Virtualizing SQL Server with VMware: Doing IT Right, Rough Cuts
- By Michael Corey, Jeff Szastak, Michael Webster
- Published Mar 7, 2014 by VMware Press. Part of the VMware Press Technology series.
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Description
- Copyright 2015
- Dimensions: 7" x 9-1/8"
- Pages: 512
- Edition: 1st
- Rough Cuts
- ISBN-10: 0-13-343018-9
- ISBN-13: 978-0-13-343018-9
This is the Rough Cut version of the printed book.
The start-to-finish guide to virtualizing business-critical SQL Server databases on VMware vSphere 5
By virtualizing business-critical databases, enterprises can drive far more value from existing IT infrastructure. But squeezing maximum performance out of a virtualized database instance is an art as much as a science. This indispensable start-to-finish guide brings together all the techniques, tips, and insights you need to succeed.
Drawing on unsurpassed personal experience, three leading experts share complete best practices for deploying business-critical database servers in virtualized vSphere 5 environments. They cover the entire project lifecycle, bridging technical and communications gaps between SQL Server and VMware professionals that often make database virtualization more difficult than it needs to be.
You’ll find specific guidance for architects and administrators responsible for systems, storage, databases, applications, or VMware virtualization. The authors also present detailed, start-to-finish coverage of performance baselining and testing: all you need to make your virtualized databases as fast as they are cost effective. Although this book focuses on SQL, the authors’ proven guidance for enhancing performance can be leveraged by any IT professional virtualizing a demanding Tier 1 application.
Coverage includes
• Business cases for database virtualization: consolidation, Database as a Service (DaaS), efficiency, and “SLAs on steroids”
• Using the redundancy inherent in virtualization to improve availability
• Constructing a careful, conservative implementation plan
• Balancing disk, CPU, memory, and network for superior performance
• Mastering the five key principles of database storage design
• Leveraging memory: SQL MAX, page locking, NUMA, reservations, swapping, large memory pages, and more
• Ensuring responsiveness by providing a fast, reliable, low-latency network
• Supporting advanced AlwaysOn Failover Cluster Instances and Availability Groups
• Baselining physical systems and properly determining resource requirements
• Configuring performance tests from beginning to end
• Migrating existing SQL Server databases onto a vSphere platform
• Avoiding traps and pitfalls in virtualizing production databases
• Managing and monitoring virtualized database instances and resources
Sample Content
Table of Contents
Foreword xvii
Preface xix
About the Authors xxiii
About the Technical Reviewer xxv
Acknowledgments xxvii
Reader Services xxix
1 Virtualization: The New World Order? 1
Virtualization: The New World Order 1
Virtualization Turns Servers into Pools of Resources 3
Living in the New World Order as a SQL Server DBA 3
A Typical Power Company 6
Summary 7
2 The Business Case for Virtualizing a Database 9
Challenge to Reduce Expenses 9
The Database Administrator (DBA) and Saving Money 10
Service Level Agreements (SLA) and the DBA 11
Avoiding the Good Intention BIOS Setting 12
DBAs’ Top Reasons to Virtualize a Production Database 13
High Availability and Database Virtualization 14
Performance and Database Virtualization 16
Provisioning/DBaaS and Database Virtualization 17
Hardware Refresh and Database Virtualization 20
Is Your Database Too Big to Virtualize? 22
Summary 23
3 Architecting for Performance: The Right Hypervisor 25
What Is a Hypervisor? 25
Hypervisor Is Like an Operating System 26
What Is a Virtual Machine? 28
Paravirtualization 29
The Different Hypervisor Types 29
Type-1 Hypervisor 30
Type-2 Hypervisor 31
Paravirtual SCSI Driver (PVSCSI) and VMXNET3 31
Installation Guidelines for a Virtualized Database 32
It’s About Me, No One Else But Me 33
Virtualized Database: It’s About Us, All of Us 34
DBA Behavior in the Virtual World 34
Shared Environment Means Access to More If You Need It 35
Check It Before You Wreck It 36
Why Full Virtualization Matters 36
Living a DBA’s Worst Nightmare 37
Physical World Is a One-to-One Relationship 38
One-to-One Relationship and Unused Capacity 38
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