Virtualizing SQL on VMware Reference List

I’ve been managing SQL Server virtualized in production environments for nearly five years now, and in that time, I’ve had to do a significant amount of reading/learning about VMware as a hypervisor so that I could properly track down performance problems and in a lot of cases, prove to vendors that the problem wasn’t virtualization.  It wasn’t very long ago that nobody supported virtualization, including Microsoft, despite the fact that it generally wasn’t the cause of problems.  Lately I’ve seen more people virtualizing SQL Servers and asking questions about running SQL Server in a virtualized environment and in a lot of cases, when the platform selected is VMware, I can answer their questions by pointing them to one of the many whitepapers I’ve read over the last few years.  To make this easier, and to share what I consider to be important references for VMware I am going to list them in this blog post  by category.  I’ve made it a point to try and list the most recent papers but in some cases, the only paper I know of or could find searching is for a version or two back in the ESX version.

CPU/Scheduling
VMware vSphere™ 4: The CPU Scheduler in VMware® ESX™ 4
VMware® vSphere™: TheCPU Scheduler in VMware ESX® 4.1


Memory
Understanding Memory Resource Management in VMware® ESX™ Server
Understanding Memory Resource Management in VMware ESX 4.1
Virtual Performance: Love Your Balloon Driver
Large Page Performance


DiskIO
PVSCSI Storage Performance
VMware vSphere 4 Performance with Extreme I/O Workloads
Comparison of Storage Protocol Performance in VMware vSphere™ 4
VMware® vStorage Virtual Machine File System Technical Overview and Best Practices
Recommendations for Aligning VMFS Partitions

SQL Server Specific
Performance and Scalability of Microsoft® SQL Server® on VMware vSphere™ 4
Microsoft SQL Server and VMware Virtual Infrastructure
Availability Guide for Deploying SQL Server on VMware® vSphere
Microsoft® SQL Server on VMware® Best Practices Guide

Performance Best Practices General
Performance Best Practices for VMware vSphere™ 4.1
Performance Troubleshooting for VMware vSphere 4

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