# SQL Server on Virtual Machines Reviews **Vendor:** Microsoft **Category:** [Server Virtualization Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/server-virtualization) **Average Rating:** 4.6/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 18 ## About SQL Server on Virtual Machines Spin up a virtual machine, back up your SQL Server instance, and restore it into Azure. It’s that easy to reduce your capital investments and optimize operational expenses by migrating your on-premises SQL Server to the cloud. Spin up a virtual machine, back up your SQL Server instance, and restore it into Azure. It's that easy to reduce your capital investments and optimize operational expenses by migrating your on-premises SQL Server to the cloud. ## SQL Server on Virtual Machines Reviews ### 1. The most seamless database migration I've ever seen in any IT software **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Babatope B. | Mr, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 08, 2019 **What do you like best about SQL Server on Virtual Machines?** No joke, migration of local SQL Database to SQL on virtual machine is "easy peasy:" simply spin up a virtual machine, back up your SQL Server instance, and restore it into the virtual machine - period! In addition, all the good stuff on your physical SQL server are available on the SQL server on virtual machine: - Loads of tools and wizards that simplify tasks and help to get tasks completed without extensive knowledge of Database - Query wizard with intuitive IDE - excellent integration with other Microsoft products - reliability plus performance - easy administration, even via active directory - Easy connection to external database - additional benefit of optimization by the team that built SQL when hosted in Azure and also peace of mind that databases are highly-secured on the most compliant cloud - Improve business continuity in the event of disaster by placing SQL Server Always On Availability Group replicas in virtual machines. **What do you dislike about SQL Server on Virtual Machines?** - Back up is a breeze, but restoration of large database is challenging - Software consumes a lot of memory as the database grows - Great for mid to complex projects, but inadequate for large projects such as IoT projects - software can use more monitoring tools **Recommendations to others considering SQL Server on Virtual Machines:** Go for it! You will save tone of time and money. **What problems is SQL Server on Virtual Machines solving and how is that benefiting you?** We have saved a lot of time in setup and migration of SQL servers. Also, we have saved cost utilizing pay-as-you-go service rather than building physical servers for our databases. ### 2. A Quick & Reliable solution to your Queries **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Education Management | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 14, 2019 **What do you like best about SQL Server on Virtual Machines?** This software is greatly reliable and quick. Backup and data recovery is quick and efficient. Data analysis is made so much easier through this process. Cloud flexibility and access even when remote is an added bonus. It is also compatible with multiple file systems and easy to migrate to and from. **What do you dislike about SQL Server on Virtual Machines?** Honestly, not much to dislike. Licensing can prove to be an issue, but haven’t faced any software based issues so far. **What problems is SQL Server on Virtual Machines solving and how is that benefiting you?** I don’t have to worry about losing data or files because of the great backup and restore features. I can also like the flexibility to run the VM on various platforms like Azure. Lower downtime than most softwares makes for easier analysis and results. ### 3. VMI SQL Server provides respectable service **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Facilities Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 19, 2019 **What do you like best about SQL Server on Virtual Machines?** SQL Server on Virtual Machines really allows for the user to take full advantage of a mobile desktop outside of their office environments. So many times I've found myself in need of data or the ability to pull from our DHW but I can't trust my server to handle the bandwidth or even produce results within less than an hour. This software makes it so seamless and reliable to have all the benefits of the office when you are remote. **What do you dislike about SQL Server on Virtual Machines?** It's nothing against the software but mostly against my company's excessive security about connecting to VMI and it's multi step process. Overall it makes it much harder when i have a bad connection to reconnect to the software b/c I have to restart everything. Again that's not really the software's fault, I personally blame my company issued laptops, but overall I wish something could be done about it. **What problems is SQL Server on Virtual Machines solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are really bringing all our of data and analytical capabilities with us whenever we may find ourselves. Whether we are at a clients remote office or at our desk at HQ, we have similar access and are no longer limited to the analysis or insights we can provide. ### 4. SQL Server on Virtual Machines **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Hospital & Health Care | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** February 18, 2019 **What do you like best about SQL Server on Virtual Machines?