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Building a SQL Server for 3-10 users

J

Jorona

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Nov 6, 2011
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I've been tasked with choosing the hardware for my companies new servers. These are small servers that will be deployed at our customers locations. This machine currently will have to run our dated database setup (MS Jet 3.5), but be capable enough that when we move to SQL, the performance will still be there. I know with Jet GHz is king since it's single threaded. I/O weighs into it aswell, but not as much as CPU.

From what I've gleaned from the internet and personal experience with MSSQL, I should be heading for the most IO performance I can muster, then pick a CPU that will sufficient. The idea is also to keep price point low.

I've suggested an i3-6100 for the most Ghz in single thread, and still 4 logical for SQL. 8-16gb of DDR4, and a SSD of sufficent size.

I'm getting push back on the i3. My managment wants to go with an i5 or even i7.

My question for anyone with SQL server experience is, will either of them make any difference to the performance of the server with my expected user load?
 
Hardware costs are relatively insignificant compared to software licensing costs. Spend a little more for better equipment if this will host an important business application. If management is willing to go with better hardware, all the better. If you can record baseline and load performance metrics, you can find out where the bottlenecks are to justify hardware upgrades. Depending on your DB size and availability requirements, free SQL Express may serve your needs.

There are lots of deals for Lenovo servers with Xeon E3 with ECC RAM, perfect for small DB servers. Start with 16GB RAM minimum, RAM is cheap. Redundant disks are important for disk I/O and failure. If you can budget for a hardware RAID controller, get one.
 
Omitting Licencing costs please. I'm simply in charge of hardware. We also have a company that builds the PCs for us from scratch, so no Dells/Lenovos/etc. We use our own branding.
 
Have you considered cloud based SQL servers (AWS, Azure)? You get a lot more flexibility to grow and expand. I have moved most of my operations to cloud based servers due to cost and ability to expand or contract as needed.

As for SQL you do not want a server that doesn't use ECC RAM, so skip consumer hardware. It is hard to recommend a SQL hardware spec without knowing your database. However...

Based on your description, threads are not going to be a big factor, so a Xeon E3, E5 or Avoton is probably fine. Make sure whatever motherboard you get has the room to expand RAM.

Memory, SQL server will use as much memory as you can throw out it. I would recommend starting with 16GB and keep an eye on memory usage.

Disks are a major factor. Simplistically, I would recommend a RAID 10 array of 15K SAS drives. For best performance and reliability two separate arrays are recommended, one array for your database files, the other array for transaction log files. Installing your core OS on an SSD is a good idea. Using SSDs for your database files is also an option, but there are specific SSD drives for this and using consumer SSD drives is a bad idea. There are plenty of write ups about using SSDs in Database magazines.

I would recommend using something like the
Supermicro SYS-5027R-WRF
32GB DDR3 ECC
8x Seagate Cheatah 15K SAS drives or similar high performance drives
1 64GB SSD
 
Certainly go with Xeon's and ECC memory. But why don't you check out Azure? I bought my last servers last month, from now on we'll try to migrate to Azure.
It's pretty epic to be honest.
 
Azure.

Do you really want to be in the business of maintaining a SQL database server?
You're not going to have enough users for there to be a performance reason for on-premise.

Also, SQL Server is an enterprise database platform. It threads gracefully. Multi-threaded performance and memory are your primary drivers for a build.
This may sound like strange advice but SQL Server actually doesn't benefit tremendously from solid state at that user level unless you're having sustained page reads.

More threads is so cheap, never question that. Consider, though, that the pricing model is per core....
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/products/sql-server/purchasing.aspx

$3,717 per core. Don't skimp on the hardware when the software is what you're buying.
 
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