Best install for performance

  • Hi to all

    I've got the opportunity this morning to rebuild one of our essential DB Servers via normal backup and restore procedure. I am bound to the fact that it will run NT 4 SP6, 4 CPU and 4GB of RAM. (Compaq Proliant DL760). It will be a SQL2000 SP install and the DB's about 50Gb in size(No clustering). Afterwards I will restore the databases from remote backup drive. The question I am battling with is the setup of the drives as such. Now I've done this a number of times before but I'm still not sure, whith all the conflicting advice, what is the ideal setup say if drive space is no problem. On what volume should SQL actually being run? Boot/startup volume? Mirrored?. Log files I imagine would be better on a striped mirror set (Raid 1+0) but may this be on the same volume set as SQL app itself? and can this be still on the same set as the OS? Is datafiles (mdf) on a RAID5 good enough for performance. Can I split them to another drive? What is the ideal Pagefile setting for SQL2000 with NT4sp6 and on which volume should it ideally be situated? Performance is the key issue!

    I've read any conceivable article, BOL, KB etc. on the ideal setup but the above questions seem to be unanswered. Any suggestions?

    Phil

  • I agree there is a ton of advice out there. I'll add my couple thoughts, Im sure you'll get others! RAID 5 is good enough for performance in my experience. Right now Im putting the OS, SQL, pagefile, and logs on a single set of mirrored drives, data on RAID 5. Works well.

    Andy

    http://www.sqlservercentral.com/columnists/awarren/

  • I agree with Andy, though if you can get another RAID 1 set, I'd separate logs out.

    RAID 1 - OS, SQL, tempdb, etc.

    RAID 5 - Data mdf/ndf

    RAID 1 - SQL Transaction logs for databases.

    Steve Jones

    steve@dkranch.net

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