jwcolby
jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com
Mon Oct 4 13:39:43 CDT 2010
Last week late and over the weekend I brought up the new server. That is a *lot* of work! The server consists of: 1 Norco 4020 case http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811219021 1 Corsair 750W modular PS http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139010 1 Asus KGPE-D16 Dual Socket G34 motherboard http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131643 1 AMD Opteron 6128 8 core processor http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819105266 2 Kingston 8GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139140 3 OCZ Vertex 2 OCZSSD2-2VTXE120G SSD http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227551 Windows *Server* 2008 Enterprise ;) SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Visual Studio 2008 Visual SVN One of the SSD drives is the boot drive, the other two will be for specific database files (raid 0). So essentially ATM the server is 8 cores and 16 gigs of RAM. Coming next another 8 core processor and another 16 gigs of RAM, to be followed by a final 32 gigs of RAM. Of course in typical fashion, not thinking about what I was doing, I moved the RAID controller and the drives over to the new server only to discover that I had not detached the databases and they would not attach. So I had to bring the old server back up, move the database files back over, attach and detach them, then move the files back to the new server, whereupon they all attached as expected. So as of this AM, the new server is up and functioning, with my SVN server / repository, and all databases functioning. I am planning on moving a couple of my main databases to the SSDs Raid 0 array. These are read-only databases, I do not write to them under normal circumstances. I will keep a current backup in case the Raid 0 array fails, but will work with them from the Raid 0 array on a daily basis. Having the main working databases on SSDs in a Raid 0 configuration, as well as more cores and more memory should allow me to do some of what I do in a much faster time frame. I do a lot of PK (autonumber) joins between tables, pulling multi-million record sets with data from each of the tables. I am hoping that this kind of processing will be much faster than when the source disks were on rotating media. We shall see. I still have the old server and will use it to run the test on rotating media, while doing an identical test on SSD on the new server. Of course I will not be testing just the effect of the SSD but rather the total speed increase of the entire system. -- John W. Colby www.ColbyConsulting.com