[AccessD] Needs analysis

jwcolby jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com
Sun Jun 20 07:47:51 CDT 2010


Mark,

I know you can't do Newegg, these are just to display the hardware.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131643
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2+50001028+40000727+1652756958&QksAutoSuggestion=&ShowDeactivatedMark=False&Configurator=&Subcategory=727&description=&Ntk=&CFG=&SpeTabStoreType=&srchInDesc=

John W. Colby
www.ColbyConsulting.com


Mark Breen wrote:
> Hello John,
> 
> Which motherboard and processor do you recommend to achieve 16 cores ?
> 
> thanks
> 
> Mark
> 
> 
> 
> On 19 June 2010 16:56, jwcolby <jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com> wrote:
> 
>> I am about to upgrade my SQL server.  Currently I run a quad core with 16
>> gigs ram, using data on
>> raid6 arrays with a dedicated raid co-processor.  I have an opportunity to
>> build a server that
>> better meets my needs but I need to discover what those needs are.
>>
>> As I have posted previously I process fairly substantial lists where (for
>> example) I will join a
>> table with 20 million names to a table with 65 million names on a sha hash
>> field and select by a
>> half dozen field criteria.  Stuff like that.  My databases are, generally
>> speaking, read-only.  This
>> is not transaction stuff, but rather "data mining" kind of stuff.
>>
>> These queries can take a long time to run, tens of minutes or more.  What I
>> would like to find out
>> is what is the bottleneck.  If I increased my memory to 32 gigs would that
>> be enough?  Would 64 gigs
>> be better or not be any better than 32 gigs?  How much memory do these
>> queries want?  If I increased
>> my cores to 8 or 16 would that be enough?  How many threads would these
>> queries use?  If I moved
>> some of the database onto SSDs would that help more than additional memory?
>>  How much time /
>> resource is spent loading the data off of disks.
>>
>> I have absolutely no idea how to discover this kind of information.  I am
>> going to have X dollars to
>> use to build a server, and of course X is never enough, so I need to decide
>> whether to spend more on
>> cores, memory or disks and in what combination.  As an example I have
>> enough to buy either 24 cores
>> and 32 gigs of memory, or 16 cores and 64 gigs of ram, or 16 cores and 32
>> gigs of ram and a bunch of
>> SSDs.
>>
>> I am pretty sure that regardless of what I do I will get a substantial
>> performance leap, however
>> maximizing that performance leap is still a good thing.
>>
>> Any help appreciated.  BTW, I am NOT a DBA so if you give advice like "look
>> at the logs", please
>> give specific directions on how to do that.
>>
>> --
>> John W. Colby
>> www.ColbyConsulting.com
>> --
>> AccessD mailing list
>> AccessD at databaseadvisors.com
>> http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd
>> Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com
>>



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