Recently one of my colleagues discussed SharePoint Infrastructure sizing with me and we were discussing Virtualizing an entire farm. There are a number of factors that need to be considered which I will update here regularly.

This blog is intended to send you directly to the relevant information for planning, design and implementation.

Starting Point

It is important to understand the basics first prior to moving ahead with your deployment. These articles and references are a good starting point to review:

There is no doubt that SharePoint can run on a virtualized platform. I would recommend reviewing this KB for planning your virtualized SharePoint 2010 environment: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff607968.aspx

Here is Microsoft’s support policy for Microsoft Software running on non-Microsoft hardware http://support.microsoft.com/kb/897615

Reference this KB to review which Microsoft Products are supported in a virtualized environment: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/957006

Since I am only discussing Hyper-V on my blog, you can review the Hyper-V Planning guideance on TechNet here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee344841(WS.10).aspx

Hyper-V Getting Started Guide: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc732470(WS.10).aspx

It is important to review the SVVP: http://www.windowsservercatalog.com/svvp.aspx?svvppage=svvp.htm

Infrastructure Planning

Apart from the solution, Infrastructure Planning is one of the the most important components to get right. The core reason is the investment made in server and network infrastructure will likely be based on a 3-5 year replacement plan.

Performance

Important references for Performance tuning :

1. Windows 2008 R2 Performance Tuning Guide: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/gg463392.aspx
2. Troubleshooting Performance tuning problems in SQL Server 2008   http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd672789.aspx