SIMS SQL 2005

[Gatt]

Got an email from our LEA support for SIMS stating that our servers would need updating and we needed to buy

SQL Server 2005 £95.86

 

All device Cal licenses upgraded to 2005 £13.12 each (for every PC connecting to the server)

 

Windows 2003 Server Std. £46.71

 

Hardware requirements 4 GB RAM

 

Now the school has a schools agreement (3?) with Microsoft - would this cover us for the SQL stuff?

The SIMS server currently already has Windows 2003 std on it and 5GB RAM

[DMcCoy]

Got an email from our LEA support for SIMS stating that our servers would need updating and we needed to buy

SQL Server 2005 £95.86

 

All device Cal licenses upgraded to 2005 £13.12 each (for every PC connecting to the server)

 

Windows 2003 Server Std. £46.71

 

Hardware requirements 4 GB RAM

 

Now the school has a schools agreement (3?) with Microsoft - would this cover us for the SQL stuff?

The SIMS server currently already has Windows 2003 std on it and 5GB RAM

 

Only if you bought SQL licenses in your schools agreement.

[robknowles]

Rather than buying SQL Server and then the CALs for all computers, you may find it more cost effective to purchase SQL Server on a per processor licence like I have at £250ish per year and will cover an unlimited amount of devices connecting to your SQL Server. Even better is that Microsoft licence per physical processor not per core, so I only needed one licence for my Quad Core Xeon.

 

Rob

[klawd]

deleted

[john]

Also worth remembering that schools actually get exams results 48hrs before "Results Day" so realistically the entire results fortnight is a period to be kept clear of ALL systems work. I know those 2 weeks all I do is reimaging and new installs, no updates or infastructure changes due to the risk of blipping the internet or the admin infastructure.

[thom]

I have just received a quote from Ramesys for SQL 2005 licenses.

-SQL 2005 Standard - £105

-Media - £6.50

--Per CAL (per device not connection) £13.50

--Per CPU (we have 2) £789

We have Sims.net on about 150 PCs/Laptops so we can pay a total of £2136.50 per device or £1689.50 per CPU

 

This seems a lot of money

a) for a school

b) as we already use SQL 2000 std

 

Is there a cheaper option (I am contemplating taking out a CPU!)

[bossman]

Only SQL express (free) but you would still have to purchase cals.

[mrhaggis]

Hi

 

You could use Workgroup Edition instead of Standard.

Per CPU it is about £460 , Will only use up to two physical processors and 3gb Ram, but would have thought most servers will only have 2 cpus in them anyway. Works out a fair bit cheaper than Standard.

 

Andrew

[CyberNerd]

Is there a cheaper option

 

CMIS ?

[john]

Is there a cheaper option

 

CMIS ?

I don't see why that is a cheaper option, we will be moving over to SQL 2005 shortly I would suspect.

[enjay]

Is there a cheaper option

 

CMIS ?

The personnel costs in moving MIS - i.e. time taken for data migration and staff re-training - would be huge.

[CyberNerd]

Is there a cheaper option

 

CMIS ?

The personnel costs in moving MIS - i.e. time taken for data migration and staff re-training - would be huge.

 

yeah - we've gone from SIMS > CMIS > SIMS in 3 yrs and the financial and personnel cost far exceeds a simple SQL upgrade ( a single 2005 processor license was £750 from dabs IIRC) . Good job school management isn't accountable to anybody.

[Guest monkeyx]

The personnel costs in moving MIS - i.e. time taken for data migration and staff re-training - would be huge.

 

Well our school had SIMS, Bromcom and a third party reporting package. The training costs and admin costs for all 3 were huge!

 

Also Serco move the data for you, so on what basis are your HUGE costs coming from. Have you personally gone through a migration process?

 

Under CMIS(Facility/Eportal) the overal admin costs are the same(slightly lower), but the training and support costs are MUCH lower as only 1 product to support and train staff on. Staff using eportal hardly need any training either, which has been a BIG help!

[enjay]

Also Serco move the data for you

How does that fit with the Ts&Cs of your Capita contract which state, IIRC, that you won't share your database outside of your school and Capita?

 

Under CMIS(Facility/Eportal) the overal admin costs are the same(slightly lower), but the training and support costs are MUCH lower as only 1 product to support and train staff on.

What about the initial training costs? Our users know how to use SIMS so don't require much training, but everyone would need re-training if we were to move.

[nicholab]

It looks like VMware is going to be usefully in migrating your server. You can copy the whole machine then play with the upgrade. Is every body getting new servers for SIMS. We are going to be upgrading in autumn half term as RM have to install the new server.

[User3204]

@thom

 

That looks like the same as we've paid for our licenses.

