SQL Physical Server vs Hyper-V or VM

Question

We had Brent Ozar evaluate our SQL Environment about a year ago , one of the recommendations was to moved from Virtual to a Physical Server but there were no further explanations as to the PROs and CONs of Physical vs Virtual.
This is an SQL server for Dynamics GP  ERP system and they also recommented to go from 8GB of ram to 128GB ram
Any comments appreciated.

Answer 1

Hi Elant,
Regarding the Pros and Cons of Physical vs Virtual, they’re briefly described in the below link.
SQL Server Physical Vs Virtual Environment
As for the recommendation of moving your SQL server from Virtual to Physical, toughly to say, it is on purpose to improve the performance. A dedicated physical server is all yours, namely critical resources(CPU and IO, which is sensitively related to performance)
will not be used by anything other than the SQL server task. Without outside interruption, SQL server will run smoother. As you mentioned you had Brent Ozar evaluate your SQL Environment, so this should be based on his understanding of your scenario. See below
link’s from Brent Ozar’s site.
Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Virtualize SQL Server
With regards to memory gaining from 8GB to 128GB, since SQL Server uses memory to cache data and avoid additional trips to disk, it can improve performance obviously. You’ll get the added benefit of additional memory to cache query plans, perform bigger joins
and sorts in memory, and may even see a reduction in CPU and disk utilization to boot. SQL Server 2008 R2 Standard Edition maxes out at 64GB  as well as SQL Server 2012 Standard Edition does while SQL Server 2014 standard Edition maxes out at 128GB. Generally
speaking, the more memory you gain, the more performance is improved. See the link from Brent Ozar’s site also.
How to Prove Your SQL Server Needs More Memory
If you have any question, feel free to let me know.
Best Regards,
Eric Zhang