SQL Server or servers for the hosting?

[--Norton--]

As you are all aware there are various Databases required during installation for all sorts of things.

Virtual center, Update manager, Anti Virus, vCloud Director, Chargeback etc and the list goes on.

My question is how many SQL servers should I use within the solution for these?

The SQL servers will be virtualised within a management cluster but my SQL team want to house all DBs on a single server.

I had spread the load across a couple of SQL servers as to me it seems easier to load balance a couple of 4 proc servers than a single 8 proc server with a large amount of RAM.

I wondered what everyone else does with their designs??

Thanks

[MKguy]

Generally, the databases of VMware product such as vCenter, SSO, Inventory Service, VUM, vCD etc. do not need a lot* of performance, even in large environments. Just needing a database and the association with the magic 3 letters "SQL" does not automatically mean they are a performance and IO hog.

I don't know about the "AntiVirus" thing you mentioned or maybe other 3rd party databases though.

We are actually hosting 3 small to medium sized vCenters with all their multiple DBs on a single 2 vCPU 8GB RAM VM (on older Nehalem hardware), and this VM runs smoothly at an average utilization of 300 Mhz and 25 IOPS. No issues here.

Personally I'd go with a smaller, single VM first, see how it fares, increase the virtual Hardware allocation if necessary and if even that turns into a performance issue (which I really doubt), then you can still move databases to a separate SQL server. For most DBs (the "large" ones like vCenter DB at least) it's just a matter of pointing the ODBC connection to another server name after moving the DB:

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/7960893

*This is of course a subjective statement, as always: it depends.

[--Norton--]

Thanks for the help.

I have been looking into this and found http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CEIQFjAA&url=http%3A%2...

Its basically a guide to SQL best practice on VMware.

Page 35 summarises my origional concerns although from what youve said the size of server I am looking at is way too big anyway and could be reduced to just one of the spec I am wanting to use.

Hopefully others will coment so we can get an average.

Thanks

[--Norton--]

Hmm it would seem that my previous reply was deleted?

Not quite sure why as it was a link to a PDF that was SQL Best practices within VMware??

Anyway it was called Microsoft SQL Server on VMware Best Practices Guide

And it was page 35 that was my main concern.

As it happens your VM size for all of the DBs was my VM size roughly for half of them so I will see how that goes.

Hopefully we will get a few more replies and be able to take an average view point

[--Norton--]

hmm. And now I can see the post again? Dont know whats going on here? Very odd