Virtual Server?

[David Whatley]

Has anyone ever done a Virtual Server Migration? Example would be if I wanted to move my physical servers and all the OS, Applications, Etc into a Virtual Server enviroment.
A year ago we had a potential client want to do this, and now we are looking at is as a possiable alternative to adding a "backup" server.
Discussions?, Did it work for you, how many man hours involved, software used, etc
TIA
David

[ngoduyviet]

VMWare? I used to have a bunch of different OSes running concurrently on one box. You can try that.

[brewercm]

A company I worked for did one a while back. We moved all their existing physicals to a couple of larger servers with VMware. Once that was completed we took the old physicals and created a disaster recovery site with them.

My only part was moving all the databases and getting them mirrored to the DR site. I do know that they way underbudgeted my portion because they didn't bother asking me until the job was already signed. Heads rolled for that mistake as much money was lost and many late hours I shouldn't have had to work. BTW, always get you DBA involved from the beginning.

Also make sure the customer doesn't skimp on disk space or memory. Costs much more to fix later.

[Peacock]

David,
I would not use virtualization as an alternative to a backup server, virtualization would make a great alternative to providing a COOP, and server consolidation to potential save operating costs.

You will need plenty of storage and as mentioned earlier plenty of RAM, on the servers that will be hosting your VMs.

VMWare and Microsoft's Hyper-V are the two heavy hitters right now, each at different price points.

Microsoft's Hyper-V role is part of Server 2008, so can be used at the very base level for virtualization to test if you would like...the larger solutions for Microsoft it is recommended to utilize System Center Virtual Machine Manager to manage your virtualization environment.

[revjvegas]

I work in vSphere pretty much full time at this point.
If you set it up correctly, it works like a charm.

I even have a small cluster running in my home office which is hosting my personal email, web, and media servers all on one box and using shared storage.

You would still need to perform backups of the VMs should your host or storage crash so you could recover if needed. Of course having a host crash is less a concern if you are using shared storage, then it is more a concern about the storage device tanking--like all hard drives like to do.

[epoh]

There's no reason why not to, unless storage is an issue.

As to the time involved, that will depend on the size of the server, and the speed of your network. My rough guideline for our network is about 1hr per 15gigs of data, for total work.

[David Whatley]

Thanks to all that replied. We had a company come out and bid the project and they think it will take 40+ man hours to get the Virtual Server up and running.

Currently we host our own servers, 2 that are production and one that is a development Server. I want the servers out in a CO-Lo
Dell Poweredge 2850 boxes with Raid, 4 80 gb HD's. 4 gb RAM
Total data is about 200GB between both boxes.

Currently we are runing Server 2003 on the production boxes and 2008 on the development server. MS SQl is our DB

I wanted to migrate the 2 production machines to a Virtual Server, take the 2 boxes down adn move them to a Co-Lo and have the VS take over in the downtime for the move.
Go back live with the boxes that would now be in a co-lo and let the VS act as a disaster recovery solution.

Any problems anyone sees? Is it a Major Undertaking?
The contractor has suggested Hyper-V and PlateSpin Migration as the tools to use.

[epoh]

I don't see any issues. Platespin is a good product (it's what we use at my company) and it will allow you actually do the full migration on-line if you have the physical resources to support that.

The only things I'd advise you to keep in mind when you virtualize -

1) Licenses. Not all licenses can just slide over to a virtual box. Some companies will want you to have an additional or different type of license due to the different hardware config.

2) Support issues. Oracle will NOT support any performance issues of their databases in a virtual environment. They will also not offer any first run support of any bugs until AFTER you've found some way to prove with 100% certainty that the virtual environment is not the cause of the bug. Basically they will require you to migrate back to physical and recreate the bug before they will offer any assistance. I don't believe any other company is quite so crazy about virtual environments are Oracle, but if you are running any 3rd party software it's best to validate they will support you in a new virtual configuration.

[brewercm]

One major question that needs to be asked is what is the acceptable down time if the DR site needs to take over?

