Virtualization Archives

When Should You NOT Virtualize That System?

Virtualization is an amazing and valuable tool for so many reasons. I’ve been a proponent of the concept since GSX server, and early Workstation products. In the early days, I used to use it as a fresh image to load on a workstation for a development crew who required a pristine testing environment for a […]

Overview of Virtualization Technologies

Virtualization has been around for quite a while now; however, its mass appeal has only been realized with the extensive improvements that have appeared in the last few years. In virtualization’s early days, you had to purchase very expensive hardware; now, due to its ability to use commodity PC servers, you can download free virtualization […]

How to Explain Virtualization to Newbies

In the world of enterprise architecture, many parts of our daily conversations are taken for granted. We talk about virtualization, vMotion®, Storage vMotion, Replication, IOPS, and so very many other jargon-filled statements. We know these things, understand the concepts, and feel that our conversations amongst industry veterans can use these concepts without explanation. Even when […]

Expert Tips for Configuring SQL Server for SSDs and Virtual Machines

A recent Information Week’s 2014 State of Enterprise Storage Survey indicates that 40% of respondents were using SSDs in disk arrays and about 39% deployed SSDs in servers, which is about 8-10 points up from the previous year. These figures clearly highlight that SSD adoption is increasing. We brought together a group of expert DBAs, geeks […]

Avoid these Critical SQL Server Virtualization Mistakes

Today’s hypervisors like Hyper-V and vSphere make it easy to virtualize servers like SQL Server. However, they can also make it easy to create poorly performing virtualized SQL server instances. In this article I’ll cover some of the biggest mistakes that you can make when virtualizing SQL Server. Some of the top mistakes to avoid […]

Best Practices for Virtualizing SQL Server

It wasn’t that long ago that many companies thought that you couldn’t virtualize SQL Server because it was too resource intensive. However, with the advances that both Microsoft and VMware have made to Hyper-V and vSphere respectively today’s virtualization platforms are more than capable of running almost every enterprise workload – including SQL Server. This […]

Can Data Keep Pace with DevOps and Agile?

Provisioning a new server has become increasingly easy with virtualization. Provisioning data, however, can be more challenging, especially in Agile shops where the volume of environments required to support dev and testing can easily go beyond the abilities of your IT operations to keep up. Is there any way to make it easier? We brought […]

Protecting Oracle Database Performance in a Virtual Server World

Keep a watchful eye on two key configuration parameters to maintain consistent performance. Server virtualization for Oracle databases is here–and it works, so it will be staying. As database administrators, we must adapt to the new architecture, while ensuring database performance and resiliency. A recent client problem involving a handful of critical applications revealed two […]