Sims Multiple Cores

[THERADIOTUBBY]

Hi All

Running Sims on dedicated SQL server, SQL 2008, Server 2003

Trying to run some quite complicated marksheets and getting frustrated at speed

Looked at task manager and Pulsar is only using 1 core on my dual core machine. Tried on a quad core workstation and yet again only using 1 core with cpu usage never going over 25%

Is this right?

[matt40k]

And what's the server load like?

[THERADIOTUBBY]

Its a quad core 2.13 xeon mostly only on 25% with odd peaks up to 50%

[matt40k]

You can only put 1 physical file onto 1 CPU, so SIMS.mdf will only ever appear on 1 CPU, so you're running on 1x2.12GHz CPU.

Are you using SQL 2008 express or have you purchased Standard, if you're on express, then your using 1GB ram. The fact your CPU rather high, I would guess you need more ram on the server. Also what RAID are you using? I think the general recommendation is RAID-1 for OS and RAID-5 for data (SQL).

[Butuz]

Not true matt.

If your using SQL 2008 express then your SQL server can only use 1 core. If your using the full version then your SQL server can take advantage of multiple cores (up to 32 cores I think). I have 4 x 3.16Ghz cores allocated to my SQL server and it flies.

As far as pulsar on the actual sims workstation goes - it wouldn't surpise me if it was single threaded - it is pretty archaic. I'll do some testing on my quad core sims workstation and see what pulsar uses for me.

Butuz

[matt40k]

Correct Butuz, you can allocate more CPUs using the standard ed etc, BUT it is physically impossible to get a single file split between two CPUs (without splitting it up - which SQL doesn't do). You will however have SIMS.MDF on CPU1, SIMS.LDF on CPU2, TEMP on CPU3 and so on.

[3s-gtech]

IIRC, don't run an SQL database on a RAID5 array is the recommendation I've always been given.

[matt40k]

Why's that, SIMS database would be more read then write, which is RAID-5, read\write would be RAID-10 but that's more £££

[Butuz]

Correct Butuz, you can allocate more CPUs using the standard ed etc, BUT it is physically impossible to get a single file split between two CPUs (without splitting it up - which SQL doesn't do). You will however have SIMS.MDF on CPU1, SIMS.LDF on CPU2, TEMP on CPU3 and so on.

Not 100% sure what you mean matt. On my SQL server I can get sqlserver.exe to use 90+ % CPU of 4 cores if i run several big SIMS reports on several workstations at the same time.

I wouldnt imagine SQL 2008 actually loads individual database files to individual cores - it simply would not scale at all if it did that. And it does scale - much further than most Single SIMS server secondary schools????

Cheers

Butuz

[matt40k]

That's how it works, it's not SQL, it's a physical problem. If you have your database split between two CPU, how quickly would it be before it get's corrupt? Not even a second. Only way to get SIMS.MDF onto two or more CPUs would be to split it up into mutliple database files

[Butuz]

Yep - I don't follow either.

Butuz

[THERADIOTUBBY]

All i was trying to do was to run a marksheet that uses nested else ifs to add colours to the grades awarded so these can be displayed in an individual report.

What is my 'affinity'?

[Butuz]

I have just run a few tests. Pulsar.exe on SIMS workstations is single threaded. It doesn't appear to be able to make use of multiple CPU's.

On Dual core workstations Pulsar.exe never uses more than 50% CPU (1 core)
On Quad core workstations Pulsar.exe never uses more than 25% cpu (1 core)

Butuz

[Ian_ICTDS]

If my memory serves me right you can normally set a multi-core processor to act like a single-core one in the bios somewhere. This would allow single threaded applications to use all four cores as if they where one but to the detriment of everything else.

Ian.

EDIT: I'm talking on a client PC here to help pulsar. I wouldn't dream of doing this on a server.