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How do I spec RAM for my DB server based on number of elements?

Can anyone advise me on a rule of thumb to use as I spec a DB server for RAM?

Assuming I will be using only Orion NPM at default settings, and a dedicated DB server, how much RAM should I put on the DB server for each license level of Orion? I don't want to just arbitrarily slap 32 GB of RAM on my DB server with an SL500 license.

Any one have any ideas?

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jbaulsir

I don’t think it’s as cut and dried as just the number of elements being monitored. It’s really how big is my database going to get, so you should look at it like:

How many elements am I going to monitor x What is my data retention policy = My database size

Then

How much of the database do I need to keep in RAM to keep it fast? (to a DBA the answer is as much as possible)

(This is not an exact equation, just a thought experiment)

My Orion database server has a 24 GB database that contains the data for 6000 elements for one year.

Don’t forget how the data gets “rolled up”, as this will affect the size as well:

Retain Detail Stats	7 Days
Retain Hourly Stats	30 Days
Retain Daily Stats	365 Days
Retain Events	30 Days

Now our IT department is very sensitive to the performance of our monitoring tools so I have installed 32 GB of RAM in the Database server. This gives us a Buffer Cache hit rate of >99.8%, a page life expectancy of up to 22 Hours, and a Procedure Cache hit rate of >95%. This means the data is kept in RAM and the DB server doesn’t have to go to disk very often to get it and the SQL queries are already in the Procedure Cache and don’t need to be recompiled very often.

This makes our DB Server very fast. Hope this helps.

DB Server.JPG

Donald_Francis

I ran close to 20,000 elements on 10gb of RAM on a dedicated SQL server. While SQL will reserve as much as you tell it it can I rarely saw actual utilization go above 6 or 7 gb.

Now with that said I just stood up a new SQL server for SW with 24gb of RAM but if all you have is 500 elements max something around 12gb will be more than enough.

If this is not a VM and you have to spend money on another physical server I would recommend you just run SQL on you SW box. But that is ONLY if you expect no growth.

jspanitz

Hey JB, slightly off topic here, just wondering what the tool was in your screen capture above. I know I've seen it before, but I just can't place it now.

Thx - John

MarieB

Hi All--

I'm marking this for the PM to see if he has any info to share.

DirtySouth

This has got me thinking now. Our SQL box only has 4GB RAM and has a few other non-SolarWind databases running. Up until now, performance has been fairly good, but I bet we could increase performance by increasing RAM.

I'm not a DB guy by any means...is there something in particular I could look at or monitor to determine if memory is a bottleneck on my SQL box?

jbaulsir

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