Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 3. Architecting for Performance: The Right
Hypervisor
In this chapter, we discuss what a hypervisor is and the different types of virtualization
hypervisors on the market. We also discuss why some hypervisors run applications true
to the native or physical stack whereas other hypervisors do not.
This is especially important to understand given that a SQL Server database is one of
the most complex applications you may ever virtualize. When a hypervisor does not run
true to the physical stack, it is possible to encounter bugs that would not exist in the
physical world, thus introducing an additional level of complexity and risk that you need
to be aware of.
We look at the different generations of VMware vSphere hypervisor in this chapter. Just
as there are many versions of the SQL Server database, there are many versions of the
vSphere hypervisor. You would not run your most demanding SQL server workloads on
SQL Server 2000, just as you would not run your most demanding virtualized
workloads on VMware Infrastructure 3.0. It's important that you are running on a
version of vSphere that was built to support the complex resource needs and demands of
a SQL Server database. Finally, we discuss some additional things to consider when
virtualizing your SQL Server database.
What Is a Hypervisor?
To help you better understand what a hypervisor is and the role it plays, let's look at a
portion of a typical infrastructure before and after it has been virtualized. Figure 3.1
illustrates a small slice of a much larger infrastructure. Imagine you have three physical
servers. Each server is running a different operating system. One server or physical host
is running a flavor of Linux, another server is running a version of the Windows Server
2008 operating system, and the final server is running a version of the Windows Server
2012 operating system. For the purposes of this example, it is not important what
version of the particular operating system the different physical machines are running.
 
 
 
Search WWH ::




Custom Search