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DexterstevensFlag for Afghanistan

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VMWARE Virtual Machine

We are running a SBS 2003 server with over 16Gb of memory and 2x Dual Xeons obviously SBS 2003 is only 32 Bit and can not take advantage of the full resources...

We would therefore consider running a VM machine inside with a say x64 Win 7 Host and assigning all of the spare memory to this say 12Gb (32bit only recognises 3 -4 Gb) we could then run MS SQL inside this machine and utilise all the resources more efficiently.

Q. Does this logic make sense and would work?
Q. Does windows 32bit only recognise certain number of processor cores so again the same logic could be used to assign spare cores to VM?

Q. if SBS 2003 only see 4gb memory assigning the other 12gb would make no difference but would it allocate the correct next 12gb and allocate correctly?

Q. would any of this effect network performance? and wold the MS SQL server running inside the VM ware host be the most efficient way?
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Getsum_Bloodlust
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DO you have physical 64Bit architecture?
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Q. Does this logic make sense and would work?

Does Task Manager see 16GB in the current OS?
Do you have a 64 bit Processor? Do you have Intel-VT or AMD-V enabled in the BIOS.
Type 2 Hypervisors which you propose are slow.

Q. Does windows 32bit only recognise certain number of processor cores so again the same logic could be used to assign spare cores to VM?


It depends on your license. The Hypervisor would see the same processors and cores the Host OS does.

Q. if SBS 2003 only see 4gb memory assigning the other 12gb would make no difference but would it allocate the correct next 12gb and allocate correctly?

You may have to change the HOST OS, before the Hypervisor is able to make use of the extra memory.

Q. would any of this effect network performance? and wold the MS SQL server running inside the VM ware host be the most efficient way?

No.

If you server was on the HCL for VMware ESXi, it would be better to use VMware ESXi on the server, and P2V SBS2003, and run under VMware ESXi.

But only if the license was transferable, because SBS 2003, OEM is not.
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ASKER

The server has 2x opteron AMD x64 8 Core processors so yes the hardware is x64bit and bang up to date.. The OS only sees both processors but only 4gb memory but there is 16Gb

To update SBS would take re - licencing of all the users approx 20 but we need to efficiently run an SQL server for a 3rd party app

So the idea run a host OS inside vmware workstation which runs inside the SBS 2003 allocate the extra memory to the VM and allocate a few cores as well normal systems run  normally and we can utilise extra resources

yes ?
Sounds like this could be done in theory.
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
Avatar of Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
Andrew Hancock (VMware vExpert PRO / EE Fellow/British Beekeeper)
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but why do you have a 16GB, Dual Opteron 64bit Server, with SBS2003 32bit installed?
Would this reduce performance in any way on the SBS 2003 OS as we would technically be using resources it is not!

Would we be able to achieve better results from the VM MS SQL 2008 rather than putting it on a separate machine with say 4 or 6gb memory as we cloud allocate a full 12gb from the current server with opterons!
What CPU Utilisation are you using at present?

Clearly you are not using more than 4GB!
I do not think performance would be worse, than what it currently is, and you would be using all the resources of the server using VMware vSphere Hypervisor for FREE!.

http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere-hypervisor/overview.html

What is the server?