Hardware Question

  • I run an intranet for a non profit organization. As such, throwing money at a problem is seldom an option.

    Right now I am running ColdFusion and SQL Server 2k5 on the same box under Win2k3/IIS. It is a dual 3.06 GHz with 3 GB of ram.

    I have a lesser server laying around, a dual 1.25 GHz with 2 GB of RAM. I am wondering if I will improve overall performance by moving SQL Server to the lesser box.

    Generally, is a dedicated lesser machine like the dual 1.25 server going to peform better than a shared dual 3.06?

    I could also move CF to the weaker box, but that would require a great deal more effort than moving SQL Server.

    What thought process should I use to determine if this is a worthwhile change?

  • For me the rule is

    NEVER put the website (Even if it is Intranet) on the same box as a DB Server.

    When allocating a server (For Web or for DB) check what kind of load you are going to get on the DB. Let us say you have a pretty large DB, then DB should get the higher end server.

    Just my 2 cents

    -Roy

  • I am well aware of the gospel that says not to put them on the same box. Unfortunately I did not have a choice at the time.

    I work in an evironment where there is never enough time or money to do it right, but there is always enough time or money to do it twice.

    I may be able to upgrade the processors on the lesser server. Not sure what the max capability of that motherboard is just yet.

  • depends on your workload. have you used performance monitoring to determine which is the higher load, sql server or cold fusion?

  • Process monitoring is running now. In a day or two I will analyze the results.

    In the previous version of the website, I was writing all of my queries in ColdFusion, thus placing a lot of the workload on CF. Now I am storing as many of the queries as possible in SQL Server, thus moving the workload over to where it should be.

    Because I am in the middle of this transition, the current workload data will be pretty much obsolete very soon. I cant really make an educated assessment until I finish the query migration.

  • I would monitor the SQL Server performance counter, batch requests per second on your current CF/SQL server during your peak production load to first determine wether a CPU bottleneck currently exists.

    Tools such as SQLH2 can assist you w/ benchmarking performance within you current environment. It is available for download via the URL below.

    Good luck 🙂

    http://www.microsoft.com/Downloads/details.aspx?familyid=EEDD10D6-75F7-4763-86DE-D2347B8B5F89&displaylang=en

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