi I would like to ask people who are/were working with SQL servers that should run with optimal performance all the time.

Let's assume, that we want to build up 6 SQL servers, each with 4vCPU+16GB of memory. I have 3 hosts (each host with 2xQuadCore+32GB) plus NFS storage on Netapp (dedicated volume for these servers)

So tell me, if I put 2 such SQL VMs on each ESX host, to make these servers run with no performance issues, should I set them any memory reservations (or maybe they shouldn't have any reservations set)?

Should they have any specific swapfile "location" for them? (in VM configuration->swapfile location). What about internal OS setup? Should it have some OS (Windows 2008 x64) tweaks inside for best performance?

I think this setup should be enough for this, but was wondering what else should I think of. These reservations make me crazy, coz I don't know what in this situation would be the best option.

I hope someone will be able to give me some tips on this.

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Re: performance wise setup for SQL?

1. Nov 6, 2009 8:19 AM in response to: mlubinski
Click to view rickblythe's profile Hot Shot
rickblythe
203 posts since
Jan 5, 2007
There is a pdf written on this topic:
Performance and Scalability of Microsoft SQL Server® on VMware vSphere 4 http://www.vmware.com/resources/techresources/10033

Rick Blythe
Social Media Specialist
VMware Inc.
http://twitter.com/vmwarecares
http://twitter.com/vmwarekb

Re: performance wise setup for SQL?

2. Nov 6, 2009 12:47 PM in response to: mlubinski
Click to view king@it.ibm.com's profile Virtuoso
king@it.ibm.c…
2,927 posts since
Jan 16, 2004
Jump onto this thread:

http://communities.vmware.com/message/1411301

Massimo.

Re: performance wise setup for SQL?

3. Nov 11, 2009 8:15 AM in response to: king@it.ibm.c…
Click to view mlubinski's profile Expert
mlubinski
283 posts since
Jun 10, 2008

Thanks, but in posted links I didn't find any details as how VM should be configured for best performance. What I thought to see in such document would be something like:
  • if you set memory to 8GB, then set limit to 8GB, and reservations to 50% of limited memory

  • inside Windows 2008 set pagefile to automatic (or whatever is recommended)

  • on VM configuration set to place swapfile on host swapfile datastore

etc, etc

Maybe someone could share about their internal configs, that perform very good on VMware with SQL (and best if this would apply also to storage over NFS)

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