Hardware Requirement Preparation

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Hardware Requirement Preparation

md.salih

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November 10, 2014 at 10:14 pm

#298335

Please advise me how can we prepare hardware requirements like minumum RAM, CPU and hard disk space for our own software which has back end as MS SQL 2008 or MS SQL 2012

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Grant Fritchey SSC Guru Points: 398890 More actions · Answer 1

You have to make a determination for hardware through a whole slew of factors. How much data do you anticipate? How many users will there be? How many transactions will you have to support? What are the business requirements for uptime and availability? What are the business requirements for speed of the system?

Based on the answers to these questions, and more, you can then start to figure out how many CPU, how much memory, the size and number of your disks and disk controllers, whether or not you're going to use a SAN or NAS or local RAID array, the need for additional servers for failover, etc.

But the primary driver has to be understanding your data and business needs. Figure that out, the rest will fall into line. A few simple recommendations, go with 64 bit. 32 bit is a giant waste of resources at this point in time. Get more memory than you think you'll need. SQL Server is a resource pig when it comes to memory and can usually take advantage of more.

"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt

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md.salih SSC Rookie Points: 30 More actions · Answer 2

Thanks for your reply,

Database size (MS SQL 2008 R2) will come around 40GB and concurrent users are 300 to 400.

And my software developed in .Net control and back end is MS SQL 2008. Hard disk using with inbuilt RAID controller.

Please advise me for this requirement, How much RAM need & Processor Need.

Any tool there to get these details ?

Thanks,

MD Salih

Grant Fritchey SSC Guru Points: 398890 More actions · Answer 3

Unclear how many transactions you're dealing with. That can still affect your choices. Is the system going to be OLTP or Reporting focused? That's also going to affect how it deals with resources. You'll also have to consider how you split the databases up between your disks and controllers.

I'm not aware of a tool that will outline this for you. Basically, I'd suggest getting as many CPUs and as much memory as you can afford. I've run databases much bigger than that on 16gb of memory, but it was somewhat painful at times. That might be enough, but I would ensure the server you purchase can go higher if needed.

But understand, I still don't have a full appreciation of your situation, so this is, at best, an educated guess, not a real estimate.

For example, you're saying that you have 400 concurrent users (always go with the higher end estimate). If you apply the rules outlined here, consider how much memory just the connections from these users will consume.

"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore Roosevelt

Author of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning

vsagg85 SSC-Addicted Points: 434 More actions · Answer 4

Before considering the hardware requirements for the database, think about DATA.

Following can be considered about data

•Type of transaction – Transactional or Analytics

•Size of data(if BLOB is included your database size will also be big)

•Type of data that will be handled

Well you can include more points if you go deeper into it,

Then consider the following

•No. of users

•Total no of active users/hr

•Total no. of transactions/sec

•Types of queries that will be executed by the users

•Business requirements like high availability, accepted downtime,type of backups,frequency of backups

•Edition of SQL SERVER

•Licensing conditions for the editions for SQL SERVER as some editions have licensing costs depending upon the no of processors.

Well, finally the BUDGET comes into play

Well giving you a rough idea:unsure: considering the no of users as you have put and the size of the DB,

Go for a 64 bit hardware,4TB hardisk with a speed of 10,000/rpm,64 GB memory.

Include a SAN .

Check for server level hardware from HP.

Hope so the above gives you an idea for the hardware requirements.