 

 

@nicholab

We definitely have gotten a new server for the new SIMS, with lots of RAM (8gb), as the old one was always running nearly at capacity.

It also means we have had to change to "enterprise" windows 2003, as "standard" wouldn't recognise more than 4gb of RAM.

 

 

 

 

Now, I just have to work out if it will be easier to:

a) upgrade the old server, then transfer to the new server;

b) transfer to the new server, then upgrade to the new SQL;

 

My preference is b) as this means we still have a working server, if it all goes wrong. But my boss wants to do a) 'cause he thinks this will work "better"... I keep askng him to define better !

[steve]

@User3204

 

I'm going with c) Copy off all SIMS to a Virtual PC, do the upgrade on the virtual PC, then transfer to new server.

 

I'll have a server to go back to if it all goes pear shaped and won't have to uninstall MSDE off the new server, keeping it as shiny and new as possible.

 

Just been playing with our new sims server: HP DL380 G5, 2x quad xeon 2.33ghz, 12Gb RAM, 2 xRAID1 36Gb 15K HDDs, 2x RAID1 72Gb 15K HDD on 2 SAS P400 controllers.

 

Its a bit nice :-)

[User3204]

Yeah, trouble is, I don't have a spare server to install any Virtual PC or VMWare onto.

 

I'm also, not currently in charge of SIMS, so if/when it all goes wrong, it's not my fault, and I get little say in the install order.

 

 

I really should get a spare server for VM / Virtualisations.

 

 

I think our new SIMS server is a HP G5 ML350 (no racking in this server room), with 2* 140gb SAS mirrored drives, partitioned into 3, for windows, SIMS, and stuff. And thinking about it, it might even be a stupid amount of RAM, I only know it was more than 4gb when Windows 2003 standard advised it wasn't going to use the stuff above this.

 

I'm sure I spoke to some supplier who told me they'd managed to cluster SIMS onto multiple machines.. on the understanding from Capita thatit wasn't supported, I reckon I'd like to do this too, specially the slowdown we get in february/march time for FMS.

[nicholab]

Our server will be limited to 4GB of RAM as that all RM support. I have suggested getting a HP or dell. It's a massive upgrade in hardware for us as we currently running on a 1GHz with one 1GB of RAM. What RAID are you using on your SIMS server? I have heard that for absolutely stoking database performance raid 5 sucks.

 

I just realized that for the new update you can not do the old style update deconnect then reconnect the database. You got to upgrade the database.

[robknowles]

Hello,

 

On our database server we run RAID 10, so we can get the performance advantages of RAID 0 (data split across multiple drives) but with RAID 1 protection as well (redundantly mirrored). RAID 5 isn't too bad, but with the cost of the server (Dell PowerEdge 2900) getting an extra disk wasn't going to add much more to the price. Also just to add a bit more performance we have 2 HDDs on RAID 1 Drives with the OS and SQL Installed, and the data files on the RAID 10 array and also used 15K RPM HDDs. Get plenty of RAM as well (we have 16GB with more for more), 1GB is far too little, but you need the full version of SQL Server to take advantage (IIRC 2005 Express only uses 1GB). Also just for a little more performance set the NTFS File Block Size as high as possible on the SQL Data Partition, as your database will be many MB's setting it higher will equal less reads and faster access.

 

I personnelly would buy a server from RM, you can get a far better specced server for a lower price and Dell Support I have found is excellent.

 

Rob

[nicholab]

So do you use six disk?

[robknowles]

Yes, there's 6 disks in total. 2 x 73GB (RAID1) for OS Install, 4 x 300GB (600GB usable RAID 10) for SQL Data Directory.

 

Rob

[Guest monkeyx]

From you previous answer I guess the answer is NO, you have not actually migrated from one MIS to another.

 

Also Serco move the data for you

How does that fit with the Ts&Cs of your Capita contract which state, IIRC, that you won't share your database outside of your school and Capita?

 

I did check Ts&Cs the data in the database is the schools property! But just to make sure I copied the original! It is only the application accessing the data that is part of Ts&Cs. The migration procedures are run within Facility by the school.

 

Any how I guess that is not really the point of this thread, just that I seem to becoming a grumpy old **** recently!

[meastaugh1]

Only SQL express (free) but you would still have to purchase cals.

 

I don't think so: http://www.microsoft.com/sql/howtobuy/default.mspx

[ctbjs]

Moving data from one sims server is a doddle and will take you one day only at the most. I have just done this with mine moving from one domain to another, it took me just less than a day and then obviously now I have to visit all the workstations and reconfigure them to go onto the new domain. Not using as much RAM as you guys but see no problems with connectivity or speed. I will need to revisit this later in the year as we have more users connected to the SIMS database.