[sims] New SIMS server installation

[mdrabble]

We will be commissioning a new Dell R720 server to replace our current ageing SIMS server and have a question about where to put the SIMS SQL Database.

 

The Server is going to have 2x200GB (Raid 1) SSD drives for the OS and 4x300GB (Raid TBD) 15K SAS drives.

 

Do I put the database on the SSDs or do I put them on the 15K SAS Drives?

 

What are people thoughts on this?

 

Thanks

Mark

[Bananas]

I'd keep the OS and database separate if it were me. We had our server specced with 5xSSD's and did the same split

[mdrabble]

That was my original intention to keep them separate but then thought about using the speed of the SSDs.

 

We already have the new server, so bit late to change drives unless I put off the installation/migration

[Bananas]

Tough one that, you could partition the SSD drives to an OS and data partition if nothing else. This is going to be one of those situations where there's no correct answer

[zag]

Put it on the SSD for sure.

 

We have ours on a 300GB virtual machines with a single SSD drive.

 

Works great and is really fast.

 

Microsoft's advice to put the SQL db on a separate disk is out of date, when it comes to SSD drives there is no performance improvement separating them.

Edited May 16, 2014 by zag

[vikpaw]

I thought it odd to spec SSD for the OS. I still think regardless of the type of hardware separating to different units is worthwhile.

[PotNoodleTech]

Swap it around. Use 3 x 300GB (plus 1 as a hot spare) for the O/S and the 2 x 256GB(?) SSD for the Database. Have the database back itself up to the O/S drive every night for good measure.

 

It's a bit academic as if you're using 16 or more GB RAM accesible by SQL all writes will be written to ram and then occasionally offloaded to disk so SSD won't speed up write speed. It will of course speed up read speed which could be handy if you for example regularly open whole school attendace on more than one workstation.

Edited May 16, 2014 by PotNoodleTech