BEST RECOMMENDATION FOR A TESTING SCENARIO

guys:
I would like to have your best advise.
We am planning to install Passive/Active SQL server Clustering in the
production environment that includes two identical Dell PowerEdge 6650 dual
processor servers with a External Disk Storage PoweVault 220S. We have
bought two copies of Windows 2003 enterprise (for each one of the servers)
and one only copy of SQL Server 200 enterprise Edition licensed per
processor (I was told that only one copy of this software ins needed in an
Active/Passive mode)
On the other hand, since the configuration above would be in production at
all times, we would like to have similar scenario for development and
testing purposes.I was advised to replicate the same hardware and software
scenario described above, however, as you can see, it would be a costly
endeavor. Each Dell 6650 costs approximately $20,000 (two processors, 8 GB
RAM, 2 MB cache) the External Raid $8,000, the Windows 2003 Enterprise
server software $3,000 (for the two servers), and the SQL Server 200
enterprise software about $24,000 (license for two processor, for just one
server)
Could you please if you see any issue in the production scenario? Are we Ok
using only one copy of SQL server there?
Secondly, do we have any other choice for a development and testing
scenario? Most people recommend that a development and testing scenario
would be, if not identical, at least very similar to the production
scenario. I was planning to get those Dell 6650 server but with a single
processor, only 1 GB of RAM, and 1 MB cache (or even 512 KB). In terms of
software I was also told that one economical approach would be to acquire
the MSDN Universal subscription that allows use software for testing
(Windows and SQL server)
Thirdly, do you have any other (most economical recommendation in terms of
hardware and software for our development and testing scenario? How critical
is that this has to be very similar (or identical) to the production
scenario?
Thanks for all your answers
White
First off, what you are implementing is a single instance cluster, not an
active/passive cluster. It may just look like a term, but there is a very
dramatic difference between the two.
As for licensing SQL Server in a cluster, you have exactly what you need.
The easiest way to tally up licensing for a cluster is to ask how many SQL
Servers you can connect to from an application. In your case, it would be
1.
For the dev/testing environments, you do not need to purchase the Enterprise
Edition of SQL Server. You can use the Developer Edition which gives you
the full functionality of Enterprise Edition without all of the cost and
hardware requirements. This even allows you to simulate a cluster, you just
don't get full clustering functionality. But, you do NOT need to stuff
clusters into your dev/test environments. There is no case that I'm aware
of where a clustered SQL Server behaves differently with respect to an
application than a standalone SQL Server.
My recommendation would be to purchase a Dell 6650 with the external RAID
array. Depending on your testing and development scenario, you can very
easily place BOTH dev and test on the same machine in different SQL Server
instances without collisions. The only real reason to have completely
different systems for the two would be if you are doing a lot of very heavy
performance related work. If not, you can get away with a single machine
with external array + Windows 2003 Server + SQL Server 2000 Developer
Edition.
I can send you my address so you can send a check for the ~$54,000 that I
just saved you.
Mike
Principal Mentor
Solid Quality Learning
"More than just Training"
SQL Server MVP
http://www.solidqualitylearning.com
http://www.mssqlserver.com

Best Practice/recommendation dev data maint plans

We are working on converting to SQL 2005 database. During the conversion we are having to rewrite a lot of code and doing a lot of intital testing and development on development data. This is causing our transaction logs to really big. I have created a maint plan that runs nightly that does a back up of database and tran log but throughtout the day the tran logs are getting really big and eating up a ton of disk space. Does anyone have suggestions on what sort of maint plan I can setup to run on my developement data where as at this point I am not concened about being able to roll back the database just keep is small as possible and "healthly"

All ideas are appreciated

Thanks

Chris

Hi,

If your database has recovery model set to FULL you can schedule to take a T-Log backup on half/hourly to keep it in shape.

BTW are you doing Re-Indexing / Bulk Insertion-Updation !!!

Hemantgiri S. Goswami

|||

Would you recommend running the hourly t-log backups by creating a maint plan?

I have a maint plan running nightly that is perfoming reindexing, update stats, and shrink the db. We are also converting in data via text files and bulk inserting but when we do this we are shutting off as much of the logging as possible.

Would you happen to know of any articles, white papers or anything like that I could read up on?

Thanks for your time.

Chris

|||

Hi,

As you said that you have a maint plann running nightly which does ReIndexing... Re Indexing actually keep your T-Log file growing, what is a plan you have for shrinking!!! Refer http://hemantgirisgoswami.blogspot.com/2006/03/cause-for-t-log-become-full-and-how-to.html

Regards

Hemantgiri S. Goswami

|||Thanks for the suggestions. The articles are very helpfull.

