Building a SQL Server - Need help to determine Best Practices 1

[Zych]

Hello,

I am going to build a SQL system for an application we need to run. The company that designed the application is little help in designing the server. What is the best practice in setting up a SQL Server? I will be running MS SQL Server 2000 in SMP (2 processor) configuration. I want to setup the drives so I get the best performance. Should I have multiple drives in mirrored configurations? RAID 5? etc, etc. How partitions?

Thanks,

Zych

 

[mrdenny]

Here is an FAQ on setting up drives for a SQL Server. faq962-5747

Denny
MCSA (2003) / MCDBA (SQL 2000) / MCTS (SQL 2005)

--Anything is possible. All it takes is a little research. (Me)

http://www.mrdenny.com

 

[Zych]

Thank you that was very informative. I gave you high marks on it. This was exactly what I was looking for.

If you don't mind I put some things together and wanted to get your opinion on it.

The server falls into the medium category. It may grow to 1000 users but it will be more like a web based item than people running large queries all the time.

This is what I think I am looking at:

HP DL380 G$ SAS Rack Server
Dual Xeon 3.00GHz/2MB Processors
(7) 36GB SAS 10,000 RPM Hard Drives
(2) RAID-1 for OS and Binaries
(3) RAID-5 for System and User Databases
(2) RAID-1 for Log Files and tempdb

I need to verify that the RAID card can handle this but I think it can.

Does this look good to you?

To throw a wrench into this I am also thinking of buying two of these and have one as a standby mirror in case the first has a hardware failure. I know this will slow it down a little but is there any reason I should not mirror the server?

Thanks,

Zych

 

[mrdenny]

If your load on the logs and tempdb will be low then you can put both of them on the same server.

As the server grows you may wish to move the tempdb to it's own RAID 1 array (which would require external storage).

This looks fine to me.

Making a second server a standby server won't slow down your production server any.

Denny
MCSA (2003) / MCDBA (SQL 2000) / MCTS (SQL 2005)

--Anything is possible. All it takes is a little research. (Me)

http://www.mrdenny.com