[sims] SIMS server

[Sheridan]

Hey guys,

 

I'm about the bring SIMS in house (from an external provider) so we have to provide the server and install the clients.

 

I'm looking at putting it on a 6core,8GB server with 2 RAID arrays (one for SQL and one for the Documents) obviously this is being done to a cost so the spec is pretty tight!

 

I'm just after opinions from people who run SIMS in house already on a few things.

 

1) Are you running SQL Express or the full version (we're a decent sized secondary school so the 4TB limit of Express seems fine)

2) Do you host the documents on the same server as SQL? We will probably have to to keep the costs down but does this cause any issues?

3) Whats the best way to deploy the client software onto a virgin (ie never had sims on it) network, SOLUS 3 or manual?

 

Just curious to see if this is going to be OK - the server is only expected to last 3 years before renewal.

[jamesfed]

Don't quote me on this as I don't come into contact with SQL that often but isn't SQL Express limited to one CPU core only (this making your 6 core CPU largely redundant)?

[Edu-IT]

1) Are you running SQL Express or the full version (we're a decent sized secondary school so the 4TB limit of Express seems fine)

Express. Not noticed any issues or had problems.

 

2) Do you host the documents on the same server as SQL? We will probably have to to keep the costs down but does this cause any issues?

Yes. All seems fine in terms of performance.

 

3) Whats the best way to deploy the client software onto a virgin (ie never had sims on it) network, SOLUS 3 or manual?

We push out the MSI's to the machines and then let them auto update when a newer release is applied to the SIMS server.

 

Don't quote me on this as I don't come into contact with SQL that often but isn't SQL Express limited to one CPU core only (this making your 6 core CPU largely redundant)?

You're right I believe. It can only use one core at once.

http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sqlgetstarted/thread/d5414be5-61b6-49fb-9688-31fb7078b0c7/

Edited October 24, 2012 by Edu-IT

[glennda]

How big is your Sims DB? Personally with SQL I would put the ram requirements as OS basic +1gb (so 5gb for 2008 r2). Plus for SQL the size of the DB+2GB. This then gives the ability to mount the entire DB in the ram and then some space for sql requests to be processed.

 

Plus Yes go for Full SQL (its like 75 quid a year on EES).

[Sheridan]

Ahh good point about the multi core processor. Express does 'support' multi core but only in the sense it will use any one of the cores at any time! So there would probably be a performance benefit using the full version, althought that may be difficult to quantify.

 

The aim is provisionally to run Express, and upgrade to full in a year or so - purely for cost reasons. We don't have EES so a multicore license is around £2000 on the Select type of agreement.

[3s-gtech]

I would always factor in the cost of a full SQL license with a secondary (or larger primary) SIMS server - but obviously that is a high cost without EES. Express is a bottleneck to performance. You can upgrade it fairly easily in the future using the built in wizard though.

 

As RAM is cheap, I'd look at getting 16GB if possible (not that you'd need it for SQL Express!), possibly when you can upgrade to full SQL. SQL loves loading everything into RAM, and it makes a huge difference. Our SIMS server uses SATA drives in a single RAID 1 array (urrrgghg, it does not sorting out) but it can fit the DB into memory so it's still quick.

[vikpaw]

In addition to the sterling advice above, i'd recommend virtualising. It really pays dividends when an update goes awry, because you can just undo to the previous snapshot.

[twin--turbo]

In addition to the sterling advice above, i'd recommend virtualising. It really pays dividends when an update goes awry, because you can just undo to the previous snapshot.

 

Yep I second the virtualisation. In five years tie when the hardware is underperforming or out of waranty you can either just shift the VM's to a new machine ( don't have to pay somone to rebuild a bunch of servers for you ) or suplement the HOST and divide the load.

 

Rob

[SHimmer45]

Your LEA most likely has a guideline of requirements for SIMS and the the SQL host (HCC does)

[Greg]

What OS are you using, we currently recommend Server 2008 Enterprise 32 bit to our schools to allow full compatibility with all of SIMS and a decent amount of RAM. Clients are ok 64bit, depending on what the users need, it's good to know that everthing will work on the server though.

 

We also recommend full SQL 2008 as 1 cpu and 1gb ram can cause performance issues.

 

Virtual's are fine for SIMS, just make sure that the host is setup correctly and well specc'ed, we've seen poor performance with bottlenecks caused by the hosts.

[jinnantonnixx]

... SQL loves loading everything into RAM, and it makes a huge difference.....

 

Indeed it does. Sometimes it gets greedy, to the detriment of the operating system.

 

In theory, SQL service should release memory on demand when the OS comes under memory pressure. However, this sometimes doesn't happen, and you get the strange situation where an SQL server with a ton of memory is performing unexpectedly poorly.

 

 

You might need to sign up to sqlservercentral.com to read the articles, but I recommend subscribing to their newsletter.

