January 28, 2011 at 2:44 pm
I have searched far and wide for a good reason to sell my company executives on Enterprise edition and have not found enough information. I know for many it is easy to make this decision based on the features. However, we do not need most of the features (data driven subscriptions being the only real "feature" that would be useful, but hardly enough to justify the cost).
We have several different applications currently accessing this instance with a combined data size of about 85gb. This typically has about 30 employees accessing it through a web application during normal business hours while up to 300 may be accessing it around 5pm to enter in their sales numbers for the day. It also hosts our customer portal where they can access their account information.
What I want to know is: When do I say there are too many applications for Standard edition to handle it? How many connections? Is there a point where I can say that we HAVE to purchase Enterprise just to handle all of the requests?
Thanks,
DBA
Jared
CE - Microsoft
January 28, 2011 at 3:01 pm
I don't know of a good argument just based on the amount of connections, applications, databases, etc. At RAM you likely will need many of the enterprise features as well.
But take a good hard look at the features and I think you might be surprised at how useful some will be.
Examples:
1. Snapshots. Incredibly useful when upgrading applications, deploying new code, etc.
2. Resource Governor could be very useful in your situation.
3. Indexed view without requiring (noexpand). Particularly if you are in a scenario with lots of vendor apps since you can often addd indexes to tables or view but generally can't change code.
4. On the security front, SQL Server Audit and TDE are big ones.
And so on. You should be able to build a case basedon features alone I would think.
January 28, 2011 at 4:18 pm
high availability, clustering, and database mirroring. even said.
if they don't believe, accidentally take down a prod server and watch them panic.
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January 28, 2011 at 11:03 pm
This is just my opinion...
Of course Enterprise Edition has extra cool features They key is to tie features to your paticular business and show the benefits, if they exist. For example SQL Audit in SQL 2008 is a great feature, if you currently have to write custom audit code for your applications you might be able to show "time" savings with the upgrade. Or if you could benefit from data partitioning showing the performance differences in your code by upgrading showing a "performance" savings. You may find that after evaluating the features the benefit to reward isn't there, or you may find it would help the business significantly. Just depends how you use the tool at hand and the return on investment. I look at it from the point of view if I had to pay for it out of my own pocket what would I want to know.
January 29, 2011 at 3:38 pm
Thanks everyone! These are all great points. I will take these and evaluate the features and determine ROI. Thanks much!
Jared
CE - Microsoft
January 29, 2011 at 4:41 pm
jared-709193 (1/28/2011)
I know for many it is easy to make this decision based on the features. However, we do not need most of the features (data driven subscriptions being the only real "feature" that would be useful, but hardly enough to justify the cost).
You have already worded the answer to your question. If your business needs match what Standard Edition offers it will be unethical to say the least to push for anything more expensive than that.
Think about this, your most important asset as a Technical Advisor is your reputation - don't ruin it just because it is cool to have Enterprise Edition.
Just my two cents.
_____________________________________
Pablo (Paul) Berzukov
Author of Understanding Database Administration available at Amazon and other bookstores.
Disclaimer: Advice is provided to the best of my knowledge but no implicit or explicit warranties are provided. Since the advisor explicitly encourages testing any and all suggestions on a test non-production environment advisor should not held liable or responsible for any actions taken based on the given advice.January 29, 2011 at 5:21 pm
Thanks Paul. I think my main point of posing the question here is that the information that I've found detailing "Availability and Scalability" does not really give me enough information. I was under the impression that Standard Edition is "departmental" which meant to me that 1 or 2 applications is what it is built for. I assumed that that was what the engine could reasonably handle. I think I have found here that the issue is really features and not about performance when we are using a single socket, 64-bit, and 32gb box.
Thanks.
Jared
CE - Microsoft
January 29, 2011 at 7:29 pm
Oberion (1/28/2011)
high availability, clustering, and database mirroring.
although mirroring only support synchonous mode in high safety.
Enterprise mainly offers online features, in most cases standard is fine. what features do you need?
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January 29, 2011 at 8:40 pm
jared-709193 (1/29/2011)
I was under the impression that Standard Edition is "departmental" which meant to me that 1 or 2 applications is what it is built for. I assumed that that was what the engine could reasonably handle. I think I have found here that the issue is really features and not about performance
You are correct - "editions" are more about features than performance.
An example? if you have the need of partitioning tables you want to go with Enterprise edition(*) - if you don't have the need of partitioning tables you may be fine with Standard Edition.
(*) yes, I know you can implement "poor's man" partitioning on Standard Edition by exposing several individual tables as a single object via a view but, this is not the point. The point is, actual "table partitioning" is an Enterprise Edition feature.
_____________________________________
Pablo (Paul) Berzukov
Author of Understanding Database Administration available at Amazon and other bookstores.
Disclaimer: Advice is provided to the best of my knowledge but no implicit or explicit warranties are provided. Since the advisor explicitly encourages testing any and all suggestions on a test non-production environment advisor should not held liable or responsible for any actions taken based on the given advice.January 29, 2011 at 9:03 pm
jared-709193 (1/28/2011)
I have searched far and wide for a good reason to sell my company executives on Enterprise edition and have not found enough information. I know for many it is easy to make this decision based on the features. However, we do not need most of the features (data driven subscriptions being the only real "feature" that would be useful, but hardly enough to justify the cost).
I'll echo some sentiments above about you don't spend more money until it makes sense to do so. At 20k/processor difference, you're looking at the salary of another person for that year, albeit midlevel, on two dual proc systems. That's just for the software, not the hardware.
You go to enterprise under one of two circumstances.
1) You require a tool it provides, for example higher # of CPUs due to traffic, and thus must ship specific applications to the Enterprise edition. The features of enterprise are limited in scope to very large shops. The only times I see it needed in mid-level shops, or non-heavy-BI shops, are for five-9s shops that require the parallel index/consistency operations so they don't get downtime during the process, or they're trying to leverage the virtualization components into better ROI (rarely works, but it sounds *great* on paper).
2) You determine that a feature of Enterprise will save you money. You're about to risk the salary of a human who's a lot more versatile then the upgrade is, at least for one year. Is this upgrade going to save that much money? Keep in mind you're going to want a dev, a QA, and a Prod system, it's not one server.
It comes down to money. Make it too expensive and other software will look like a reasonable alternative. Only use it if you need it.
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January 30, 2011 at 7:13 am
I think all of this information is great! The only real feature I am interested in at this point is Data Driven Subscriptions. However, we do have a "poor man's" fix for that using an SP that was in an article here that will basically do the same thing. We also have a dev team that has been creating services for our larger volume data driven subscriptions. I suppose that at this point the real question is are we going to spend 20G's on an development within the next 3 years just for data driven subscriptions? My guess is no. Although I'd like to begin some BI with data mining and SSAS, I don't think it is worth the cost even combined with the data driven subscriptions. I will look over all of the features again, but I'm pretty sure I have sold myself against recommending Enterprise edition.
Thanks!
Jared
CE - Microsoft
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