** Operating system choice – support for Windows Server, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, and Ubuntu Linux. Cloud flexibility – Set up and manage your SQL Server deployments in minutes, and then scale up or down. Tuned for performance – Meet your toughest demands with virtual machines optimized by the team that built SQL Server. Hybrid connectivity – Get the most out of your on-premises investments, and take advantage of all that Azure offers. Highly-secured and trusted – Protect your entire data estate with a highly-secured database on the most compliant cloud. **What do you dislike about SQL Server on Virtual Machines?** Mostly nothing to dislike. Functioning is pretty much same, when compared to desktop version. Spin up a new development environment in minutes, and only pay for what you use. Our SQL Server Developer images, including SQL Server 2017, provide a full SQL Server feature set in a free license for development and testing. SQL Server Express images allow you to host lightweight workloads (up to 1 GB memory and 10 GB storage) with a free license as well. Low virtual machine usage costs mean you pay only cents per hour, while using all the features you need for development and testing. **What problems is SQL Server on Virtual Machines solving and how is that benefiting you?** Improve business continuity in the event of disaster by placing your SQL Server Always On Availability Group replicas in virtual machines. SQL Server 2017 gives you up to eight readable replicas, which you can deploy to a fast-growing list of Azure regions around the world. Set up fast failover for database applications running in Azure, and strategically place your SQL Server replicas for peace of mind in case of on-premises failure. SQL Server 2017 gives you the flexibility to run your choice of SQL Server edition in an Azure virtual machine, now on the operating system of your choice. Whether you choose Windows or a Linux distribution like Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Enterprise Linux, or Ubuntu, SQL Server 2017 will provide a consistent experience from on-premises to cloud. Run your Linux applications on the database with industry-leading performance and security for all your workloads. ### 5. SQL server is the saviour **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Shah H. | Software Engineer, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 13, 2019 **What do you like best about SQL Server on Virtual Machines?** I had to develop a utility to get status of automated jobs running throughout the day. So, SQL server came in handy and I wrote a SQL query to get the status of each job from the database. **What do you dislike about SQL Server on Virtual Machines?** There is nothing to dislike in SQL server. It is one of the better tools ever created. **What problems is SQL Server on Virtual Machines solving and how is that benefiting you?** Getting status of automated jobs from the SQL database so that our business (Spending account) could get the actual status f jobs. Taking out the status of automated jobs in real time so that we can could represent in dashboard. ### 6. SQL Server running on Virtual Server in a Higher Education Environment **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Higher Education | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 16, 2019 **What do you like best about SQL Server on Virtual Machines?** The best thing about running SQL Server on a Virtual Machine includes a few different things. 1) The ability to run a virtual machine snapshot prior to doing updates. This allows for a quick roll back if the updated causes issues. 2) The ability to run a backup easily and with just a click. The speed of the backups is far better. Restoring from backup is much better. 3) The ability to increase resources on the virtual SQL server is so much simpler. Adding vCPU's and vRAM is very easy. **What do you dislike about SQL Server on Virtual Machines?** I have no dislikes myself. Some people do not like getting to the server console via a virtual management server. But, I see no issue with this personally. In fact I can get to things remotely much easier than with hardware only servers. **Recommendations to others considering SQL Server on Virtual Machines:** Download you favorite Hypervisor's free trial and just simply test it out. Read up on it in the many forums out there. Watch some videos on it. **What problems is SQL Server on Virtual Machines solving and how is that benefiting you?