We are planning to virtualise this server and are currently running performance tests, details below
I have a physical HP server as below:
ML350 G3 server running Win Ent 2003 & SQL 2005 with Navision Version 4.00 SP3 (4.0 SP1)
Raid 1 (2 Disks) = OS
Raid 10 (4 disks) = SQL Data
Raid 1 (2 disks) = SQL Logs.
.
We have tried a P2V of this server and also a fresh build OS server.
The Vmware hardware is below:
Physical Host: HP PL 380 G7 running Vmware 4.1
Virtual Host: Win Ent 2003 & SQL 2005 with Navision Version 4.00 SP3 (4.0 SP1)
Raid 5 (3 Disks) = OS
Raid 10 (10 disks) = SQL Data
Raid 1 (2 disks) = SQL Logs.
Storage: HP P2000 Fibre
Running simple SQL select statements the Virtual server is 3 times faster than the physical. The problem is that the Navision “Credit Control Dashboard” report is 4 times slower.
When it is about running a NAV/SQL environment virtualized, it is crucial to configure the VMWare properly and to use sufficient hardware!
RAID5 is IMHO a No Go for database servers, even for the C:\ drive. You said it’s used for the OS, but I guess there’s also the Page File, the SQL Server Program Files and the SQL Server System databses (master, model, msdb, tempdb). Running this on a RAID5 could dramatically degrade performance.
Also you need to make sure that you are using real physical drives, no virtual/logical volumes.
What about RAM and CPU? You need at least 8GB RAM (probably more!) and CPU have to be assigned directly, not dynamically.
I have moved the OS to a 2 disk mirror, also the System databses (master, model, msdb, tempdb) are on the raid 10 with the navision database already. This unfortunalty as made no difference to the report timings.
sorry I do not understand this “you need to make sure that you are using real physical drives, no virtual/logical volumes”, we are using Vmware 4.1 and I can only find where you ajust how much is fixed to the server ?
Check to ensure that the “limits” and “reservations” are aligned correctly with what you think should be allocated to the VM for CPU and memory. I’ve now seen two situations where the VM/OS thought it had say 4GB, but VMWare was actually only giving it 1GB.