Suggested Max Memory Settings for SQL Server 2005/2008 - SQLServerCentral

 

It is pretty important to make sure you set the Max Server memory setting for SQL Server 2005/2008 to something besides the default setting (which allows SQL Server to use as much memory as it wants, subject to signals from the operating system that it is under memory pressure). This is especially important with larger, busier systems that may be under memory pressure.

 

This setting controls how much memory can be used by the SQL Server Buffer Pool. If you don’t set an upper limit for this value, other parts of SQL Server, and the operating system can be starved for memory, which can cause instability and performance problems. It is even more important to set this correctly if you have “Lock Pages in Memory” enabled for the SQL Server service account (which I always do for x64 systems with more than 4GB of memory).

 

These settings are for x64, on a dedicated database server, only running the DB engine, (which is the ideal situation).

 

Physical RAM MaxServerMem Setting

2GB 1500

4GB 3200

6GB 4800

8GB 6400

12GB 10000

16GB 13500

24GB 21500

[Sheridan]

Good advice - thanks to all!

 

Virtualising would be the ideal, but the budget will restrict that as we simply don't have the infrastrucuture in place to add VMs - and to start with SIMS would be too expensive. In 3 years time when its due for renewal then it might be a different matter! We still have the single server model which works fine but does take a decent initial investment to move over to VM's

 

I'd be running Server 2008 R2, with SQL Standard (if I can stretch to that!) and a min. of 8GB of RAM, but 16GB if I can get it. Hardware is cheap but when you have to add in backup devices and software, licenses etc then it gets expensive!

[siuko]

My only input (sorry if its off topic) is that if you are buying in a server from the likes of Dell etc (I buy dell servers as they do seem quite reliable)

 

DO NOT go with the pricing on the dell server website.

 

Spec up your system on there and then get a number of suppliers to quote on it for you... I've sometimes seen a drop of about 30% from the dell webpage

[jinnantonnixx]

If you're tempted to put everything on one volume - Windows, data files, log files and tempdb files - DON'T!

 

Here's why.

 

"Everything on One Disk

Some subscribe to the theory that modern hardware can act like a shock absorber for whatever the worstworkload you can throw at it: just build a single LUN with disk in some type of RAID configuration and just put theentire database on it. This is just not the case. Thoughtful planning and testing is still mandatory. Mixing tempdb,transaction log and data together can and will cause performance problems. There are other considerations in this,too. For example, by putting log and data on the same physical volumes, you have created a single point of failure.Lose one RAID volume and you have lost log and data. What’s more, the performance penalty for calculating theparity bit on the log and/or tempdb can be a significant factor in disk latency (response) times. This can be seen inthe DMV’s and ::FN tables. (We’ll look at this in the monitoring section of the paper.) Effectively when we co-mingle workloads on the same physical disk (mixing log, tempdb, and data)—you are reading and writing to thesame disk at the same time which aggravates the situation. For example, you run a SELECT statement with anORDER BY that is not indexed well. You will be reading off the same disk that you will be writing to with thetempdb. The same can be said for backing up to the same volume that you have your database on: reading/writingto the same disk and a single point of failure (lose the data and lose the backup at the same time). Regrettably, thisis a common configuration we see often enough."

 

 

Poor Disk Performance, Time Outs, Database and the SQL Server Error Log

Edited October 25, 2012 by jinnantonnixx

[Sheridan]

No it would most likely be an HP server - with the system and SQL on a RAID 1 array (300GB), and the documents on a larger RAID 5 array (around 650GB)

[vikpaw]

Good advice - thanks to all!

 

Virtualising would be the ideal, but the budget will restrict that as we simply don't have the infrastrucuture in place to add VMs - and to start with SIMS would be too expensive. In 3 years time when its due for renewal then it might be a different matter! We still have the single server model which works fine but does take a decent initial investment to move over to VM's

 

I'd be running Server 2008 R2, with SQL Standard (if I can stretch to that!) and a min. of 8GB of RAM, but 16GB if I can get it. Hardware is cheap but when you have to add in backup devices and software, licenses etc then it gets expensive!

 

You can VM on a single server model. You don't necessarily need to invest in blades, and SANS. You could use Hyper-V, i'm sure for free and only have one VM, though i'm sure it was free for up to four. Put this on your intended single server and max the spec you give the VM. You'll get the advantages of virtualising without too much extra cost. You can phase full scale virtualisation in over time. Of course, you don't get exceptional features, like host migration, and resource pooling, but just the snapshot feature is useful. If you find it works well and want to then add a second VM, perhaps a test one, that has lower spec' and isn't always on, then you also get a great way to test updates as well as your backups.

[Sheridan]

Actually setting up the server on a single VM (probably exsi) would be a good idea, like vikpaw says for using the snapshot facility.

 

It would also make it easier to move the server to new hardware in the future, rather than reinstalling everything.