June 14, 2006 at 2:00 pm
Hi. I know that this question has been asked a ton but I cant find any specific answers on what to buy. I need to know what is the best type of setup for hardware and raid configuration. I have several database servers but users report slowness when running large queries and I know that it is disk I/O since the databases and trans logs are on the same drive and the drives are SATA. If you had 10k to spend what would you do? I dont need specific brands of hardware and such just a broad overview. Like shoudl I get a fiber switch and a san or just a larger type of server. Thanks for your help.
June 14, 2006 at 2:30 pm
I think microsoft's site might be a good source for this.
June 14, 2006 at 2:37 pm
I am looking for a more real world approach instead.
June 14, 2006 at 3:36 pm
I am guessing that I need a fiber switch and a san. Is that pretty much what everyone is doing out there.
June 14, 2006 at 10:35 pm
Hey Eric,
We are in the middle of implementing SAN here at my work, and certainly it will help you a lot. As the first this you can do is split your data and log files. Then you could also do a snap mirror to another server so users can do their read-only queries from there.
However, I don't think 10K is enough for this kind of approach. You can definitely get a quote.
Cheers.
June 16, 2006 at 9:04 am
Hi Eric,
I have often had this same question from clients and here is what I've been recommending:
Drive Configuration:
Logical Raid Level Contents
===== ======= =======================================
0/1 RAID 1 SQL Binaries, NT Binaries, Page File
2/3 RAID 1 TempDB, Database Backups
4/5 RAID 1 Database Transaction Log file(s)
6/7 RAID 1 Database Data file(s)
Configuring 8 drives as 4 mirror sets (RAID 1) provides the necessary physical separation of the critical database components onto their own spindle sets: SQL/NT Binaries & Page Files, TempDB, Transaction Log, Database. Using less than the number of recommended drives may result in reduced application performance by increasing the potential for disk read/write contention and lower I/O throughput. In our experience we've found application database performance suffers the most when these database components are not placed on separate spindle sets (such as one RAID 5 array).
Hope this helps.....
June 16, 2006 at 10:42 am
Any other opinions on this type of setup? Are these scsi drives? Is SATA RAID even doable for SQL Server. Lets say I have a server with 6 drives on one scsi card. What would a good way to set that up? I was thinking of this
0/1 OS and SQL Application
2/3 TRANS LOGS
4/5 Database Files
Is it important to have the TEMPDB on another array? Thanks for your help. I am going to make a purchase in the next week and this is great information. Also would it be better to have a product like this PowerVault 220S/221S filled with drives and then seperate them all out in RAID 1 configs for three database servers. Let me know if I am way off here. Database server configuration is really new to me so I am trying to learn. Thanks
June 16, 2006 at 11:37 am
Ideally, I'd want to not only have the setup somewhat like what has been stated above, but also think about splitting up the drives on different SCSI channels. That way you're not waiting trying to push all of the same data through the same channel, same idea as why you want to put t-log and data on drifferent physical drives...
Also alot of this will depend on how many transactions and how large you db will be. A db server for a small department of 5-10 people with a few hundred transactions per second (if that even) wouldn't have to be quite a beefy as something serving millions of transactions per second.
July 6, 2006 at 12:03 am
Hey Eric,
How did you go with your SAN installation?
Just sharing with you that the SAN we're implementing will have RAID-DP (Dual Parity), and twice better in performance and reliablity than any other RAID Configuration.
I'm not sure if this applies to you, but thought I'll share that with you.
Cheers,
TK
July 6, 2006 at 1:07 pm
What type of SAN did you purchase? My manager put me on hold for the purchase until later this month. So I am still shopping. Thanks for the info
July 6, 2006 at 4:39 pm
We're Installing NetApp here. Check it out at http://www.NetApp.com
You can get a basic understanding of SQL on SAN at http://www.netapp.com/ftp/sql-server-mag-article-1-2006.pdf This is a really good article.
What are your requirements like? I might be able to help.
Viewing 11 posts - 1 through 10 (of 10 total)
You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login to reply