PerformancePoint Server and Hyper-V on a test machine

  • Article

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.

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.

Hyper-V_PPS_storage_options

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.

  1. The pass-through storage option allows you to maximize SQL Server performance by freeing resources for PerformancePoint Server back-up and restore.
  2. The PerformancePoint Server is managed in a VHD with the prerequisites and configuration settings and makes a good candidate for using the snapshot feature.
  3. 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.

---------------------------------

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).