My Sims Server

[swiftysw1]

Hi ,

At the moment our 'Sims Server' has a box all to too himself.. Has anyone thought about or have visualised it?

 

Thoughts?

 

Advantages\Disadvantages?

 

Thanks

Si

[HBPS]

I have virtualised sims servers before never been an issue. I'm planning on creating a VM for my new sims server at my current school also

[robyholmes]

No problem at all and makes sense if you plan to use a HA setup.

[steveg]

Ours has been virtualised for years, no issues. Lots of benefits of it being virtual, being able to restore the whole server in half an hour has been a huge benefit in the past! Can't really see any reason to keep it physical now?

 

Steve

[ITJS2015]

I have got a few primarys which I support and which are all on physical machines. Myself and the boss have been advised by capita and 3rd party support not to go to virtual as there are problems with the virtual memory.

 

I wish we could go virtual as it would be a lot easier to restore but knowing if something will happen it is hard to undo what you have done.

 

Can any of you guys feed back to me on what your physical machine are running on and how many cores/memory you have applied to your VMs

[colly72]

If you can, go virtual every time. As @steveg says, the ability to restore the full server in the event of a disaster in minutes, is reason alone. We virtualised it around a year ago and haven't looked back.

[colly72]

If using Hyper-V, here's a link on running SQL Server with dynamic memory:

 

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh372970.aspx

[XiJ]

We virtualised our first primary for Sims in April. No problems so far.

[round2it]

no issues with it being virtualised just make sure you give it enough ram and cores.

disaster recovery is easy with a good backup product like veeam or altaro vm backup, restore the entire server in 30 mins. just do it.

 

I have virtualised everything except my PDC just not had time. the entire school runs on 2 servers now,

[swiftysw1]

What do you all think Re How many cores/memory we should use??.

 

1000 Students With Discover?

 

Thanks

Si

[matt40k]

What do you all think Re How many cores/memory we should use??.

 

1000 Students With Discover?

 

Thanks

Si

 

It depends.

 

For starters if your using the free SQL Express your SQL instance is limited to 1GB and 1 core. Beyond that it comes down to number of SIMS users - named (ie has an account), active (ie no of active uses at anyone time), what modules\add-ons you have - like Lesson monitor, InTouch, Groupcall, Go4Schools etc. And not forgetting how you use SIMS (and the velocity of data entry as well as the size) - you can get a feel for this by looking at your sims.mdf vs .

 

Really if your VM SIMS you already have a VM platform, you shouldn't build one just for SIMS and the platform should have room to scale it up or down beyond a default of say - 4cores\8gb.

 

The key with SQL which 90% of people forget is it's all about disc IO - use SSD.

[Esteban_Child_of_the_Sun]

The key with SQL which 90% of people forget is it's all about disco IO - use SSD.

or if you want to be a pioneer you could use 3D XPoint

[matt40k]

or if you want to be a pioneer you could use 3D XPoint

 

Only if we can use your credit card