Voice of the DBA

Tag: hyper-v

  • Windows Server 2012 and Hyper-V

    hyper-v
    Hyper-V looks like a great candidate for almost any SQL Server with the enhancements in Windows Server 2012.

    I recently went to a Microsoft event in Denver on Windows Server 2012 and Hyper-V improvements. A bunch of the information was presented by Harold Wong (b | t) and there’s a number of demos and notes from the talks on his blog.

    I haven’t looked much at the Windows server OS’s in years and not much at Hyper-V. I have preferred VMWare for my demo/research environments, especially as I move between Windows and OSX regularly. However I’ve thought Hyper-V was rapidly improving and on the right track. I was surprised to find the new limits in Hyper-V under Windows Server 2012 to be quite high for both the host OS and the guests. You can have up to

    • 64 virtual processors
    • 1TB RAM
    • 64TB (vhdx format)
    • 4 virtual Fibre Channel adapters
    • much more

    With 320 logical processors and 4TB of ram on the host, it seems as though Hyper-V is on par with VmWare ESX 5. There’s a lot more to look at than software cost, but at this time, it appears all new virtualization projects using Windows ought to consider Hyper-V.

    There were interesting demos on replicas, live migration, improvements in file transfers and more. They were designed to make things look good, and there’s a good marketing presentation on the capabilities. I’m sure the actual implementation isn’t as easy or smooth as in the talks, but it did make me think there’s no reason virtualization shouldn’t be considered for SQL Servers, especially as you move to newer hardware.

    Steve Jones

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  • Windows Server 2012 and Hyper-V

    I recently went to a Microsoft event in Denver on Windows Server 2012 and Hyper-V improvements. Harold Wong (b | t) showed quite a few demos and there’s a number of demos and notes from the talks on his blog.

    I haven’t looked much at the Windows server OS’s in years and not much at Hyper-V. I’m sure the actual implementation isn’t as easy or smooth as in the talks, but it did make me think there’s no reason virtualization shouldn’t be considered for SQL Servers, especially as you move to newer hardware.

  • Hyper-V Guests

    Virtualization has really changed the way that we deal with software. It seems that more and more often I find people using virtualization for all sorts of systems, both production and non-production servers. The ability to run multiple operating systems on a single physical host means that systems are used more efficiently. It also means that more people have the ability to experiment with alternatives to the standard Windows OS that so many of us use.

    Hyper-V has gained a lot of attention over the last few years as Microsoft has tried to get people to run this hypervisor.  It seems that quite a few people have had success running Hyper-V, and it becomes more popular all the time. However, not everyone is happy, and I found a  post about Linux support in Hyper-V, or the lack thereof.

    Whether Microsoft is mis-representing their support is one thing, but this did have me thinking about a wider issue. As we build more and more systems that are virtualized, or even composed of services offered by other vendors, to what extent should the vendor provide support? Is it reasonable to say that your platform works with software x, y, and z, even if you don’t have engineers trained to support the software?

    This could become a large pain point in the future for other types of platforms, as I am sure it will continue to be an issue with hypervisors.  I’m not sure I would expect a hypervisor vendor to offer full  support for various guest operating systems, but I certainly would expect that they would work with engineers at other companies to solve issues, especially if I have a support contract.

    Steve Jones