January 28, 2008 at 8:07 pm
I have a couple of programs (Blackboard and Sharepoint 3) where there is some recommendation to put on the database on seperate servers. My questions are these:
Which is faster having the SQL on the same server as the application (connection is gigabit connected on the same switch) or on a dedicated server?
Any benefit or detriment to using one SQL 2005 server for both heavy duty applications? I guess one detriment is if you lose the sql server both applications are hosed.
All servers are Dell 2950 dual core dual processor servers with 8 gigs of ram.
thanks for any help
Gary
January 28, 2008 at 11:21 pm
It depends 🙂
What do you mean by 'faster'? Sure you may get a slightly faster response time if the app is on the same server as SQL Server instead of on a box 100 miles away, but the majority of the time the response time will be governed by the work the underlying server has to do.
A few things you need to consider here:
1) Can the server support the MAXIMUM workload of the two databases/applications? How about the projected workload in six months time? Machine specs are irrelevant - you need to do your own testing in terms of CPU limits, IO throughput, memory consumption
2) having a single server doesn't give you any chance of redundancy. Separating the app from the SQL Server allows you to have an HA solution (e.g. failover clustering or database mirroring) at the SQL Server level without clients having to connect to a different machine (they connect to an app server)
3) having a single server doesn't allow you to do any scale-out of workload (e.g. with peer-to-peer replication)
Server consolidation is all very well but it does impose certain limitations on your architecture, and responsibilities in ensuring the server can handle peak throughput on all workloads.
Hope this helps
Paul Randal
CEO, SQLskills.com: Check out SQLskills online training!
Blog:www.SQLskills.com/blogs/paul Twitter: @PaulRandal
SQL MVP, Microsoft RD, Contributing Editor of TechNet Magazine
Author of DBCC CHECKDB/repair (and other Storage Engine) code of SQL Server 2005
January 29, 2008 at 5:25 am
Yes, that does help. It is as I suspected. Since both are web based apps the users are limited by all those trappings anyways. One other question is that the one app recommends sql be on the C drive. What is your thought on that?
Gary
January 29, 2008 at 6:06 am
Cool.
By all means install SQL on the C drive, but don't fall into the trap of putting the data and log directories for any databases on the C drive too. Without getting into a rat-hoel of how to layout data and log files, put them somewhere else than the system volume, any volume containing the system page file, and any volume storing database backups.
Thanks
Paul Randal
CEO, SQLskills.com: Check out SQLskills online training!
Blog:www.SQLskills.com/blogs/paul Twitter: @PaulRandal
SQL MVP, Microsoft RD, Contributing Editor of TechNet Magazine
Author of DBCC CHECKDB/repair (and other Storage Engine) code of SQL Server 2005
January 29, 2008 at 6:51 am
Perfect. One other question, which RAID is best for SQL? The C drive will be raid 1 but I usually use RAID 5 on the other 3 hard drives. I'm glad I found this site.
Gary
January 29, 2008 at 6:58 am
Well, it depends 🙂
RAID 5 pays a penalty for writes so isn't suitable for OLTP systems, for instance. RAID 1 is fine unless you want high capacity or high speed - in which case go for RAID 10. There's a bit more info in this whitepaper http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/2005/physdbstor.mspx
Thanks
Paul Randal
CEO, SQLskills.com: Check out SQLskills online training!
Blog:www.SQLskills.com/blogs/paul Twitter: @PaulRandal
SQL MVP, Microsoft RD, Contributing Editor of TechNet Magazine
Author of DBCC CHECKDB/repair (and other Storage Engine) code of SQL Server 2005
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