Drew Wutka
DWUTKA at Marlow.com
Mon Sep 28 16:47:51 CDT 2009
LOL, with this economy, funds are tight! Though if you are using a RAID 6 with 4 drives, you are only going to lose about one drive of space...to go to a RAID 10. This is with an external RAID controller, right, not something on the motherboard? (If it's on the motherboard, that might be hogging the CPU too). However, as far as duo and quad core processors.... we are kind of both right. It depends on the actual design. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-core If you look down to about the middle of the page, there is a 'Disadvantages' section...it mentions that some quad core designs are two duo core dies on the same chip. Try running 2 processors on your data stuff, see if that makes a difference (so it's only using one duo core, if your processor was designed like that). Drew -----Original Message----- From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of jwcolby Sent: Monday, September 28, 2009 3:45 PM To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving Subject: Re: [AccessD] [dba-VB] [dba-SQLServer] HELP,server completely unresponsive Drew, >So if you have three cores cranking away, not specifically with calculating on their own, but in running things through the busses, then that fourth core may be 'available', but the line is going to be busy trying to get to it. Does that make sense? No, it doesn't work that way. Yes, all four cores use the same busses but each has an equal shot at everything - shared cache, IO, busses etc. > Plus, drive operations usually take a very high priority when it comes to interrupt requests, that is why almost any machine, when it's processor is tied up with drive operations, is going to appeared locked. This may in fact be the case. MS doesn't specifically say. However what is "supposed" to happen is that low impact / low IO stuff is supposed to get priority exactly because it has a low impact and costs nothing to process. Hi impact stuff is supposed to get last priority exactly to prevent locking out the low impact stuff. If a uart is running bringing in a few characters every millisecond then it is supposed to be the highest priority so that its pitiful little I/O is processed. Like that. The high impact stuff is supposed to grab all of the remaining bandwidth / processor cycles after the puny stuff is done. More or less. > #2. RAID 6. Let's face it, the absolute best method for performance AND reliability is a RAID 10 (or a RAID 0 +1). No argument. Every RAID class has it's purpose. Raid 6 allows two drives to fail without data corruption, yet only uses two drives for parity (redundancy). Raid 10 uses 1/2 of your drives for redundancy. >But RAID 10 is the most expensive to implement, however, with the cost of today's drives, that really should not be used as a factor in decision making here, unless you are going with ultra huge and ultra expensive drives! That is easy to say when you are working for a corporation and just put in a funds request. My funds requests come directly out of my children's mouths. > #3. This is just guessing, but you probably also have your OS on a partition on the same RAID. Nope, I have Raid1 for the OS. I have the log files out on it's own RAID array (separate disk set). Solution #1. Upgrade your machines. Put in 2 separate (duo or quad core) processors. Mirror two drives for the OS, and then 4 more drives for your data RAID 10. Please do put in a funds request and send the check to me at ... ;) > Solution #2. Upgrade to Windows 2008, and use it without the GUI (2008 can be setup where it's just a command line interface, and thus it strips all the regular Window's overhead out of the mix....) and then access it strictly through the network from another computer (using Enterprise manager). Uhh... I don't think so. I should be able to see the SQL Server instance from another machine. It is not showing up (when whatever this is happens), most likely because the machine is not responding before the remote Management studio times out. I should be able to remote desktop into the machine as it is. The machine is "not responding". It seems unlikely that I am gonna change that with an OS change and stripping the gui. A lot of work with a highly questionable result set. As it happens I do have Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 as well. Given that my data is all on raid disks, I can fairly easily swap out the Server OS and SQL Server instance. "fairly easily" being of course many hours of my own time (no corporate IT department to call here). I will eventually do this just because I need to do so to stay modern. However I certainly do not expect that to solve this problem. MS has had a dozen years to stop this nonsense and hasn't. I have no expectation that they suddenly decided fixing bugs is more important that sales brochures bullet points. John W. Colby www.ColbyConsulting.com The information contained in this transmission is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain II-VI Proprietary and/or II-VI Business Sensitive material. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender immediately and destroy the material in its entirety, whether electronic or hard copy. 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