SAS vs. SATA

[madman045]

ok, lets look at it from a different point of view, just exactly how busy will this server/database be? as you might find just two disks, especially R1 might not be able to cope with the load

Just for an example with an existing client

sbs 2008 premium, single server, Server 2008, Exchange 2007 & SQL 2008 Standard

Running on a box with a single quad, 16gb ram and 2x146gb 15k SAS R1 for the OS and transaction logs for SQL and then 4x146GB 15K SAS R10 for the Exchange & SQL DB

It runs it fine, however they wanted to add Sage on the server, just for their company data and only four users would access it and it was too slow.

so will a box with two disks, OS, IIS and SQL running be quick enough for your needs?

[peterb]

<---snip

Ooooh, like the look of that. Unfortunately I don't think it'll fit into a 1U server

I'm still pondering backup solutions. Again, the problem is balancing a tight budget and meeting the needs of the service. I'd like some form of tape solution, but I might have to settle for something less ideal

The drive itself will fit into a 1u case, but if you are adding a DVD drive as well, that would be a problem (although you could use a USB DVD drive for Software updates etc)

You haven't mentioned which OS you are using. I back up a Linux file server using ssh and rdump over the lan to another linux machine that has the tape drive in it (SCSI thogh - not SAS). There is a bit of a speed penalty. (It isn't necessary to use SSH over a local LAN as transmission security (transec) isn't really an issue, but I use SSH to remotely log in, and SSH gives me secure authentication as well as transec)

If you are using windows server solution, you might be able to do something similar, but I'm not particularly familiar with Windows' backup facilities.

Alternatively you could look at an external tape drive and plug that in as required to backup.

The problem with a hard drive solution is that hard drives are relatively fragile, and being mechanical, it isn't a case of if they fail, just a matter of when - and it only needs to be dropped...

[scaryjim]

Our primary site is currently running *live* on a P4 HT with a single SATA drive. This is the primary reason that I have insisted that some of the funding for the new application is dedicated to buying new hardware

The additional application will have, at most, a similar load pattern to that site.

The server doesn't run Exchange or host a domain: it'll be running Web Server 2k8 R2 with IIS and SQL Server only. The database load for each request is relatively light, and the total load for each site is likely to be in the region of 10k requests served per day. The site doesn't currently perform any data manipulation or addition, although I may introduce a logging system for authenticated users which would add a database update for some requests.

Now, my experience would suggest to me that the servers I'm looking at (single quad-core Xeon, 8GB RAM, 2x SAS RAID1) should be plentiful to handle that kind of load. But I'd be happy to be advised otherwise should that not be the case...?