Hardware general question about sql

Dear folks,
Nowadays, we have got an Active-Active cluster for to attend our business as
usual. Each node own the following main features:
-8 processors xeon 700 Mhz
-8 Gb RAM
-RAID 5 (up to 400 gb ) 12 disks approx.
-OS 32 bit (Advanced Server)
-Sql2000k with sp3
-Quorum disk have 36,6 GB
-Our growing per w is almost 50 gb.
-Databases are forty.
The above configuration was bough five years ago, so that, which could be a
good migration of this hardware?
We are thinking over to buy Itanium but we don't know if TCO is good with
such growing of data.
Maybe a good solution will be buy 64-bit hardware and by the moment to
install our sql2000k and within six months or so (when SP1 for sql server
2005 is released) move the data to that version.
Any input will be greatly.
Regards,Enric wrote:
> Dear folks,
> Nowadays, we have got an Active-Active cluster for to attend our
> business as usual. Each node own the following main features:
> -8 processors xeon 700 Mhz
> -8 Gb RAM
> -RAID 5 (up to 400 gb ) 12 disks approx.
> -OS 32 bit (Advanced Server)
> -Sql2000k with sp3
> -Quorum disk have 36,6 GB
> -Our growing per w is almost 50 gb.
> -Databases are forty.
> The above configuration was bough five years ago, so that, which
> could be a good migration of this hardware?
> We are thinking over to buy Itanium but we don't know if TCO is good
> with such growing of data.
> Maybe a good solution will be buy 64-bit hardware and by the moment to
> install our sql2000k and within six months or so (when SP1 for sql
> server 2005 is released) move the data to that version.
> Any input will be greatly.
> Regards,
What hardware issues, if any, are you currently having? Assuming your
queries are performance tuned (which should always be the first order of
business when it comes to performance), you need to determine where the
hardware is failing you. Are you CPU bound? Disk bound? Memory bound?
50GB of growth per w is significant. Could you have meant 50MB /
w? Given that you only have 400GB of disk, 50GB / w doesn't leave
you much time.
You have a powerful, but older server. You could probably get better
performance out of a modern 4-way Xeon server. Since SQL 2005 will run
on 64-bit AMD and x86 boxes, I might consider waiting for that version
and skip Itanium.
If you determine that you are disk bound, you may want to consider using
a SAN or a different RAID implementation. It sounds like you have RAID 5
for everything (data, logs, temdb). You will normally get much better
performance using a RAID 1+0 array for data, and RAID 1+0 or RAID 1
arrays for log files and tempdb. Unless activity is low during log
backups and full backups, you may want to consider backing up to an
array that's different than the data array.
David Gugick
Quest Software
www.imceda.com
www.quest.com|||If you're not experiencing any problems with your current set-up, and the SW
side is fully optimized, then IMHO you don't really have to change anything.
ML