[sims] Building a new SIMS Server

[MrWu]

Hi all;

 

Just planning to build a SIMS Hyper-V server alongside to replace our old Win2003 SIMS.

 

We have a Hyper-V environment with 2 x HP 5620 DL380s served by a HP P2000 SAN via 6Gb SAS, running 12 x 600Gb 10k rpm drives on RAID 60 as one volume (nothing stressful on there, 2 printer servers, 1 intranet, 1 Radius/unifi server and later migrate a corero finance server, Impero and 1 WSUS server over)

 

I was think of creating 100Gb OS and 300Gb DATA as fixed disk for the new SIMS, along with 16Gb of RAM to minimise disk access..then DPM for hourly snapshots too.

 

Does this sound like an ok plan?

 

Thanks as always

[GREED]

It sounds mighty complicated for a SIMS server, remember this runs fine for most on a bog standard server setup.

[IrritableTech]

Sounds like you've got the virtual setup you need.

 

Our (virtual) sims server only has a 100GB OS drive, and a 60GB Data. It's currently only using 15GBs of the data drive so 300GBs might be a bit of overkill?

 

I'd throw 16GB of RAM at mine, if I had it spare.

[zag]

As the others state, its a bit overkill for a Sims server. It will run fine with 8GB of ram. SQL server uses whatever it can, it has nothing to do with disk access. Most Sims databases are under 4GB.

 

Total storage doesnt really need to be over 60GB. Ours uses 31GB.

Edited January 24, 2013 by zag

[vikpaw]

I would go with a larger OS partition they always fill up. My 80 is feeling the squeeze now and all it takes is a few upgrades SPs and some random add on software. At least 160gb would be better.

[glennda]

What other modules do you use withing Sims?

 

How big is your DocStorage folder?

[skunk]

I would spec RAM depending upon your current and planned use. We have 65 teachers all using SIMS every lesson for the registers and querying assessment data. The front page widgets also pull down data for all staff. The SQL server has 10Gb of memory and I will be adding more when the servers get more RAM as it runs very slowly.

[localzuk]

I would spec RAM depending upon your current and planned use. We have 65 teachers all using SIMS every lesson for the registers and querying assessment data. The front page widgets also pull down data for all staff. The SQL server has 10Gb of memory and I will be adding more when the servers get more RAM as it runs very slowly.

 

Weird, we have SIMS here running on SQL Express still, so 1GB RAM max for the DB. We use it with 30 teachers and half a dozen admin staff using it all day too. Our DB is 1.7gb in size though, so if yours is a lot bigger, you'd want more RAM.

 

Only time we have any sign of a slow down is when our admissions officer does anything to do with CTF imports!

 

I'd be thinking something else is wrong if you've got 10GB RAM on a SIMS server and its running slow!

[skunk]

I may just have very high expectations.....I want instant!

[GREED]

I may just have very high expectations.....I want instant!

 

Don't we all!

[localzuk]

I may just have very high expectations.....I want instant!

 

Don't think that's ever going to be possible with SIMS.net - the database itself isn't clean enough to do it!

[GREED]

Don't think that's ever going to be possible with SIMS.net - the database itself isn't clean enough to do it!

 

*cough* *cough* *Aspen*

[localzuk]

*cough* *cough* *Aspen*

 

I'll be steering myself and my boss your way when I'm at Bett. You're there aren't you?

[GREED]

I'll be steering myself and my boss your way when I'm at Bett. You're there aren't you?

 

I am probably the only person who cannot NOT be there!!! Come along buddy happy to show you the wears...

 

Except Friday I'm likely to be called away that day.

[MrWu]

Cheers all!

 

The old SIMS server Q6600 and 4Gb of RAM + SATA IDE RAID..running Discover, SIMS.net and inTouch..the DB is round about 3.7gb.

 

There will be around 70 - 80 staff accessing..it's a bit slow and inTouch more so.

 

Capita recommended at least 32Gb, and I've seen some insane solutions on the forum like Enterprise SSDs for the SQL db etc..which is awesome but money is a bit short !

 

Doc storage folder around 2.8Gb

Edited January 24, 2013 by MrWu

[localzuk]

I'd be sticking it in 8GB RAM personally. Disk speed isn't *that* important, as SQL runs things in RAM anyway, writing to disk as and when.

 

32GB would be ridiculous.

[MrWu]

Thanks for the feedback,

 

So would the best idea to build this VM, add SQL 2008 and tweak, restore all the SIMS stuff and test? Then come the time say over holidays restore most current data from old SIMS and repoint all the clients over to the new SIMS VM?

[bwestlake]

ideally ram should be recommended windows os + 1gb for each gb in sql database

[vikpaw]

Sounds good mr wu.

[glennda]

Thanks for the feedback,

 

So would the best idea to build this VM, add SQL 2008 and tweak, restore all the SIMS stuff and test? Then come the time say over holidays restore most current data from old SIMS and repoint all the clients over to the new SIMS VM?

 

I would rename the new sims server the same name as the old one - although do your clients get the connect.ini file from a mapped drive or local.

[vikpaw]

The only reason I don't like that is that SQL used to complain and have weird settings hard coded on install. I may have been doing it wrong back then but if its easy enough I prefer a clean start. If connect.ini is on the sims share its no biggie, just need to alter sims.ini by batch