Collision Course or Prime Opportunity: Virtualization and SQL Server

Virtualization is an exciting technology because it offers enterprises a variety of ways to save costs, shrink the footprint of their data centers, and reduce the complexity of their infrastructure.

However, not every application is well suited to virtualization. Before virtualizing SQL Server, carefully consider the benefits and drawbacks of virtualization. Does the application (or applications) in your enterprise run under those use cases that are best served by virtualization? Are you willing and able to undergo the additional troubleshooting and diagnostic work when there's a performance problem? Can your business users accept potentially worse performance or different SLAs?

Each of these questions and more should be answered in a comprehensive server virtualization strategy. This paper explores some of the challenges and considerations you should think about as you look at SQL Server virtualization in your environment.