SQL performance

This talk was created because of persistent misconceptions that virtualization is unfit for and hurts the performance of SQL RDBM's (though this talk is about MS SQL a lot of it can be generalized to be used for other IO intensive workloads as well).







Problem is a reduction in storage spindles is one source of performance problems. Queues can also be a problem.

Sequential reads drop when there are more hosts added to your vmfs volume.





One way to fix this is to set memory reservations.





This pitfall is someone using the hosted product and creating a misconception about ESX.

Newer procs are always better. Decrease in pipeline lengths and increase in caches.





Dell's DVD store is a great benchmarking tool.









Servers that had multiple SQL instances are best broken down in multiple VM's.

When doing PoC's ensure you use target HW for correct modelling.

There is a white paper on VMware.com about this topic.