Installation best practices

Hello,

I have an HP DL580 G5 with 8 disks (2 - 72GB 15K, 6 - 146 GB 10K). I want to configure this as my SQL server and use SQL 2005 enterprise edition. I am planning on installing Windows 2003 Server X64. What RAID configuration should I use for the OS and please include log files and data files in recommendation? Should the log files and data files be stored on seperate spindels?

Thanks much!

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ElisabethZakes

For the Orion NPM side of things, see the Quick Start Guide and the Administrator Guide (specifically, the Server Sizing section beginning on page 9), both available from the Support tab.

For more Windows/SQL-specific configuration, I think Microsoft would have a good deal of information on setting up SQL 2005 servers.

If you would like additional information, feel free to contact support.

FormerMember

you give some of the stats for the server but not all of them so will take a swing at it and let you figure out the rest.

the main thing you forgot to mention was how many controllers you have.

for the OS part use the two 72 gig drives and run them mirriored.

then for the data it depends on how you want to do it.

you could just make a raid 1+0 with all 6 drives and then keep it all together.

or you can make two raid 5s and do a split based on that.

it depends on the number of devices you have and how often you are polling as to if you will get a performance increase based off these decisions.

but the main thing is the number of controllers that are making up your raid in either case will decide the performance. Being that you have 6 disks for the data that limits your options for raid 1+0 which has the best performance.

if you go with a raid1+0 and have at least 2 controllers then you will get above average operation from your SQL system from high input/output systems like Orion. on the flip side this is slower for Large IO operations due to the smaller block sizes. the other deciding factor for many is how much actual disk space are your getting for your $. in Raid 1+0 this is the highest cost due to the fact that you are only getting 50% the size you are buying. for Raid 5 it is a happy medium at approximatly 70%.

if you go with a raid 5 and have 3 controllers then you have one controller writing to each disk and that is about the fastest you can get when there is a controller per disk.

If you have a raid 5 and happen to select all the disks on a single controller then this is the worst performance you can get.

performance increases come when you have multiple controllers wirting to multiple disks so this is the desired effect when you are setting up a disk set for high Input/output operations.

Also make sure that your Orion SQL server does not become tasked with other databases. if it is working for someone else it can't process your traffic until it is done with them.

Hope this helps give you some insight into how you want to set up your server.

rajivbahl

Hey Hemi

Thats a great piece of information you have shared ..

I'm having my SQL server set up with Raid 1+0

Now i am planning to move to SAN solution for DB

Can you please help in letting me know what should i take care to achieve best performance.

Thanks in advance

sonic6t9

What do you mean by SAN solution?? I am not a DB person and my boss wants me to figure out server purchase stuff for NPM and al lthe stuff with it.... Would you still buy the server to run the DB but then just use the NAS to backup that DB or how would you do it.... Our Db guy still hasn't responded to me but my boss needs an answer...