The machine is going to be used for a pretty large database (well over 100
tables with some of them containing over a million records from the start,
number of tables and records will grow (much?) larger in the future). This
database is going to be used by a pretty large number of employees. The
number of concurrent users will vary between 1 - 100 or so, depending on the
time of day etc. This will be a database containing client and supplier data
as well as product descriptions and prices/ingredients/labels/brands etc.
Database use will include lots of SELECTS but also lots of INSERTS/UPDATES,
i.e. the database will be pretty active during bussiness hours...
I think you (Scott and Will) are right when you say that NAS devices are not
ideal for this kind of thing. I have been thinking about the hardware
configuration for this machine for some time now (and had a lot of hints
through this list already) and decided to go for a SCSI RAID config after
all. The extra costs will be worth it :)
The machine I have in mind now is like this :
Dell PowerEdge 1750 machine with Intel Xeon CPU at 3 GHz and 4 GB of RAM.
This machine will contain a PERC4/Di RAID controller with 128MB of battery
backed cache memory. The O/S and logfiles will be placed on a RAID-1 setup
of two 36Gb SCSI-U320 drives (15.000rpm). Database data will be placed on a
Dell PowerVault 220S rack-module containing six 36Gb SCSI-U320 drives
(15.000rpm) in a RAID-10 setup. This PowerVault will be connected to the DB
server via a SCSI cable...
This machine will be a bit more expensive than I thought at first (it's
going to be about EUR 14.000, but that's including 3 years of on-site
support from Dell (24x7, 4-hour response) and peripherals like UPS etc...
Do you think this machine wil be OK for this task?
Thanks for your help so far :)
Kind regards,
Alexander Priem.