[AccessD] The Business Side Of Databases

Jim,

And that is what I am thinking about, running Linux as the base, then
virtual machines on top of that.  Those virtual machines running Windows
2003 and SQL Server.  

In fact even that is negotiable.  Currently I run Windows 2003 / SQL Server
simply because I understand them (so to speak).  From a performance position
it might make sense eventually to switch to Linux in the virtual machine and
something like MYSQL.  The databases I am talking about are not complex
relational databases with hundreds of tables etc.  I might very well get
better processing power with something simpler than SQL Server or Oracle
(such as MySQL).  As long as I can run VB.Net and be able to access those
databases through drivers then I would be set.

>If you access the server as a station there is a dramatic performance drop

What do you mean by that?  Sitting at a keyboard using the machine directly?
As opposed to sending database requests to the db server?

John W. Colby
Colby Consulting
www.ColbyConsulting.com 
-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Jim Lawrence
Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2007 2:20 PM
To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving'
Subject: Re: [AccessD] The Business Side Of Databases

Hi John:

Memory is key but after that both servers just run full-time each with a
different intranet IP address...re-directed access from the Router. If you
access the server as a station there is a dramatic performance drop but if
the servers are set as just servers, remote server-based access shows a
minimum performance drop. (Once setup with Linux you can just turn-off the
graphical interface for better performance.) Had a test running for a while
but for a hardware failure and was using MS's free Virtual Server software
but I hear VMWare is equally as good and runs on Linux as well. 

Jim   

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of jwcolby
Sent: Thursday, June 28, 2007 10:52 AM
To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving'
Subject: Re: [AccessD] The Business Side Of Databases

Do you have any idea what the overhead is for doing this?  I know that
Windows 2003 Standard Edition cannot utilize more than 4 gb of RAM.  If I
ran two virtual machines could I assign 4 gig to each virtual machine and
use all of the memory?  And how much overhead is there switching between the
machines?  If (for example) two virtual machines ran all of the time, each
running a SQL Server instance, would the overhead be 10%?  20%?

Could the base machine run Linux (for the low overhead), and the virtual
machines run Windows 2003 and SQL Server 2003?

John W. Colby
Colby Consulting
www.ColbyConsulting.com