VMWARE (esxi) and NAV 3.7

michalk

Hi there - I'd like to ask those who uses NAV with native DB on virtual machines about their opinions. Is that reliable and good-performance solution (comparing to physical machine setups)?

TIA

matttrax

From my experience it's never a good idea to run your database on a virtual machine. Granted I am almost always using SQL and usually dealing with pretty big databases. It depends on how many writes and reads you are doing to your database. If you're small, very few transactions, you probably won't have any issues with a VM. But, if you have the option between physical and VM, go physical.

michalk

matttrax wrote:

From my experience it's never a good idea to run your database on a virtual machine. Granted I am almost always using SQL and usually dealing with pretty big databases. It depends on how many writes and reads you are doing to your database. If you're small, very few transactions, you probably won't have any issues with a VM. But, if you have the option between physical and VM, go physical.

Tnx for response - my databse is out 60 gigs. Below stats from 2 files - dunno if it is many write/reads
Field Value
No. 4
File Name Data05.fdb
Size (KB) 7000000
Total Reads 156750
Mean Read Time (ms) 5
Reads in Queue 0
Total Writes 22177
Mean Write Time (ms) 4
Writes in Queue 0
Disk Load (%) 0

Field Value
No. 1
File Name NoveData02.fdb
Size (KB) 7000000
Total Reads 158836
Mean Read Time (ms) 5
Reads in Queue 0
Total Writes 21989
Mean Write Time (ms) 5
Writes in Queue 0
Disk Load (%) 0

matttrax

I personally wouldn't put a 60GB database on a VM. We currently run a 90GB on SQL and wouldn't even consider it.

Please keep in mind that I am by no means a database expert. My knowledge on databases housed on VMs comes from what our DBA has experience with and our limited testing of it. You may find some white papers out there saying it's ok to do it, but most of what I have seen come from the VM companies themselves. I'm sure if you throw enough power behind the VM it will perform the same as a physical, but the software to run that VM will eat up CPU, so you'll have to give it more to see the same results as on a physical.

michalk

matttrax wrote:

I personally wouldn't put a 60GB database on a VM. We currently run a 90GB on SQL and wouldn't even consider it.

Please keep in mind that I am by no means a database expert. My knowledge on databases housed on VMs comes from what our DBA has experience with and our limited testing of it. You may find some white papers out there saying it's ok to do it, but most of what I have seen come from the VM companies themselves. I'm sure if you throw enough power behind the VM it will perform the same as a physical, but the software to run that VM will eat up CPU, so you'll have to give it more to see the same results as on a physical.

I'll try and put it productively for one week Let's see what users 'll say

Thank You a lot for Your time

Rgds
M

fverkel

We use VMWare for almost a year. Our biggest database is 80 GB native, 75 concurrent users, Navision 3.7.
Works fine, not slower than before the virtualization.

Christian_Buehl

We transferred our native database to esx 3.5 and got only benefits from this step. (OK the old server was really outaged)

Benefits I encountered:
- much faster reboot (in case of system updates etc.)
- automatic redundancy (in my case ony in theory, as I have no vmotion)
- benefits from the fast and reliable system
- free extentibility (If I need more memory, I add it)
- less worry about space
And for me it's much easier to get a budget for 10-15 servers than just for 1 application.
For sure, if I would run it natively on the VMWare server (a 2x4 core machine) it will be a bit faster. But this is no requirement and the bottlenecks are more on the client.
I would say the esx is a economic choice. Especially navision is a hot candidate for virtualization (Compare CPU and Disk usage on your current system and check if you ever got more than 50%). With esx4 you might even consider to transfer the sql server to the vmware (as the real performance loss is there just between 3 and 7% against a native system.

Only during a hotcopy it takes much resources.
regards

ta5

Have a look at this:
http://www.windowsservercatalog.com/svv ... wizard.htm

This page is officially referenced by Microsoft if you ask any question about virtualisation.

Regards
Thomas