New SIMS Server Specs

[Gatt]

Currently we are running our SIMS Server on an old Dell PowerEdge 2600 with about 4Gig RAM and on Windows 2003/SQL 2005

I understand SIMS is to require SQL 2008 very shortly, and SLT/SMT are starting to enquire about a new server for it

My Question is this

What is the recommended Spec for a SIMS Server (CPU, RAM, HDD, etc)
Can we run it on Windwos 2008 R2 (I think this is a yes judging from previous threads)

Now a big one - where do we get the installation disks, as it is currently being managed by our Council, but we are looking to bring it in-house..
Can we install it without it being "live" (ie on a 2nd server and without interaction with the current SIMS Server)

Any and all help would be appreciated

[localzuk]

Currently we are running our SIMS Server on an old Dell PowerEdge 2600 with about 4Gig RAM and on Windows 2003/SQL 2005

I understand SIMS is to require SQL 2008 very shortly, and SLT/SMT are starting to enquire about a new server for it

My Question is this

What is the recommended Spec for a SIMS Server (CPU, RAM, HDD, etc)
Can we run it on Windwos 2008 R2 (I think this is a yes judging from previous threads)

Now a big one - where do we get the installation disks, as it is currently being managed by our Council, but we are looking to bring it in-house..
Can we install it without it being "live" (ie on a 2nd server and without interaction with the current SIMS Server)

Any and all help would be appreciated

2k8 R2 is unsupported, but YMMV. Personally I'd not put SIMS on an unsupported OS, simply because if something goes wrong, you may well be on your own.

Spec very much depends on number of concurrent users I'd say.

Regarding installation, the installation media is available from the Capita support site IIRC, or try contacting your LEA support team.

[zag]

Install CD link was posted on support-net recently, I made a post about it here:

Sims ISO image

Yes you can install it live in a 2nd installation no problem (I run a parallel Sims server as a backup), Just be careful with updates from solus as if you update one server, you need to ring capita to "re-authorise" it for the other server.

[Gatt]

Thanks
Installed 2008 x64 (Not R2) and it wont let me insatll - is the iso above 32bit?

[zag]

yes its 32bit

[vikpaw]

Install CD link was posted on support-net recently, I made a post about it here:

Sims ISO image

Yes you can install it live in a 2nd installation no problem (I run a parallel Sims server as a backup), Just be careful with updates from solus as if you update one server, you need to ring capita to "re-authorise" it for the other server.

That iso is only to perform an update though isn't it? It wont be a fully installable version. I think that's a separate CD/iso that you need to request.

[steve]

I'm going to say the V word - Virtualise! We've just upgraded and virtualised (Hyper-V) while doing so.

We've allocate 4 processors and 16Gb RAM to our 2008 x64 SIMS VM. That's for 100+ staff (1800 students) using it for lesson registration.

You can run the new setup in parallel and rename it later. If you use trusted logins, you need to watch those.

All the set up files you need are in the sims\setups folder. With the 2008 SQL stuff available by SOLUS.

The way I did it was:
P2V of physical server, turn off physical.
In place 2008 SQL migration of virtual, backed up databases.
Made new 2008 server, installed SQL 2008 / sims.
Used backups of data to restore on VM.
Renamed VM to match old physical.

At any stage I could have gone back to the physical 2005 SQL server if I'd stuffed it up.

[leco]

Thanks Steve, I'm in the process of doing this so the step by step might prove very helpful.