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coolerbob
Aged Yak Warrior
841 Posts |
 Posted - 2005-09-06 : 04:57:36
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| We are trying to decide what direction to go in for our next server. The IT Manager is not happy with the idea of buying SQL2005 before it has had time to "settle". He wants to wait for the 1st service pack to come out. So I'm stuck with SQL2000. I have pretty much an open budget. So I want to pick the best hardware and configuration that provides the best performance.What are the key ROI issues that will provide the biggest gain? Database design and index creation issues have been dealt with for the time being. Now I'm looking at things like what RAID to set up on the server, how many hardrives to have in the server, whether to put filegroups on different RAIDs... stuff like that.We have a 10gig DB. It has a big history table which I have partitioned into two tables: HistoryRecent(under 1 gig) & HistoryOlder(over 9 gig). We also have a customers table with a few hundred thousand records. There is ofcourse much else - that was just to give you an idea.I can't remember (or find) the memory limit for SQL2000. Was it 4gig?Can I run SQL2000 on a 64bit server with Windows 2003 Server/Enterprise? If so, would it make sense to buy a server that can take SQL2000 now AND SQL2005 in about 12 to 18 months time? |
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eyechart
Master Smack Fu Yak Hacker
3575 Posts |
Posted - 2005-09-06 : 11:52:53
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| I would avoid buying any Itanium based systems at this point (IA64). There is very little support for that platform for windows software. Unfortunately, SQL 2000 is only fully 64bit on the Itanium platform. We recently got rid of our itanium servers because ofthe support issue, as well as the fact that they were harder for our hardware IT people to support.Your other choice is to go with opteron or a 64bit xeon based system (using the x64 edition of Win2k3). I personally would go with the opterons right now becauase their performance is pretty phenomenal. SQL 2000 runs fine on these systems after applying SP4. They basically run in AWE memory mode so they can address a pretty huge amount of RAM, although the 64bit Win2k3 doesn't run in PAE mode becuase it can natively address large amounts of memory already.A couple of drawbacks to the x64 approach that I have noticed are:1. SOme 32bit software doesn't work completely (winzip for example, no right-click shell extensions)2. There is a separation between native 64bit and 32bit in the registry. This can cause confusion when using software like perfmon or even SQL DMO from wscript/cscript.Eventually, in the next 6 to 9 months the first issue will go away. I really have only noticed a few minor problems with existing 32bit software. The 2nd issue goes away once SQL 2000 goes away and you have fully adopted SQL 2005.-ec |
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coolerbob
Aged Yak Warrior
841 Posts |
Posted - 2005-09-06 : 12:15:52
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| Sounds to me like I'm best of staying away from 64 bit until we upgrade to 2005. Thanks, that's one off the list. |
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eyechart
Master Smack Fu Yak Hacker
3575 Posts |
Posted - 2005-09-06 : 14:12:35
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| btw, we are really impressed with our new 64bit hardware. We got boxes that use the dual core opterons, so we have four 8-way boxes now. THese things blow the doors off of the old hardware.64bit on x64 is definitely doable right now, and I would actually recommend people implement the 64bit hardware now because there are so few issues. 64bit on itanium is another story though, and should be avoided at all costs IMHO.-ec |
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SQL2000 on 64bit