Re: Michael Noel and SharePoint Virtualisation

This was really good…

Michael Noel did a really good talk about virtualising SharePoint using either HyperV or Vmware. ( and he also mentioned no 3 in virtualisation - Cirtix Xen Server)

Still cannot believe Michael flew in from the states today and is flying out again today….just to talk to me and Peter regarding virtualising SharePoint…
Well actually there were a few others there….

He’s written a few SharePoint and isa server books and whitepapers for Microsoft etc…He knew his stuff.
One of his clients has 250,000 SharePoint Users!

Don’t virtualise Sql Server was one very important point…This is due to the high I/O of Sql Server
Next to go physical would be Index Server….
Other Virtuals only lose 2% to 3% of CPU performance so web servers do make a good case for Virtualisation.

Watch the NUMA boundaries…giving to much Ram for a virtual doesn’t equate to better performance if the NUMA boundary is hit..--> Too much paging etc...
Good rule of thumb … Ram per vm = Ram/CPUs…..
e.g two quad cores --> 8 cpus --> 64G of Ram --> 64/6 = 8G per virtual.

Hyper V guys need to get Ms Virtual Machine Manger 2008 – came out in Oct 2008…

Check out:
http://tinyurl.com/virtualsp
http://tinyurl.com/edgenoel2
http://tinyurl.com/edgenoel3

Virtual Machine Manager 2008 is out now….
System Centre Data Protection Manager 2007 great for shadow copies to restore sharepoint servers faster..

VMware has a cool tool P2V (free now!!) for copying physica to Virtual Machines…
Will need to email some people who asked me about this this year….

Big sites get vmware ESX or Citrix xen server 5 for vmotion or xen motion for great fail over if one server goes down.

Synergy and AvePoint have some SharePoint Replicators? … Will need to check these out…

Peter came along because apart from hyper v he is now playing with vmware---
It was good that Michael confirmed what I had hinted to the guys about -- don't virtualise SQL Server..That being said, up to 100 users should push sq server too far? Maybe not unless they are really using SharePoint by using an addon like Wisdom DMF where they can easily open and save their documents....Then take no chances...