Microsoft SQL Server Virtualisation Support Policy Updated

Microsoft provides technical support for SQL Server 2005 and for SQL Server 2008 that are running in the following hardware virtualization environments:

Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V

Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008

Configurations that are certified through the Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP).For more information about certified vendors and about configurations for SVVP, visit the following SVVP Web site:

https://windowsservercatalog.com/svvp.aspx?svvppage=svvp.htm (https://windowsservercatalog.com/svvp.aspx?svvppage=svvp.htm)

Note The SVVP solution must be running on hardware that is certified for Windows Server 2008 to be considered a valid SVVP configuration.

Any non-Microsoft virtualization software that is not a validated configuration through the SVVP program will be handled under the policy as documented in the following Knowledge Base article. This also applies to any earlier version of SQL Server that is not listed in this article that is running in any virtualization environment. For more information, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

897615 (https://support.microsoft.com/kb/897615/) Support policy for Microsoft software running in non-Microsoft hardware virtualization software

The following restrictions apply to support for SQL Server products in any hardware virtualization environment:

Guest Failover Clustering is not supported in a virtual machine. Guest Failover Clustering is when you create a SQL Server failover cluster inside a virtual machine where the nodes are running as a virtual machine.

The virtual machine must be running an operating system that is supported for the specific SQL Server version and edition and that is supported for virtualization.

The SQL Server product must be a supported version under its current Microsoft Support Lifecycle policy. For more information about Microsoft Support Lifecycle policies, visit the following Microsoft Support Web site:

https://support.microsoft.com/?pr=lifecycle (https://support.microsoft.com/?pr=lifecycle)

 

 

The above is captured in the following public KB article:

 

Support policy for Microsoft SQL Server products that are running in a hardware virtualization environment

https://support.microsoft.com/KB/956893