Here are some tips from a magazine article about optimizing SQL Server in a virtual environment:
- Check CPU Usage Regularly
- Disable Memory Balloon Drivers
- Don’t Assume All Database Server Memory Can Be Shared
- Get Back to the Storage Configuration Basics
- Deduplicate Data
- Disable the Lock Pages in Memory Option
- Monitor the VMs and the Physical Host
If you are using your server for self-service reporting, we recommend the following instead of doing all that work:
- Stay physical. Don’t virtualize the database. While it works great for web servers, the added overhead and complexity isn’t worth it.
- Go 64-bit. Absolutetly no reason not to and there are huge benefits for databases larger then 4 GB.
- Stick with one instance. You can actually query across different tables in different databases if you keep them in the same instance.
- Buy lots of memory. It’s orders or magnitude cheaper than hiring a DBA to optimize your database or having a developer learn how to do it.
- Go with SSDs if your database will fit on one. Can be much much faster for some queries.
