September 28, 2006 at 9:09 am
Generally I wing these types of things on my systems, but this time through I'd like to get some feedback on how best to configure a new SQL Workstation that I'm going to be using.
The main things I'm looking at is OS storage / log files / database files / indexes and memory management.
What I have to work with:
80GB SATA drive (1.5GB/s)
250GB SATA drive (1.5GB/s)
2x320GB SATA2 drives (3GB/s)
4 GB of System Memory
I'll be using XP64 bit.
My thoughts initially were to use the 80 for the OS and program files,etc. The slower 250GB for log files, and then to stripe the 2x320's for data / indexes. Although I wanted to see if other people had additional ideas / options that might make things better for me.
BTW, the machine is primarily going to be a development machine which will inevitably end up making it's way into becoming a backup production type machine. I'll be working with ~250-400M records worth of dialing information / prospect information and testing out various ideas concerning data warehousing and reporting services.
An additional piece, the MB that I'm using has 6 adapters for SATA drives, so if there is someone who thinks that adding an additional drive somewhere into the mix would increase my abilities with the machine quite a bit, then let me know. Hard drives are ridiculously cheap at this point.
September 29, 2006 at 3:13 am
Generally I'd probably do pretty much what you're talking about, though I think I might be tempted not to stripe the two disks, just create one or more filegroups and allocate them over the two disks. System tables will be in the PRIMARY filegroup, and those could possibly go on to the same disk as the logfiles since they'll be pretty static, all other tables would go into your user filegroups and be spread over the two disks. You still get the parallel IO advantages of striping along with better administration - it's easier to add a new disk to a filegroup than it is to add it to a RAID array should the need arrise.
September 29, 2006 at 12:35 pm
Since it is a workstation and not a production server I'd say you can do pretty much what you want to disk wise. You've got enough memory unless you have some reall application memory hogs. I'd be more concerned with CPU power. With the amount of disk and memory I'd suggest at least DUAL CPUs, Xeons if possible.
RegardsRudy KomacsarSenior Database Administrator"Ave Caesar! - Morituri te salutamus."
September 29, 2006 at 12:55 pm
It's a 50/50 Development versus production. We don't really do production type environments for the company I work with. So at the end of the day it's difficult for me to classify things one way or the other due to that.
CPU wise, I'm going AMD X2 4600+ dual core CPU because as of when I purchased all of the parts this was the most economical hardware for the power that I could get. (I've been running on a 3200+ with a single 250 GB of HD space for years so anything is a huge upgrade).
As for the Memory, primarily I'm trying to set this up such that I can process around 10 to 12 million records per hour when I do some of my big batch updates (my 3200+ can do about 6). Therefore I was researching file groups / splitting the indexes onto another HD / Controller,etc and wanted to see what some other people who've probably had immeasurably more experience than me use in their environments (or wish they could use, but aren't given the chance).
This weekend is the installation time of the OS and all of its related software onto the 80GB drive and Monday is when I'm going to begin configuring the SQL aspects of things and begin porting the databases over to the new machine.
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