** We can now do updates and other changes with more confidence and without having to worry about a crashing the systems. This is because we can roll back to a snapshot we made right before the updates or changes were made. And with much simpler backup and restore solutions we can get a backup easily before an update or change and if the snapshot for some reason fails we can do a quick restore back. Although, I personally have never had a snapshot fail. ### 7. SQL Server on Virtual Machines - Good Option depending on the criticality **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Transportation/Trucking/Railroad | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 07, 2019 **What do you like best about SQL Server on Virtual Machines?** Cost reduction, faster provisioning, ease for failover and disaster recovery. Great for doing development, migration, upgrade Work using snapshots. With proper performance tuning, we can leverage the features of virtualization. **What do you dislike about SQL Server on Virtual Machines?** Management is more complex on a virtual environment. Need to manage more things, the physical host, the VMs, System Center. Performance tuning is very critical. **Recommendations to others considering SQL Server on Virtual Machines:** Performance Tuning is necessary. Virtualization might not always be a good thing for databases in general because it may interfere with the heuristics of the database management system for data access optimization, which is designed to work directly with data storage devices. **What problems is SQL Server on Virtual Machines solving and how is that benefiting you?** Cost reduction, faster provisioning, Low Downtime, Improved MTTR. ### 8. Fast and easy to use **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Zhu Qing N. | Career Center Advisor (Graduate Asstant), Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 12, 2019 **What do you like best about SQL Server on Virtual Machines?** You can just log in to virtual machine anytime and use it, doesn't take up your own space **What do you dislike about SQL Server on Virtual Machines?** The risk on having virtual Machines disconnected issue or unable to login to the machine **What problems is SQL Server on Virtual Machines solving and how is that benefiting you?** Able to help me join tables and get structure data for easy analysis, it is easy to use and been helping me to analyze my data ### 9. Sql server on VM **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Chinmay M. | Software Engineer In Test, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 14, 2019 **What do you like best about SQL Server on Virtual Machines?** It is very userfriendly dbms and plus microsoft provides sql server management studio with the help of which one can easily design tables even without prior knowledge of sql server syntax **What do you dislike about SQL Server on Virtual Machines?** Nothing to dislike. I love this product. **What problems is SQL Server on Virtual Machines solving and how is that benefiting you?** I am using it to create tables and connect it to our software we use at my organization. ### 10. sql server and queries learning **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Education Management | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 14, 2019 **What do you like best about SQL Server on Virtual Machines?** its good for practise and helping us learn many things soon. **What do you dislike about SQL Server on Virtual Machines?** the sql queries are being executed. there is nothing negative in it **Recommendations to others considering SQL Server on Virtual Machines:** YES ITS GOOD AND HELPS IN LEARNING AND EXECUTING THE QUERIES **What problems is SQL Server on Virtual Machines solving and how is that benefiting you?** its good for practise and helping us learn many things soon. We are running the basic queries and trying to figure out few doubts for the projects in our academics ### 11. SQL Server on Virtual Machines **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Health, Wellness and Fitness | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 14, 2019 **What do you like best about SQL Server on Virtual Machines?** As long as you've strong SQL background, it's easy for you to manage the virtual machines environment. It's intuitive for us to use. **What do you dislike about SQL Server on Virtual Machines?** It's only for structured data and it's not necessary good for unstructured and data science environment. But you can still use it as a sandbox or data mart. **What problems is SQL Server on Virtual Machines solving and how is that benefiting you?** We have been using it for remote user and data science team. ### 12. Easy to get up and running quick **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 14, 2019 **What do you like best about SQL Server on Virtual Machines?** Extremely easy to setup especially for windows machines. **What do you dislike about SQL Server on Virtual Machines?** There could be more features added to the SQL Server Express. **Recommendations to others considering SQL Server on Virtual Machines:** Always make sure to check your requirements before getting a certain version of sql server. **What problems is SQL Server on Virtual Machines solving and how is that benefiting you?