Progress 9.1E on Hypervisor

[SSuhaib]

Hi DBAs,

Progress 9.1E, Windows 2003.

We wish to install virtualisation application in our windows intel server. Can any one please recommend any hypervisor (preferred is VMWare) to install in windows 2003 server. Is anyone using VMware with Progress 9.1e on windows? If so what are the issues involved like performace etc. I will be grateful if you could share youe experiances and also Progress recommendation in the form of URL (I have gone through availability guide but thats not enough !).

Thanks in advance

 

[TomBascom]

9.1E is ancient, obsolete and only service pack 4 is "supported" (TS will lend you a shoulder to cry on if you have a problem). You should upgrade.

"Hypervisors" were not even a glimmer in anyone's eye 12 years ago when v9 was being developed.

None the less... it will "work".

Performance issues are the same as always. A virtualization layer, of course, adds a layer of indirection and this will have a cost. Some of that is simply the base VM but most of it is usually because the IO gets abstracted -- in particular the disk subsystem is very often built around something that is entirely unsuitable to databases (parity based RAID schemes such as RAID5 or RAID6 can only ever provide a parody of performance...) A more subtle issue, under heavy load (if IO is not an issue), is that latch contention can become a bigger problem sooner as compared to running the same load on an unvirtualized system.

If you are doing this to move from 10 year old hardware to something new then the main thing to watch out for is taking a step backwards on the disk IO. If the older system has a properly designed set of disks it may very out-perform a nice new and very expensive system with a bad RAID choice.