Best hw recommendation for a sql server - server.

At this time, i have a server running sql server 2000 sp3 on a windows2000
server sp4. this server is running slow, so I need to recommend a new server
,
buy I don′t know how to estimate the best hw tha will help us.
Do some body know a tool that can help me to estimate the best hw for our
system requierements'
Thanks a lot for your help.> At this time, i have a server running sql server 2000 sp3 on a windows2000
> server sp4. this server is running slow, so I need to recommend a new
> server,
> buy I don′t know how to estimate the best hw tha will help us.
Why do you think the slowness is due to hardware problems?
The most monumental increases we have realized in the past performance over
the past year, were from:
(a) installing SQL Server 2000 SP4 (huge gain!)
(b) optimizing indexes, statistics and procedure code|||Have you already eliminated, deadlocking, poor indexing etc before deciding
to purchase new ...? If not throwing hardware at a problem will only be a
short term solution.
Find out the budget and work back from there...
HTH. Ryan
"Maria Guzman" <MariaGuzman@.discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:EDFA0CF8-51A1-4CC3-AA14-9F36D255DF2D@.microsoft.com...
> At this time, i have a server running sql server 2000 sp3 on a windows2000
> server sp4. this server is running slow, so I need to recommend a new
> server,
> buy I dont know how to estimate the best hw tha will help us.
> Do some body know a tool that can help me to estimate the best hw for our
> system requierements'
> Thanks a lot for your help.|||Have you used Performance Monitor to confirm that the bottleneck is your
server? Replacing the hardware may seem like a quick fix compared to
analyzing and re-programming the application, but if you shell out the
$$,$$$ and the problem is still not solved, then you end up looking really
bad.
Performance Monitor:
http://www.sql-server-performance.c...&seqNum=28&rl=1
How to Perform a SQL Server Performance Audit
http://www.sql-server-performance.c...mance_audit.asp
Checklist: SQL Server Performance
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/d...
etcheck08.asp
There may still be an easy fix related to resolving deadlocks, logical or
disk defragmenting, or simply adding a crucially needed index.
http://support.microsoft.com/defaul...kb;en-us;832524
Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Index Defragmentation Best Practices
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/pr...n/ss2kidbp.mspx
How To: Optimize SQL Indexes
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/d...
etHowTo03.asp
"Maria Guzman" <MariaGuzman@.discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:EDFA0CF8-51A1-4CC3-AA14-9F36D255DF2D@.microsoft.com...
> At this time, i have a server running sql server 2000 sp3 on a windows2000
> server sp4. this server is running slow, so I need to recommend a new
> server,
> buy I dont know how to estimate the best hw tha will help us.
> Do some body know a tool that can help me to estimate the best hw for our
> system requierements'
> Thanks a lot for your help.|||Thanks a lot for your recommendatio. I applyed some of them. The other thing
that I need help to estimate the best hw for a sql server is that here in th
e
office they want to change the server because they want to implement a
Cluster. So I have to recommend a new hw requirements.
Do you know any formula that can help to to estimate that' or can you tell
me what issue I need to consider to analyze that.
Thanks a lot for your help.
"JT" wrote:

> Have you used Performance Monitor to confirm that the bottleneck is your
> server? Replacing the hardware may seem like a quick fix compared to
> analyzing and re-programming the application, but if you shell out the
> $$,$$$ and the problem is still not solved, then you end up looking really
> bad.
> Performance Monitor:
> http://www.sql-server-performance.c...ver.as
p
> Monitoring - Performance Monitor
> http://www.informit.com/guides/cont...&seqNum=28&rl=1
> How to Perform a SQL Server Performance Audit
> http://www.sql-server-performance.c...mance_audit.asp
> Checklist: SQL Server Performance
> http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/d...enetcheck08.asp
> There may still be an easy fix related to resolving deadlocks, logical or
> disk defragmenting, or simply adding a crucially needed index.
> http://support.microsoft.com/defaul...kb;en-us;832524
> Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Index Defragmentation Best Practices
> http://www.microsoft.com/technet/pr...eNetHowTo03.asp
> "Maria Guzman" <MariaGuzman@.discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:EDFA0CF8-51A1-4CC3-AA14-9F36D255DF2D@.microsoft.com...
>
>

best book on complex DTS packages?

I already know how to use the basics for setting up and running DTS packages in SQL Server 2000. Does anyone have a good recommendation for book(s) that cover advanced DTS topics such as using command line scripts, ETL and so forth to work with complex DTS topics? ThanksThe only one I know about and own is Professional DTS by Wrox books, it was written by guys at Alltel and Encore development which is a BI company.

HTH

BTW: I do reccomend it!