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TimothyAWiseman avatar image
TimothyAWiseman asked

SQL Server on Linux

For a particular project that is coming up, I am trying to expand my knowledge of Linux, so I am going to set up a Linux system at home. Rather than dual booting, I am thinking about putting SQL Server on a Windows Virtual Machine with Linux as the host at least until this project is over when I will probably switch back to Linux. So, I have a couple of different, but interrelated questions:

How well does this work? This is only a test machine at home, so I can easily accept a fair bit of degradation, but if it is going to be a horrible reduction in performance I will dual boot instead.

Is there a particular virtual machine manager I should look at to go this route? Since this is my personal machine, price is an issue but I am quite happy to pay a reasonable amount.

And finally, given the choice of VMM, is there a particular Linux Distro I should be looking at?

Edit: I cross-posted this at superuser.com I think it may be appropriate at both sites and is likely to reach different groups at each, more perspectives are good.

performancevirtualizationlinux
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Grant Fritchey avatar image Grant Fritchey ♦♦ commented ·
Not even going to try to provide an answer 'cause I don't know. I will say this though, several MVP's, Aaron Bertrand for example, are Mac heads. The Mac OS is a version of Unix now. They're running SQL Server on virtual machines pretty happily. So, it can be done, but I don't have details.
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TimothyAWiseman avatar image TimothyAWiseman commented ·
@Grant, thanks. That at least tells me that virtualizing instead of dual booting makes sense.
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TimothyAWiseman avatar image TimothyAWiseman commented ·
Well, my plans actually got put on hold for a while, but thanks everyone.
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2 Answers

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Blackhawk-17 avatar image
Blackhawk-17 answered

You can certainly virtualize. That's only a matter of abstracting hardware.

It does put an additional software layer between SQL Server and the hardware.

It all comes down to what kind of response you require. Are you virtualized from drive resources or do you have RAW access?

I used to run DOS/Windows on a MAC in the 90's with SoftWindows. It worked but I wasn't going to run mission critical things on it.

When you look at it VMware is running on Red Hat... so do what you need. Just remember that SQL Server is optimized to interface with Windows and the more direct access it has to hardware the better.

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Fatherjack avatar image
Fatherjack answered

This may not be what you are after but I'm adding it anyway... I run windows Vista as a host with an XP vm to host SQL Server. I use at home as you are suggesting you will be doing but its only there for me to test stuff, to try things out and for a little bit of learning. I use Sun's Virtual Box and it does pretty well. I have a bit of a problem with mouse control over remote desktop connection sometimes. It has a Linux version you might want to try.

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