September 8, 2010 at 2:28 pm
Our new SQL box came in this week. We are configuring it now. I need advice on configuring the RAID.
Windows Server 2008R2 Enterprise 64bit
SQL Server 2008R2 Standard 64-bit
128GB Ram, 4 6core procs
I have 16 disks: all 146gb 15k SAS
Disks are aligned.
There are 18 databases the largest being MSCRM (100GB). Also housing MS GP, SRS, DNN, Sharepoint, Virtual Center, etc (another 20GB between them all)
So far i was planning on:
2 disks Raid1 - OS
6 disks Raid10 - Primary Data vol
4 disks Raid10 - Secondary Data vol
My question is how to allocate the remaining 4 disks:
4 disks Raid 10 - Logs
or
2 disks Raid 1 - Logs
2 disks Raid 1 - another Data vol
I would prefer to give the logs all the muscle that they need although if i can set up another Data vol to segment out the MSCRM Database even more that would be great. Also, assuming that my Databases (at least for now) total about 120GB and i have a box with 128GB of RAM. Will all databases essentially run in memory and is this much ado about nothing?
September 11, 2010 at 5:08 am
I wouldn't focus too much on database size, I would rather consider number of transactions and individual transaction size.
Splitting data into multiple volumes does make sense only if application can use it. I don't know too much details about MSCRM but if most of generated queries don't use joins intensively, splitting data across multiple physical volumes doesn't help.
If you experience mostly SELECT .... FROM Table WHERE... then only storing indexes in separate physical volumes than actual data could be beneficial. But then double check if any modification to CRM database made via front-end would not drop existing index and re-create it. If yes then most likely indexes will be re-created it the same (default) filegroup
When it comes to database size and available RAM - don't bother about that. SQL does not 'load' database or entire tables into memory - it reads only pages with requested data. If only MCSRM database is used then even very infrequently used table could get loaded completely and stay in server memory after some period of time. It could be in this case that entire MSCRM database will occupy entire server memory, providing there is no memory pressure from other applications running on the same physical server. But as soon as other database are accessed and used least frequently used data pages will be purged from memory to make space for new data.
Hope this helps,
Slawek
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