SQL SERVER – 2008 – Server Consolidation WhitePaper Download

Server Consolidation with SQL Server 2008
Writer: Martin Ellis
Reviewer: Prem Mehra,Lindsey Allen, Tiffany Wissner, Sambit Samal
Published: March 2009

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 supports multiple options for server consolidation, which provides organizations with the flexibility to choose the consolidation approach that best meets their requirements to centralize data services management and reduce hardware and maintenance costs. By providing centralized management, auditing, and monitoring capabilities, SQL Server 2008 makes it easy to manage multiple databases and data services, which significantly reduces administrative overheads in large enterprises. Finally, SQL Server 2008 provides the reassurance of industry-leading performance and scalability, and unprecedented control over server resource to maximize the performance of consolidated data services.

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Abstract courtesy : Microsoft

What to Check Before Server Consolidation

Consolidation sounds simple on paper: fewer servers and less hardware to look after. In practice, the work is in the details. There are three common ways to do it. You can put many databases on one instance, run several instances on one machine, or move each server into its own virtual machine on shared hardware. Each option trades isolation against simplicity.

Before I move anything, I look at these points:

• Collation. If the databases and the new instance use different collations, queries that join to temp tables can fail with collation conflict errors.
• Logins, SQL Agent jobs, linked servers and SSIS packages. None of these live inside the user database, so each one must be moved separately.
• Workload timing. Two busy systems that peak at the same hour will fight for CPU, memory and tempdb.
• Security. Anyone with sysadmin rights on the shared instance can see every database on it.
• Maintenance windows. One restart or one patch now affects every application on that server.

SQL Server 2008 also added Resource Governor in Enterprise Edition, which lets you limit how much CPU and memory one workload can take. It helps, but it does not replace planning. Measure each server during a normal week first, add the numbers up, and leave room for growth. Also plan how you would move a database back if the combined server struggles in the first weeks.

Published by Pinal Dave on SQLAuthority. More of my work at pinaldave.com.