Please start any new threads on our new site at https://forums.sqlteam.com. We've got lots of great SQL Server experts to answer whatever question you can come up with.

 All Forums
 General SQL Server Forums
 New to SQL Server Administration
 Windows Server 2003 R2 x86 Enterprise w/SQL 2005

Author  Topic 

ngerasimatos
Starting Member

1 Post

Posted - 2011-02-01 : 18:28:02
Never had to spend much time on Win 2003 x86 Enterprise running SQL 2005 however I wanted to know the best practices for configuring this as a VM on ESX 4.1

VMs will be dedicated SQL boxes, and storage is all EMC. What specific settings do I need to make sure are checked and enabled for the VMs in the Guest OS level? They will each have 2 processors and 16GB of RAM.

/3GB switch? /PAE? /AWE?

Anything else?

russell
Pyro-ma-ni-yak

5072 Posts

Posted - 2011-02-02 : 10:08:10
Why not use 64x?

Grant Lock Pages in Memory to service account.

By the way, configure SQL on VM just as you would on a dedicated box.

Make sure that the ESX doesn't dynamically resize guests. Make sure ESX host is not over-provisioned -- or at least that it can't take resources from the SQL guests. These cause hangs and crashes on SQL guests
Go to Top of Page

jeffw8713
Aged Yak Warrior

819 Posts

Posted - 2011-02-02 : 15:26:02
I wouldn't install and create an x86 dedicated SQL Server box unless there is a documented requirement for that system. The only things that could cause issues on x64 are linked servers where you don't have an x64 driver, SSIS packages that need to connect to other systems without x64 drivers and extended procedures that cannot be rebuilt for x64.

With that said, if you absolutely need an x86 box - then you will need to make sure the OS and SQL Server can see all of the allocated memory. That is usually PAE, but on newer OS's it isn't needed. Once you have that, then you need to Grant Lock Pages in memory to the service account and enable AWE in SQL Server.

Jeff
Go to Top of Page
   

- Advertisement -