In my current role with Rackspace (SharePoint Architect), I am building several “core offering” SharePoint configurations. As the size has been growing in complexity I’ve started experimenting with using virtual servers (VMware ESX) for the application servers. My testing has shown that I can increase the server density without having to add additional boxes.
Today, a collegue direceted me to a post about virtualizing SharePoint with tests that show a 4% increase in performance and saving 74% on power consumption. Take a look at a few points from the article:
In terms of performance, (omitting the SQL back-end – which has been virtualized in other tests showing EXCELLENT performance), across 3 baseline tests, on average:
- Our Virtualized SharePoint server infrastructure farm out-performed the physical SharePoint farm by 4%,
- But only used 26% of the electrical power (watts) required to power the physical server infrastructure – put another way, that’s a 74% power saving over physical, put yet another way, going physical means 380% more power.
- 1017 Watts versus 3952 Watts. 6 Power cords versus 22
Reason to go virtual:
- More computing power in less space
- Higher level of fault tolerance (via vmotion)
- Less power consumption
- Less space required
Tags: SharePoint, Virtualization
Excellent find. There is a lot of untapped potential for virtualization for SharePoint. I’m currently working on a project using VMware ESX for our SharePoint servers. Performance is great, but that VMotion is what has really impressed me.