50 Reasons to Virtualize Your SQL Server

The whole SQL Server world seems like it’s moving towards virtualization, and you’re wondering “why would anyone want to do that?”

Change is hard; change is uncomfortable.  It’s a whole lot easier just doing what you’ve always done, but, dear reader, I promise you, if you hesitate for too long, you’re going to get trampled by the stampeding herd. The early adopters¹ jumped aboard the virtualization bandwagon years ago; the mainstream majority is now in the process of embracing the technology. Wait much longer, and you’ll be accused of being a laggard, and we wouldn’t want that, would we?  Especially if hesitating were to compromise database performance, increase exposure to disastrous downtime, and/or cost more.

There’s a lot of reasons to move SQL Server– and all your servers — to a virtualized environment; here are 50 reasons that I can think of…

1. It’s free if you pick the right virtualization product.
2. You can have quicker access to your servers because the virtualization software has a central manager that makes it so.
3. Deploying servers is faster when they’re virtual servers.
4. Quicker CD/DVD mount.
5. You can quickly allocate additional RAM or disk storage to a VM (virtual machine).
6. You can move virtual servers from one VM to another.
7. You can restore from image backups that are routinely taken as part of the VM environment.
8. You can deploy applications to production more quickly, and with more flexibility, on a VM.
9. You can increase your hardware utilization by 50% or more if you virtualize.
10. Your hardware and software capital costs can be decreased by 40% or more if you virtualize.
11. You can reduce operating costs by 50% or more with virtualization.
12. You can be green: virtualizing can save energy, which maps to a smaller carbon footprint.
13. You can reduce your TCO (total cost of ownership) by virtualizing.
14. You can re-direct the capital that you saved when you virtualized the servers to other projects.
15. Virtualization allows you to redirect unspent capital to other projects.
16. When you virtualize you get to play with a SAN (hopefully).
17. Instead of “100 servers, 100 databases” you can say “1 server, 100 databases” — of course, you may still have 100 VMs…
18. You can move database “guests” from hardware to hardware, quickly, without crashing the system, and with minimum disruption to online customers.
19. You’re justified in kicking other “guest” systems off your VM— SQL Server needs resources for good performance — and move them over to their own VM.
20. You get to use cool new acronyms (like LUN or HBA) when you use a SAN.
21. You get to help design multi-pathing networks for your SAN, unless you’re the SAN administrator, in which case you get to design it yourself.
22. You get to whiteboard the network (or forever be lost in the nests of wiring!)
23. When you virtualize you don’t have to be apologetic about asking others for their use patterns, scheduled jobs, anti-virus applications, patch deployment schedules, etc.
24. You get to compare SAN-specs at the next geek-fest (”My SAN is bigger than your SAN…”)
25. You can use cool tools like SQLIO to test the SAN speed.
26. You may get SAN through-put bragging rights.
27. You get to play peek and poke trying to figure out why the page file looks normal but SQL Server performance is in the toilet. (Don’t worry, there’s an app for that!)
28. You get to monitor how long SQL Server backup jobs take as a measure of SAN performance (”the canary in the coal mine”).
29. You get to be best friends with Windows PerfMon and the three best metrics for maintaining virtualization:
    • Physical Disk: Avg Disk sec/Read and Avg Disk sec/Write, measures SAN performance
    • System: Processor Queue Length, measures CPU contention
    • SQL Server Buffer Manager: Page Life Expectancy, measures memory allocation
30. You may be able to change jobs, from database administrator to SAN administrator.
31. You may get to replace ordinary database backups with SAN storage snapshot backups — they run SO much faster than regular backups!
32. You get to brag about how expensive your SAN was and how cool you were when arguing to get it in the first place.
33. You get to practice for the eventual shift to Cloud computing!
34. You can give developers their own sandbox(es) to play in by simply spinning up one or more VMs.
35. You can build a world-class test environment in less than a day.
36. You can run out of SQL Server licenses faster than you ever thought possible!
37. You can take an occasional day off from work — the whole weekend, maybe?
38. You can train and mentor your “grasshoppers” by giving them their own sandbox, so they won’t bring production crashing down.
39. You can experiment with and compare different server configurations without having to buy more hardware.
40. You can feel cool and ahead of the crowd — well, ahead of the laggards, anyway.
41. You can reduce face time with difficult end-users — just send over a new image and they’re up, up and away!
42. You can reduce face time with geeks — when they have a problem you can spin up an image and they can test to their heart’s content!
43. You have bragging rights for exploiting the latest cost containment solution — aren’t you clever?
44. You can provide red meat for your geeks; happy talent = retained talent.
45. The business continuity program gets a lift from new knowledge applied to minimize your company’s IT risk exposure — that makes your boss happy.
46. You can manage your servers and the VM cluster from your Smartphone.
47. Clients who require compliance can actually “inspect” your system without risk of harm to your production servers.
48. You can be the first on the block to adopt server virtualization (even now).
49. You can show your peers and colleagues how to scale back on data center space and do more with less.
50. You can quickly clone a very complex configuration that would have taken weeks to set up if you weren’t using virtualization.

¹ Crossing the Chasm (1991, revised 1999), by Geoffrey A. Moore