Server's and multiple raid 1's

[bg.graf]

Just started listening to Podnutz Pro and I've got to say that I love it.

I just finished the server podcast (one of the first you guys did) and they talked about having a server with 2 or 3 Raid 1's... which is exactly what i'm about to do. I will have a windows server 2008 r2 Enterprise edition Dell t610 server with 3 vm's. These will be a Sql Server (W.S. 2008r2 + Sql server 2008 standard), an application server (windows 7 machine), and a Terminal server (Windows server 2008 r2). I thought about sticking each one on their own raid and giving the host os its own hard drive.

My first thoughts are that the application server and terminal server do not need enterprise hard drives. 7200rpm sata's should be just fine. The SQL will have 2 600gig Raptor 10k rpm drives. I am unsure of what kind of raidcard I should get for this server or if there is an internal raid card that can control 3 Raid 1's.

Anybody have experience with this that could point me in the right direction?? Thanks!

 

[MotzTech]

This would probably get a much better response in the server forum. Perhaps a mod can move it?

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

How big will the SQL database base?
How many users will these servers be used for?

7,200rpm drives these days means SATA...they have no business being in a server...esp a database server, unless this is a home lab/learning server....or for a very small office of like..3 or 4 users.

Enterprise hard drives is about over 1.2 million hours MTBF...5 year warranty, stability, reliability, large amounts of cache. Not spindle speed.

You also want to run SQL on separate volumes...not the OS and database on the same. Larger SQL servers get spread across 3 volumes.

 

[bg.graf]

It is for a small Doctor's office who is converting over to Electronic Medical Records (EMR). There will be a MAXIMUM of 6 people hitting the server at a time (and when I say Max, i mean RARE OCCASION). The SQL Database will likely only be a couple hundred meg - 2gigs for the first year or 2 I'd imagine. The EMR software requires that doctors either install the program on each workstation and upgrade the hardware for these desktops, or run the application via Terminal Services. We've opted to go the route of terminal services which will only be used for this small (80meg) application. Between that and the application server itself (app server software is about 200 megs and is just the gateway into the Database), there is nothing else going on on either of those 2 servers. For this reason I think it is a waste to place a 10,000 or 15,000 rpm drive in the server for those 2 VM's. however, for the Sql Database, that WILL be on faster hard drives (10k rpm)

The issue I run into is that with this being an EMR server, the files going in shrink down to about 150kb/piece + the software will create attributes to link pictures from a different repository to each patient's records. The doctor sees 7-15 patients a day, 4 days a week. so we are talking about roughly 28-60 patients a week. If we say that these file sizes were a lot bigger than they are supposed to be (lets say 2 megs each instead of 150k) were still only looking at a max of 120megs a week. (and after 3-6 months the size of each patient entry will drop because they will be patients coming back in for re-checkups and stuff).. I struggle seeing that it is worth it to chunk out $1500 for 3 SAS drives (2 for raid 1 and 1 as a spare) for that little data transfer. There will be daily copies made to RDX1000 tapes as well as to a NAS...

Does that explain a little better the amount of use this machine will get?

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Yeah that's smaller. I just spec'd out a Dell PE T610 box for a clients project, just a note..the 10k SAS drives aren't much more than the 7,200rpm desktop SATA's in the server. An e5606 Xeon, pair of 146 gig 10k SAS to install ESXi on, 4x 300 gig 15k drives for a RAID 10, 24 gigs of RAM, Perc h700 512 meg RAID, iDrac enterprise for remote...Dell gave a great price of under 4 grand.

For that small the developers really want SQL standard instead of just SQL Express?

 

[bg.graf]

What are your thoughts on a Raid1 of SSD for a VM (for example, the terminal server). I don't need a big hard drive for either that or the application server. Really 50-60gigs each is PLENTY. If i bought 3 (2 in use with 1 spare) what are your thoughts on that?? i mean, if one were to fail, its just a vm that is backed up in multiple places. It's pretty quick to swap out a failed drive and pop the spare in.

 

[Slaters Kustum Machines]

For that small the developers really want SQL standard instead of just SQL Express?

It may be due to the application actually requiring the full version. My full time job is supporting insurance software and the software requires the full version and will not run on express regardless of how many users.

 

[bg.graf]

It may be due to the application actually requiring the full version. My full time job is supporting insurance software and the software requires the full version and will not run on express regardless of how many users.

The EMR company requires that we use SQL 2008 R2 Standard instead of Express

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

It may be due to the application actually requiring the full version. My full time job is supporting insurance software and the software requires the full version and will not run on express regardless of how many users.

Yes some do, some don't. I have found many times though....the specs for the software state to get the full product. Yet...if the business that will run the software is exceptionally small...you can ask the developer if they'll bless the base version of SQL and they'll say "Yes". I've seen this happen plenty of times. I realize it takes money out of the IT guys pocket (no commish on a big SQL sale)...but in some small scale projects where money is tight...you've made something possible for a small client that may have struggled to purchase the standard version....so it's a win for you in their eyes.