Virtualized SQL Server: Why not?

Question

The IT department where I work is trying to move to 100% virtualized servers, with all the data stored on a SAN. They haven\'t done it yet, but the plan eventually calls for mo

Answer 1

There is some information concerning this in Conor Cunningham's blog article Database Virtualization - The Dirty Little Secret Nobody is Talking About.... To quote:

Within the server itself, there is suprisingly little knowledge of a lot of things in this area that are important to performance. SQL Server's core engine assumes things like:

1. all CPUs are equally powerful
2. all CPUs process instructions at about the same rate.
3. a flush to disk should probably happen in a bounded amount of time.

And the post goes on elaborating these issues somewhat further also. I think a good read considering the scarcity of available information considering this issue in general.