Greetings.
There are a lot of variables to consider when comparing bare metal vs virtualized for database type workloads.
Generally speaking, you will get better performance on bare metal in the I/O area with ideal configurations.
However, in the DR area, the ability to move a virtualized DB server if a host needs repair, or migrate to newer, faster equipment by just vmotioning, often outweighs the i/o performance hit.
I have seen customers run virtualized MS SQL server and get 25-35,000 IOPs for a single SQL server.
Now this takes some FC/FCOE adapter tuning, especially max Q-depth, io-throttle count, multiple virtual storage controllers, adequate v-ram, vcpus, as well as a good storage system that can supply the throughput and IOPs.
Thanks,
Kirk...
