Explore

Architecting Your Microsoft SQL Server Workloads on VMware Cloud Foundation

Pradeep AdapaLeave a comment

Introduction:

I have attended this session in Explore 2024 Las Vegas and here is what I have learnt from this session in regards to architecting Microsoft SQL Server in the vSphere Environment. Even though the session heading shows that it is about VCF ( VMware Cloud Foundation), the reality is that these suggestions and recommendations are for vSphere. VCF is a combination of vSphere, VSAN, NSX and Aria Suite.

NOTE: I know its already close to VMware Explore 2025 but I found these on my phone from last year’s Explore and wanted to Post before I totally forget about these options in regards to SQL Server and its Performance on vSphere.

Below are few of the improvements to be made to the SQL Server VMs and VMware Best Practices (As shown in Explore 2024)

NUMA: Recommended VCPU Configuration

Here are the optimal numbers for vCPU per SQL Server VM

Storage Best Practices

Here are the Storage Best Practices for a SQL Server VM on VSAN Storage and VMFS Storage

Best Practices for VM Disk Layout

VM Disk Layout example

Network Best Practices

These are the network best practices and I have seen much better network performance with VMXNET3 NIC on SQL Server 2016 and up Servers (VMs)

SQL Server High Availability Options

HA Options for SQL Server, I would strongly advice against using RDM disks on the SQL Server VM
HA Options Example on a SQL Server VM

Power Management of the VMs

SQL Server Configuration

This is the SQL Server Configuration (few of the best practices)

SQL Server High Availability

Windows RSS Options

I personally haven’t seen the RSS options in the windows server configured but these are the options which could help.