Our production Sharepoint server serves around 800 users and runs together with its SQL Server on a physical dual-core machine.
The network guys now to put as much as possible on VMWare. The Sharepoint server and the SQL Server will be put on different servers.
Does anyone have experience of running a production-level Sharepoint server on a VM?
We run CRM under VMWare with no problems. If you have a properly configured ESX 3.0 or 3.5, with appropriate resources it is perfectly OK.
The sharepoint server: yes. The database server: I wouldn't.
Our organisation is backing away from virtual database servers and going towards large multi-node, multi-instance clusters.
Most of our app/web servers are virtual.
Have a look what Michael Noel says
http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/
He has a ppt where he also speaks about things to look after http://www.google.se/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=&cd=5&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sharepointusers.org.au%2FSydney%2FUser%2520Group%2520Presentations%2FVirtualizingSPComponents%2520-%2520November%25202008.ppt&ei=4vTdScutFtbisAb6j92zDA&usg=AFQjCNF5D68IsDrtTqTlQj075BNJ9COi9A&sig2=pVr_iV_9Gvt9Icxx4iq7Eg
I have been in a project where we have had performance issues with Sharepoint and the feeling I have is that if you have a virtual environment this is what people mostly blame. Dependent if it is just a out of the box Sharepoint installation or a more customized mission critical environment I should at least think about doing some Load tests and see how the installation scales....
Regards Magnus
Ps. lesson learned is that you have to test where the limits are...
Remember Microsoft's supportability before virtualizing any environment:
Microsoft server software and supported virtualization environments http://support.microsoft.com/kb/957006/en-us This link tells about which products are supported under virtualized environments
Windows Server Catalog http://www.windowsservercatalog.com/results.aspx?&bCatID=1521&cpID=0&avc=0&ava=0&avq=0&OR=1&PGS=25 This link defines which hardware vitualization softwares Microsoft Supports
Sharepoint Portal Server 2003 isn't supported when vitualized, that means that if you have a problem and need Microsoft's help, you'll have to reproduce it in a physical box.
We run SharePoint and SQL Server on separate VMs on VMWare ESX in our datacenter. ESX does not add much of a disk I/O performance hit, but the trick is to use fast drives (15K RPM). We found that SharePoint page load times were greatly improved by this simple change in the hardware. Since all of the configuration data for SharePoint is stored in SQL Server, all page loads are dependent on reading data out of the DB, and assembling it in IIS.