August 5, 2010 at 7:53 am
Hello,
Our company is in the process of creating a High Availability Configuration containing among the others two SQL 2008 Servers. As I am responsible for getting Vendor offers, i need to know this - one Intel Xeon X5680 Six Core 3,33 Ghz CPU per machine or two Intel Xeon X5650 2,66 per machine. We secured High Speed Storage - FC 15Krpm disks and my concern is if i try to save some money from the CPU license i might lose performance. Please advise
Thanks a lot
Andrey
August 5, 2010 at 8:10 am
Are the second one dual or quad cores?
More is usually better, though not linearly. I don't know that I've seen much posted on the six core designs, but I might look to save they money and put it to RAM and IO if I could.
You do know that if this is HA with a passive node/mirror server that is not used, you don't need to license it.
August 5, 2010 at 8:13 am
The processing power of the CPU needs to be properly scaled to the size and speed of memory and I/O throughput capability of the disks and network. It is possible to have an excess of CPU power wasted while waiting on I/O or paging.
On the other side of the coin is the nature of your application. Does it have a lot of heavy calculations that can take advantage of many parallel cores? Or is its role primarily supporting a Web server? You need to work through projected system activity in terms of transactions per second, and work through the numbers before you can make an intelligent decision.
The probability of survival is inversely proportional to the angle of arrival.
August 5, 2010 at 8:16 am
Thanks a lot,
The slower processors are 6 cores also. I know that in the Active Passive cluster you need License just for 1 of the servers, but still - two processor server will mean to me double the License money for SQL Standard Processor.
Thanks again!
Andrey
August 5, 2010 at 8:20 am
sturner,
Any reference on how to work through the numbers?
August 5, 2010 at 8:37 am
If you are asking for a specific reference I don't have one off the top of my head head, I'm sure they are out there.
What I do is gather the metrics of the proposed system... get it all down on paper so you can essentially attach numbers to each transaction. Then attempt to determine that typical and Max TPS you need to support that level of performance and work back to make sure the hardware is up to it.
Then the software: a good understanding of the capabilities (and limitations) of software you are going to be using is very important as well. Perhaps some load testing benchmarks would be useful here if the software is third party.
The probability of survival is inversely proportional to the angle of arrival.
August 5, 2010 at 8:57 am
I was asking specifically because I haven't seen any that would help you decide here. It seems like it's mostly a gut feel based on some numbers, but a guess placed by experts.
August 5, 2010 at 9:14 am
The only way you could come up with precise numbers is to do some simulations and/or benchmarking. Having said that, the methodology will produce results better than a guess, especially when done by knowledgeable individuals.
In my experience the people who are going to write the check for the hardware you are recommending would like to see some documentation and (however high-level) explanation of your though process.... basically you should be able to justify your decision.
Every time you do this you gain more insight and experience, and that's what its all about.
The probability of survival is inversely proportional to the angle of arrival.
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