Vista - Virtual Server vs. all software in a single image.

I am building a web server right now that will be hosted at a colo facility.
It will be a dual core Xeon @ 3GHz with 8GB RAM and SATA disks. I plan to
run IIS, DNS, SMTP, and SQL Express. Is there any performance benefit to
installing the different services in VMs versus all in the host OS which will
be Windows Server 2008 x64 Standard?

Probably not performance benefits, but there are good reasons why one would
separate out certain applications or services onto separate virtual
machines. Some of these reasons include management, separation of
administration, scalability capabilities, etc. Just remember - treat your
VM architecture decisions no differently than you would when considering
physical servers and their purposes.

Hope this helps,
--Ryan

--
Ryan Sokolowski
MVP - Clustering
MCT, MCITP x3, MCTS x8, MCSE x2, CCNA, CCDA, BCFP


"Detroit J" <DetroitJ@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:0DFA1C5D-0603-494B-8601-ECA080F5353F@xxxxxx

Thank you very much. I didn't think there would be any performance benefits
but I wanted to double check with the world at large.

"Ryan Sokolowski [MVP]" wrote:

Well, I'm not the ENTIRE "world at large" - just a guy with one
opinion...but I'm happy to help - and thanks for saying "Thanks."

--
Ryan Sokolowski
MVP - Clustering
MCT, MCITP x3, MCTS x8, MCSE x2, CCNA, CCDA, BCFP


"Detroit J" <DetroitJ@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:E46E905D-4CB9-4A33-9329-C8239675AF14@xxxxxx

On Tue, 13 Jan 2009 13:59:03 -0800, Detroit J
<DetroitJ@xxxxxx> wrote:
but if you outgrow your current server, using VMs, you could simply
move a couple of the VMs off to a new server and split the workload up
without needing to remove roles from the single box.

--
Cheers,
Steve Jain, Virtual Machine MVP
http://vpc.essjae.com/