Definition of a "SQL Farm"

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Definition of a "SQL Farm"

marklegosz

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May 19, 2010 at 5:50 am

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Hi everyone.
I consider to be a reasonably experienced SQL DBA, but like most people I come across aspects of the product that I'm either not familiar with or sometimes haven't heard of.
Today I was working with a vendor who wanted seperate SQL instances for each of their pieces of software, which all need their own application servers, but all integrate into one 'product'. I asked if we can use a single instance for each piece of the product.
They said that if we have an existing SQL farm, we can use that. To me, a SQL farm would be an arrangement of servers running SQL. However this doesn't seem to make sense to me if they want individual instances (read an instance on each application server).
What is others take on what a SQL farm means. Google search doesn't yeild anything helpful.
thanks, Mark

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jasonlorraine1999 Old Hand Points: 316 More actions · Answer 1

Hi ,

I have not heard of the term

SQL Farm

I think they are talking about clustering. Not Active Passive but Active Active with more than two nodes requiring SQL 2005 Enterprise Edition.

If its upto (8 nodes 64bit, 4 nodes 32bit) then you must be running Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition or whatever they call it now with Windows 2008 R2

I only create extra instances for corner cases; I would challenge the software vendor. I personally prefer to limit memory on the main instance and up the max dop if its multi processor. I think this uses the hardware better.

Cheers

J

adrian.saunders SSCommitted Points: 1517 More actions · Answer 2

i would consider a server farm to be two or more sql servers. Its a vague term and it sounds like your vendor doesn't know anything about sql instances, so I would interpret this as them saying ' you need multiple sql servers but it doesn't matter whats running on them'

It might be worth contacting them to see if they have any customers with a proper sql dba and having a chat with them.

marklegosz SSCrazy Points: 2816 More actions · Answer 3

Thanks guys for your input. I'm glad is wasn't just me missing something fairly important.

My first thought of the term would imply two or more servers running two or more instances, but it does sound like they are themselves not entirely sure on what they mean.

I think the best course of action is to get a better dialog going.

thanks again

Mark

DNA_DBA SSCrazy Eights Points: 9132 More actions · Answer 4

I understand a SQL Farm to simply be a bunch of connected servers on which SQL is running (and the only place where SQL is installed). The farm can grow by adding additional servers and have multiple instances on it. It could be something like a cluster with multiple nodes or something like PolyServe. The idea is to reduce licence costs, increase availability and provide a platform which can grow as required.