Hardware question

I'm building a database server that's going to be running MS SQL 2000 server
and .net application. Should I go with SATA RAID or is U320 SCSI RAID
recommended? The latter is much more expensive, but is the performance
worth it?

Also, should I go with dual Xeon or should I go with AMD's Opteron? I read
a review from anandtech that basically tore the Xeon up. What are your
thoughts?

http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=1935&p=9"Shabam" <blislecp@.hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:bq6dnZkI_NzWiGbdRVn-ug@.adelphia.com...
> I'm building a database server that's going to be running MS SQL 2000
server
> and .net application. Should I go with SATA RAID or is U320 SCSI RAID
> recommended? The latter is much more expensive, but is the performance
> worth it?

It really depends on what you're doing.

> Also, should I go with dual Xeon or should I go with AMD's Opteron? I
read
> a review from anandtech that basically tore the Xeon up. What are your
> thoughts?

Again.. it depends.

I've run SQL databases on a Single CPU 500Mhz machine and it was adequate.

I have a database on Quad Xeon 700Mhz 2MB Cache machine with U160 RAIDs and
that's barely fast enough for 42 million lookups a day and 17 million writes
a day.

So... again.. what will you be doing.

(and there are books that will give you numbers on various things like I/Os
per disk, etc that let you calculate what you need.)

> http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=1935&p=9|||The whole SCSI vs. SATA debate comes down to nothing more than the
external interfaces for the drives. You need to look beyond that and
compare the drives themselves and then take a look at what you want to
do with them.

In simple terms SATA drives are not yet designed for 24x7 use with the
same MTBF as SCSI drives, if you take a close look at the numbers you'll
find that the external interface, SCSI or SATA, isn't the deciding
factor in the drives performance. SCSI drives are just built better in
very simple terms and do perform better, remember that performance isn't
all about rpm. If you need the extra performance and reliability then go
for SCSI, if money is tight then go for SATA.

HTH,
g.

http://www.sqlskunkworks.com

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