What are your experiences with running SQL server in a virtual pc? Currently we have an sql2008 instance running in a virtual machine. Both CPU's hit the roof the moment a query is executed.
what are your experiences and what do you suggest in this matter?
Are you using VMWare? If so apply service packs from back in September and since.
Otherwise you can limit the resources that 2008 uses if you have no limited of a machine.
I've had some serious performance issues using virtualised SQL servers for database heavy applications (ETL development). See this Stackoverflow post for a run-down on my experiences and the outcomes of digging into the underlying issues.
Essentially a DB heavy process like ETL will thrash the I/O (more sequential operations, so it isn't waiting for disk seeks as much as an OLTP app) and Translation Lookaside Buffer (large data sets), both of which are very slow on a naively virtualised image. The posting links out to this whitepaper on AMD's site (written by a vendor so take with a grain of salt) which (in between extolling the virtues of AMD's new Opteron chips) talks a bit about the underlying issues.