Server Consolidation

  • We are looking to upgrade from SQL Server 2000 to 2005. In our current environment(2000) we have a dev server that's running RS, AS, holds all of the dbs and handles all of the ETL processes. In production we have an RS server, a database server and an AS server that the users query. I'm guessing that the maximum number of users that would hit this at any one time would probably be less than 300. My questions are -

    1. Would there be issues if we ran RS, AS and the ETL processes on the same box and eliminate the other two production servers? The new box would be 64-bit, 2 proc dualcore, 16Gig ram. Current boxes are 32-bit, 2 proc dual core with 3 Gig ram.

    2. Anyone running a similar configuration to this? The users are not running any queries against the databases. The are viewing reports that query the cubes, nothing ad-hoc.

  • I know this probably doesn't help but here are some questions,

    How is your propose drives setup, what raid level?

    What is you installation setup, file structure directory?

    Have you done a performance analysis on your current system?

  • Really couldn't say for sure - but, I would think you would run into performance problems with this new setup. Basically, you are going from using 12 (3 systems w/2 dual-core) processors to 4 (1 system w/2 dual-core) processors for all processing. I know for a fact that SSIS is going to have an extreme impact on processing capability.

    If you want to put this all on a single server - I would upgrade the system to at least 2 quad-core processors, 4 quad-cores if possible. I would also recommend spending the additional money and bumping up the memory to 32GB.

    You did not say, but are you running Standard Edition or Enterprise? If you are not running Enterprise edition - you really should look at upgrading so you can take advantage of the additional features, such as lock pages in memory, parallel index rebuilds, etc...

    Jeffrey Williams
    “We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.”

    ― Charles R. Swindoll

    How to post questions to get better answers faster
    Managing Transaction Logs

  • We ended up keeping the same configuration as the 2000 environment.(Post was from Jan 08) One db server, one AS server, one RS server and a dev box running all. We're still running on 32-bit because our IT company doen't have a 64-bit image that runs all of the monitoring software that the company uses. Supposed to have that available sometime this year, I'm looking forward to see how performance on our large cubes is affected by going to 64-bit.

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