PerformancePoint Server and Hyper-V on a test machine
Hello, this is Norm. I have been tinkering with Hyper-V, which I loaded onto a Dell Optiplex 745 machine. See below the workarounds I had to incorporate to make it Hyper-V ready.
While researching storage options, I found two helpful blog posts.
- Storage options for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V: great for conceptualizing VHD or pass-through disks.
- More on Storage Options for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V: a great diagram that corresponds to the conceptual post.
From my research and some advice from one of our testers, I created my own diagram that will apply for the release of SP2 for PerformancePoint Server.
So, the following diagram is an example of a single-machine installation of PerformancePoint Server 2007 (Planning Server or Monitoring Server), an instance of SQL Server, and the corresponding storage configuration.
The diagram shows the following.
- Disk 1 is a disk directly attached to the host on which the Hyper-V software is installed. The host is the physical computer running the Hyper-V software.
- Disk 2 is the disk on which the VHD file is running PerformancePoint Server. Disk 2 is directly attached on the host.
- Disk 3 uses the pass-through storage option to directly expose it to the guest partition on which SQL Server is installed. This allows the guest to “bypass” the host’s file system.
- Disk 4 uses the pass-through storage option to directly expose it to the guest partition on which SQL Server Analysis Services is installed.
Note: The pass-through storage option prevents you from using VHD-related storage features such as VHD snapshots, dynamically expanding VHDs and differencing VHDs.
The following advantages are realized in this single-machine installation configuration.
- The pass-through storage option allows you to maximize SQL Server performance by freeing resources for PerformancePoint Server back-up and restore.
- The PerformancePoint Server is managed in a VHD with the prerequisites and configuration settings and makes a good candidate for using the snapshot feature.
- The guest partition for PerformancePoint Server is on a separate disk that is attached to the host so that the hard drive spindle does the work for only one operating system.
Note: It is important that you install the integration components on the guest partition. The integration components are the additional software you run on the guest to better support Hyper-V. Windows Server 2008 already ships with Hyper-V Integration Components, but older operating systems will need to install them separately.
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The Dell Optiplex 745 workarounds for Hyper-V. You might have a better solution to the problems -please comment.
- Problem: The doesn't let you add another disk. You have to upgrade to larger disk.
- Solution: I found a PCI 4 Internal SATA II Ports Controller Card - SIL3124 and a HP DN733A SATA Power Adapter Cable so that I can add disks. Note that you need a PCI card that is Vista compatible.
- Problem: I only had 2 GB for memory.
- Solution: Upgrade to 8 GB. Kingston (and others) sell a 2 GB stick (2 GB 667 MHz 240-pin DIMM DDR2 Memory Module for Dell Optiplex 745).
Comments
- Anonymous
January 01, 2003
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