Need help choosing Server Hardware

[John]

Hi,

I'm ussually just told what I will be working with, but today I was asked to
choose the hardware myself.

First off, it's a small company, so a $10,000 server is not an option. But
also, a $500 box isn't going to cut it either.

Basically, I am builing a web app which generates from 10-100 million
records per calculation (yes, that's the spec). I'm using SQLServer 2000
(possibly 2005 if my employer wants to risk it), and ASP.NET. The
calculations are all done in stored procedures.

Comments, suggestions, and URLs are much appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
John

 

[m.posseth]

huh ??? well barnes and nobles thought it was good enough + 2 years ago
when it was still in early Beta so risk wich risk ? ,,,,,


Well first tip use a seperate Web and SQL server this is much better
scalable

for business servers i would go for the poweredge series of DELL maybe two
2850 `s ?? one with 2 gb ( for the webserver ) and the other one with as
much memory as fits in the budget for the sql database

regards

Michel Posseth

 

[John Timney \( MVP \)]

Your not going to get a one line answer, as database sizing and web server
sizing are entirely different things and you've not hinted at whether you
expect different servers, raid clusters, resilience, failover, SAN/NAS
storage, lots of web traffic - only that you expect the database to be quite
busy. You've neitehr said if your 100 mill records are 1 bit large, or 1
meg each split across many tables, 1 user per hour or 100,000 per second -
and of course it all counts.

This is not a simple job, and if I was you I would be going back to whoever
asked you to chose the hardware and tell them you need to speak to the
hardware vendor, as they can normally help you make some initial estimates
and suggest appropriate hardware. Dont be fooled by your company being
small, for a high performance database you will easily spent $10,000.

A bit of light reading to get you started
http://www.sql-server-performance.com/rc_hardware_planning.asp

--
Regards

John Timney
ASP.NET MVP
Microsoft Regional Director

 

[John]

Your not going to get a one line answer, as database sizing and web server
sizing are entirely different things and you've not hinted at whether you
expect different servers, raid clusters, resilience, failover, SAN/NAS
storage, lots of web traffic - only that you expect the database to be
quite busy. You've neitehr said if your 100 mill records are 1 bit large,
or 1 meg each split across many tables, 1 user per hour or 100,000 per
second - and of course it all counts.

This is not a simple job, and if I was you I would be going back to
whoever asked you to chose the hardware and tell them you need to speak to
the hardware vendor, as they can normally help you make some initial
estimates and suggest appropriate hardware. Dont be fooled by your
company being small, for a high performance database you will easily spent
$10,000.

A bit of light reading to get you started
http://www.sql-server-performance.com/rc_hardware_planning.asp

Thanks, I will look at the URL.

BTW-There will probably be about 10 users, who will all together, probably
run less than 20 different scenarios per week. So not a lot of load. And
the records will be over 4 tables.

Thanks again,
John

 

[Guest]

My 2 cents:

1. By the fastest disk you can find.
2. A single processor will obviously be slower than 2, 4, etc. This
factors out to exponentially slower calculations.
3. $10,000 isn't even nearly adequate unless your willing to wait, and
wait, and wait, and wait......
4. Given the limited information you've provided I'd assume a 4 processor
machine with 4 GB of ram would still be painfully slow.
5. I agree with waiting on SQL 2005. Let everyone else experiment for 6
months. Microsoft has done their due dilligence but I'd wager there are
things out there waiting to nail people. I'm already seeing things in the
news groups about why things aren't working (Security is enable by default),
patches bringing servers down (Saw that one today in the setup newsgroup),
etc.

 

[John]

Hi, ....
Comments, suggestions, and URLs are much appreciated.

Hi,

One of the partners has decided to go with hosted server.

Thanks again for the input.
John