I have a Linux server in a small company (3 users) acting as a domain server and running two VMs under VMware: one has SQL Server 2000 on it and one has SQL Server 2005, in each case running on Win2k. Each of the SQL Servers has a couple of small-but-important databases.
As near as I can tell, the Linux server spends its life utterly bored. It has 2GB of memory, but even with the VMs it never uses more than about 512MB, with the rest being allocated to cache.
But the VM performance stinks! The databases are slower than before I moved them from dedicated (but ancient) machines. If a database hasn't been used for a while, you can go have a coffee before it starts responding again.
What can I do to improve the performance?
Best Answer
I had a similar problem. Virtual disks kill performance. Try to get as much data into memory as possible. I eventually put the disk intensive VM's onto its own RAID stack.
Most people in OIT do not recommend putting disk intensive applications into a VM because of this reason. You also didn't specify which VMWare product you are using. ESXi was released for free not to long ago, if you are not using that you may want to try it. It may help you get that last bit of performance you need.