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Upcoming Events:
A couple of weeks ago I posted about SQL Server running in a VM and how disk writes were assured to happen in contradiction to a poorly written article on SQL Solutions. After working with VMware Engineering there’s now a KB article that talks about how and when I/O writes happen with different VMware products. Below is the full text of the KB article. You can also find the source here.
Eight new ESX configurations have been approved by Microsoft for support under the Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP). The new configs allow up to 64 GB memory in any virtual machine. This is an increase from the previous 4 GB limit, and will be useful to customers deploying Exchange Server, SQL Server, or any memory-intensive application. All future SVVP configs will be listed at our product’s maximum memory limit.
Under SVVP, any customer will be supported by Microsoft when running any of a long list of Microsoft products on VMware. Any version of Windows back to Windows Server 2000 SP4 is also supported, including all OS roles such as Active Directory, File Services, etc.
Four new ESX 3.5 update 2 configurations are posted now for both Intel and AMD processors. Four more ESX 3.5 update 3 configurations should appear before mid-month. ESXi configurations for u2 and u3 are in progress as well.
Microsoft’s formal support policy for virtual platforms is here. VMware’s web page describing Microsoft support is here.
These new configurations now allow full Microsoft SVVP support for maximum VM sizes on VMware’s platform. They also exceed all other competitive hypervisor certification levels. Kudos to the team at VMware for the hard work on these certification tests as well as to Microsoft for a great certification and support program. As always, I hope other large ISVs take note of this and follow suit soon.
I was reading through one of my more favorite blogs (vinternals) today and it was brought to my attention that Symantec does not support VMotion. I found that a little shocking. No real reason was given for this in the Symantec KB other than intermittent communications. I highly doubt that’s because of VMotion since (a) VMotion doesn’t occur very often and (b) network communication isn’t dropped with a VMotion. And if you’re not going to support VMotion on VMware then where is the lack of support for live migration from the other vendors which operates in the same manner? It sounds to me like someone over at Symantec doesn’t understand what’s going on. Time for some alliances work. In the mean time I agree with the vinternal guy – customers need to push back on Symantec and tell them it’s time to belly up to the virtualization bar and start doing some real troubleshooting of their issues.
(Via vinternals.)
Symantec has updated their support policy. Apparently the old link above was a premature KB article that accidently got released. Good to see they do know what’s going on. Here’s the new link.
Microsoft sure is keeping up their end of the deal on SVVP. They recently added SQL Server 2005 to the list of supported applications. I had always wondered why that one was missing since most customers hadn’t upgraded to SQL Server 2008 just yet. This is more good news for Microsoft support in a virtualized environment. I just wish the other major vendors out there (Oracle in particular) would get a clue and follow Microsoft’s leadership on this.
The short answer is yes. I get the question a lot from customers so I thought a short blog post with the details would be in order.
An update on the Exchange support issue – it’s supported as of September 1, 2008 under SVVP.
There’s a good write-up of the University of Plymouths Exchange 2007 virtualization project. I just met with 2 customers this past week that both asked about virtualizing Exchange 2007. They both brought up the two biggest questions on Exchange virtualization: what about performance and will Microsoft support it. There’s good answers for both.
VMware recently submitted some new test results to Microsoft’s SVVP certification. The new results can be found here. This includes higher memory limits as well as certification for 32-bit or 64-bit on Intel and AMD processors. Testing continues for even larger workloads as well as more operating system flavors.
I try and write something new 1-2 times per week. I'll update more when I'm in the office and possibly less when I'm out and traveling. If there's something you'd really like me to hear my thoughts on then just email me.
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