As far as the database goes. If the decision is to use mirroring as the DR plan I'd suggest using "asynchronous mirroring" as it's much less taxing on your network (especially true if the DR site is not local and on the same hardwired network). If this is the case you will be "required" to have Enterprise edition of SQL Server since it's the only version that allows "asynchronous mirroring".

[linque]

Originally Posted by David Whatley

Currently we host our own servers, 2 that are production and one that is a development Server. I want the servers out in a CO-Lo
Dell Poweredge 2850 boxes with Raid, 4 80 gb HD's. 4 gb RAM
Total data is about 200GB between both boxes.

Currently we are runing Server 2003 on the production boxes and 2008 on the development server. MS SQl is our DB

I wanted to migrate the 2 production machines to a Virtual Server, take the 2 boxes down adn move them to a Co-Lo and have the VS take over in the downtime for the move.
Go back live with the boxes that would now be in a co-lo and let the VS act as a disaster recovery solution.

Any problems anyone sees? Is it a Major Undertaking?
The contractor has suggested Hyper-V and PlateSpin Migration as the tools to use.

What type of machine will you be using to host your VMs? Will it have direct attached storage, or will you be plugged into a SAN? I don't know how many, or what type of SQL Server databases you have, but if performance is critical be sure not to skimp on the VM box, or don't VM SQL Server.

[brewercm]

I didn't think about that part until linque just brought it up, but I'd highly recommend not to put the database on a VM, best to have that run on a main server.

[epoh]

From what I've seen personally, performance isn't really an issue in a virtual environment. Obviously the storage can be, but the virtualization in and of itself doesn't really cause any issues. I'm currently running an ESX cluster of 5 physical boxes hosting 26 VMs running a complete SAP environment for a customer without any performance issues. As long as you spec out the hardware properly you won't have any issues. The only issue from my perspective is to validate you have the support personnel who can support everything, as Oracle won't be of much help. And a disaster is not when you want to be scrambling for assistance.

[linque]

Performance can be a HUGE issue with regards to SQL Server in a VM. I don't think he's running Oracle, but it applies here too. You're right about hardware setup -- spec it out properly from the beginning. It will depend on the VM hardware, and type of database(s) you have as to whether or not you will see any performance issues. If it's a heavily used OLTP database on a VM box with 20 VMs running you could encounter disk I/O issues. A SQL Server database works off of a minimum of two files -- the MDF or data file, and the LDF or transaction log file. Transaction log files are written to sequentially, however, MDF files are read/written to randomly. Lots of random reads/writes can really put a strain on the disk system. Like I said, though, it really depends on the hardware and databases you're using.

I have a fully VM'ed SQL Server 2005 setup using a SAN for storage that runs OK. I also have a SQL Server 2005 physical box plugged into a SAN that runs much faster. The fastest setup I have is a SQL Server 2008 machine with 16 direct attached 15K SAS drives, and two controllers. It's a little unfair though, because it's a QA machine and all arrays are RAID 0 (no redundancy). But I'm able to separate the OS, MDF, LDF, and tempDB files onto separate arrays which give me incredible performance. I'm able to restore a 200GB database in about 10-minutes.

[brewercm]

Originally Posted by David Whatley

Currently we are runing Server 2003 on the production boxes and 2008 on the development server. MS SQl is our DB

That was what I took out of this statement. As an Oracle developer I can attest to the fact that you won't get much if any support from Oracle (well without paying a ton of money to them).

One other thing I've seen some companies do that I thought was insane but the way they wanted it was to take all 120 databases that were previously farmed out among several instances of SQL Server and merge them to one SQL Server instance. Just not a good idea in my opinion.

[David Whatley]

GREAT Info everyone and I really appericate the input.
No Oracle here, MS SQL all the way.
Or DB isnt that large, I will have someoe look, but I'm guessing it's under 75GB total.
The 200GB i mentioned is for everythin gon the servers total. Including OS, SQL, Applications like ColdFusion 8 etc.
Amy, thanks for the license heads up. Currently it is mainly MS that we will need to deal with.
Should double, triple, quad the actual physical box specs be enough for the VS box?