SharePoint and Beyond

I know a number of customers and organizations out there who have taken the plunge and are moving Production based servers to a level of virtualization not seen in past years.  With that in mind we are constantly being asked for our best Architecture and Support recommendations on running SharePoint in a virtual environment so I thought I would share some thoughts and links on the subject.

Microsoft has published their Support guidlines for running SharePoint on a Virtual Environment.  They have taken the stance on supporting SharePoint running on Hyper-V and support for third parties as defined in a KB Article.  Additionally Microsoft has established the Server Virtualization Validation Page (SVVP).  For full details see the blog entry from the SharePoint Team from August 18th. 

Michael Donovan has done a great job evaluating Hyper-V versus Virtual Server.  This is a great comparison and has convinced me to switch to Hyper-V where possible.

Now for the Infrastrucute recommendations Microsoft has stated they will have something shortly.  But until then I tend to go with the experience I have gained.

1. WFE’s as a single role can be built on a Virtual Server
2. Index and Query should be evaluated for load and IO and when necessary located on physical hardware.
3. The SQL Backend for SharePoint should always be placed on a physical server, clustered whenever possible.   This is due to the Processor, RAM and IO requirements.
4. Test and Development environments should be evaluated on an ongoing basis on whether physical environments are necessary.

I am willing to reevaluate and plan differently I look forward to comments and feedback.