** We are using sql server for setting up databases for our automation products. ### 13. Sql server on vm **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Education Management | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 14, 2019 **What do you like best about SQL Server on Virtual Machines?** The data fetch time is less, however installing might have issues and take more time than expected **What do you dislike about SQL Server on Virtual Machines?** Installing could be made easier, apart from that I have not faced any issue **What problems is SQL Server on Virtual Machines solving and how is that benefiting you?** Batching procession with virtual machine gives faster data processing speed to the sql server ### 14. Virtual machines, reality of the future **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Construction | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 14, 2019 **What do you like best about SQL Server on Virtual Machines?** I like the ease of operation. It’s very simple, and just about anybody can operate. **What do you dislike about SQL Server on Virtual Machines?** There isn’t really anything I dislike about this software. Very simple and streamline **What problems is SQL Server on Virtual Machines solving and how is that benefiting you?** Managing data held in a relational database management system ### 15. Gives us control of our data **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Financial Services | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 14, 2019 **What do you like best about SQL Server on Virtual Machines?** Love the ability to have control of our data and customize while being in a controlled environment **What do you dislike about SQL Server on Virtual Machines?** Can’t be a bit slow at times because of connection. **What problems is SQL Server on Virtual Machines solving and how is that benefiting you?** Hosts our CRM which gives us workflow flexibility. ### 16. SQL Server for virtual machines **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Joseph d. | Corporate Executive, Defense & Space, Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 13, 2018 **What do you like best about SQL Server on Virtual Machines?** SQL Server in virtualized environments is a robust memory paging aware product compatible with flexible file systems for better integration. **What do you dislike about SQL Server on Virtual Machines?** SQL Server 2012 and above are an n-tier path to the cloud but not readily portable to NOSQL environments. XML integration is still poor. **What problems is SQL Server on Virtual Machines solving and how is that benefiting you?** Resource utilization. Migration efforts. Virtualization allows our in house data center to manage resources better during low demand hours. ### 17. SQL in a virtual world **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 16, 2018 **What do you like best about SQL Server on Virtual Machines?** Hands down the thing I like the best is the scalability and consolidation factor of physical DB into virtualized infrastructures. **What do you dislike about SQL Server on Virtual Machines?** Licensing can be complex and expensive when looking for scale-out solutions. **What problems is SQL Server on Virtual Machines solving and how is that benefiting you?** Healthcare medical records with database encryption and replication, cost savings by redux of physical to virtual and ability for near real-time testing to production cutovers. ### 18. Easy to use **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Financial Services | Enterprise (> 1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 16, 2018 **What do you like best about SQL Server on Virtual Machines?** Easy to connect to sql server base and make it user friendly for others to databases at my company. **What do you dislike about SQL Server on Virtual Machines?** This product works how I want it to, no dislikes I can think of **What problems is SQL Server on Virtual Machines solving and how is that benefiting you?** Quicker to be able to connect to the servers in a secure platform and allows for audit capabilities - [View SQL Server on Virtual Machines pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/sql-server-on-virtual-machines/reviews?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-05-24+14%3A32%3A39+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=ad9c06f4-a7d9-407c-bf53-1930f7a59476&secure%5Btoken%5D=94bd1e911c36c3b5d5fb6b2e4e913e51a130ebef634523112bf74378c4c63baa&format=llm_user) ## SQL Server on Virtual Machines Features **Performance** - Scalability - Portability - Data Recovery **Functionality** - OS Integration - Resource Saving - Performance Management - Security **Agentic AI - Server Virtualization** - Autonomous Task Execution - Multi-step Planning - Cross-system Integration - Adaptive Learning - Proactive Assistance - Decision Making ## Top SQL Server on Virtual Machines Alternatives - [Proxmox VE](https://www.g2.com/products/proxmox-ve/reviews) - 4.6/5.0 (35 reviews) - [VMware vSphere](https://www.g2.com/products/vmware-vsphere/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (745 reviews) - [Ubuntu](https://www.g2.com/products/ubuntu/reviews) - 4.5/5.0 (2,333 reviews)