Specifications

74 CHAPTER 4 High Availability and Virtualization Enhancements

NOTE System requirements vary based on an organization's virtualization requirements.

Organizations should size their workloads to ensure that the Hyper-V hosts can successfully

accommodate all of the virtual servers and associated workloads from a CPU, memory, and

disk perspective.

Practical Uses for Hyper-V and SQL Server 2008 R2

Hyper-V on Windows Server 2008 R2 is capable of accomplishing almost the same successes

as dedicated servers, including the same kinds of peak load handling and security. Knowing

this, you might wonder when Hyper-V on Windows Server 2008 R2 should be employed from

a SQL Server 2008 R2 perspective. Hyper-V on Windows Server 2008 R2 can be utilized for

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Consolidating SQL Server databases or instances on a single physical server.

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Virtualizing SQL Server infrastructure workloads with low utilization.

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Achieving high availability for SQL Server VMs by using Live Migration or guest clustering.

■

Maintaining different versions of SQL Server and the operating system on the same

physical server.

■

Virtualizing test and development environments to reduce total cost of ownership.

■

Reducing licensing, power, and thermal costs.

■

Extending physical space when the data center lacks it.

■

Repurposing and extending the life of old SQL Server hardware by conducting a

physical-to-virtual (P2V) migration.

■

Migrating legacy SQL Server editions off hardware that is old and that has expired

warranties.

■

Generating self-contained SQL Server environments, also known as sandboxes.

■

Taking advantage of the rapid deployment capabilities of SQL Server VMs by using

Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2008 R2.

■

Storing and managing SQL Server VMs in VMM libraries.

By using virtual servers, organizations can take advantage of powerful features such as

multi-core technology, and they can achieve better handling of disk access and greater mem-

ory support. In addition, Hyper-V improves scalability and performance for a SQL Server VM.