Virtualization

Hey sysadmins, quit trying to virtualize everything!

Please forward this to the systems admin in your life that wants to take your big SQL Server, and cram it into a Virtual Machine against your wishes.

So you’ve got your kick ass virtualization project moving along nicely, but you’ve hit a snag.  The DBAs are fighting back saying that they don’t want to virtualize the SQL Servers.  You hear them, but you know better right?  You built the hardware, you know what it can do.  The SQL Server doesn’t really need all that horse power. Continued »

Slide Deck and Recording from todays webcast

For those that weren’t able to join the presentation, I’m posting the slide deck and a recording of the presentation.

The slide deck only has a couple of slides in it, so my it self it isn’t all that interesting.  The recording has taken via Net Meeting.  It’s the first time I’ve recorded something via Net Meeting directly, so if it isn’t great sorry.  I’ll try better next time.

The recording works in IE, I don’t think Firefox likes the format.

Denny

Join me tomorrow as I talk about virtualization

Join me tomorrow September 30th, 2009 as I talk about virtualization with the PASS Virtualization Virtual Chapter.  I’ll be presenting my presentation entitled “Diving into Server Virtualization, Deciding if Virtualization is a good choice for your SQL Server“.  The presentation starts at 9am (Pacific) / 12pm (Eastern).  (This link goes to the live meeting site.) Continued »

My experiences upgrading ESX 3.5 to vSphere 4.0

A couple of weeks back I begun the process of upgrading our VMware ESX 3.5 systems to vSphere 4.0.  I’ve got to tell you, that has to be the easiest system upgrade process in history. Continued »

Windows 2008 C Drive doesn’t always extend correctly

When using VMs and Windows 2008 you have the ability to easily grow the C drive on your servers. This makes it much easier to assign only the space needed to the C drive of your servers saving you a ton of space.

However I recently had a few machines say that the disk was extanded in Computer Manager and diskpart, but Windows Explorer (aka My Computer) showed the old amount. And growing the disk a second time doesn’t help. Shrink the partition (either in diskpart or Computer Management) then extend it again seamed to fix it for me.

Denny

Setting VMware memory settings to improve SQL Server Performance

There is a VMware setting which you can set which should give you a small but noticeable performance improvement in SQL Server performance when that SQL Server is running within a VMware Virtual Machine.

Continued »

Here comes SoCal Code Camp

SoCal Code Camp is coming up in a couple of weeks now on June 27th and 28th.  I’m presenting 3 sessions solo, and I’m one of a few people doing an IT Pro Pannel to allow Developers to grill some IT Pros to see why we do things the way we do.

The Sessions are:

IT Pro Panel: Q&A for Developers
SQL Server Service Broker
SQL Service Broker Advanced Performance Tips and Tricks
Virtual SQL Servers Should I or Shouldn’t I?

I’ll be posting the slide decks and sample code shortly before Code Camp.

Denny

Use caution when using an image to setup servers which will be clustered.

A lesson that I learned while setting up our new data center for work, is to be careful when setting up your clustered servers.

Most of our servers are VMs, including a Windows 2008 Cluster (yeah I know not supported, I’m a rebel damn it and I want a Windows 2008 cluster installed under VMware ESX). Continued »

VMware and SQL and Lock Pages in Memory

With the recent release of the ability for the Lock Pages in Memory setting to be used on SQL Server 2005 and 2008 Standard Edition I see more and more people shooting them selves in the foot with this setting when running under VMware.  I see this as becoming more of an issue now that this switch is available for Standard edition as I would assume that most virtualized SQL Server installations are done using SQL Server Standard Editions.

Continued »

#emcworld Day 2 In Review

Today was day 2 of EMC World 2009.  There were some great sessions today.  I’m focused on two tracks this year, VMware and the CLARiiON product as we have just deployed both of these in our data center migration project.  Continued »