HCHTech
Well-Known Member
- Reaction score
- 4,227
- Location
- Pittsburgh, PA - USA
I have a growing Chiropractor client. Their current server is SBS2011 Standard and will be 3 years old in January. When that server was installed, they had 6 employees. They have a practice management software that currently runs in an instance of SQL-Express.
In the past year, they have grown to 14 employees, and performance of the practice management software has suffered greatly because they have outgrown SQL-Express (It has a maximum usage of 1GB of RAM per instance). The rest of the server is not working hard. They only use 3 email addresses in Exchange for the management users.
The vendor's recommendation is add SQL Standard to remove the RAM limitation.
I believe I'm correct that SQL-Standard cannot run on the same box as SBS2011, so I'm wondering what the best recommendation would be for them.
The SBS box is a single Opteron processor with 16GB of RAM, a 2TB RAID1 for the OS, and a 2TB RAID5 for the data. They've got about 700GB used on the OS volume and 1.2TB used on the data volume. They have a procurve switch with a 10Gb connection to the server. The rest of the network is Gigabit.
Of course, they see patients 6 days a week, so we're looking at a Saturday night through Monday morning install window for whatever solution we propose.
We could just put in a 2nd server for SQL and leave the SBS box as the DC, but I think there is a compatibility issue surrounding which OS is on the SQL box. If we can still get the Premium add-on for SBS2011, we might build a new box to virtualize both servers - but that is out of my wheelhouse for sure.
They have money to spend, but this was kind of a surprise, so I don't really know if we'll have budgetary limitations or not yet. I think they are waiting for me to quote a solution before weighing in.
How would you approach this upgrade?
In the past year, they have grown to 14 employees, and performance of the practice management software has suffered greatly because they have outgrown SQL-Express (It has a maximum usage of 1GB of RAM per instance). The rest of the server is not working hard. They only use 3 email addresses in Exchange for the management users.
The vendor's recommendation is add SQL Standard to remove the RAM limitation.
I believe I'm correct that SQL-Standard cannot run on the same box as SBS2011, so I'm wondering what the best recommendation would be for them.
The SBS box is a single Opteron processor with 16GB of RAM, a 2TB RAID1 for the OS, and a 2TB RAID5 for the data. They've got about 700GB used on the OS volume and 1.2TB used on the data volume. They have a procurve switch with a 10Gb connection to the server. The rest of the network is Gigabit.
Of course, they see patients 6 days a week, so we're looking at a Saturday night through Monday morning install window for whatever solution we propose.
We could just put in a 2nd server for SQL and leave the SBS box as the DC, but I think there is a compatibility issue surrounding which OS is on the SQL box. If we can still get the Premium add-on for SBS2011, we might build a new box to virtualize both servers - but that is out of my wheelhouse for sure.
They have money to spend, but this was kind of a surprise, so I don't really know if we'll have budgetary limitations or not yet. I think they are waiting for me to quote a solution before weighing in.
How would you approach this upgrade?
