Server Sizing

[Tom Henkel]

We just (finally) purchased ver 9. We will also be purchasing a new server dedicated to our Alpha systems. There are ~200 users banging awat at our systems, and most of our main tables are over 100K records. We do "batch" routines at night on the server itself. I don't have an actual count of the table sizes or their relative amount of activity.

What I would like to know is is there some rule of thumb that anyone uses to determine the extra disk space required as well as the processor speed.

I know, I know, bigger disks, more memory, and faster processor. What I really need is to know if anybody has a feel for how much more we should figure?

[DaveM]

Re: Server Sizing

Tom,

I don't do what you are doing and most of my operations are done on the fly. Also, I don't have 200 people banging away at a time either.

When we did do something similar with lots of records in another program. We made sure there was 3 times the size of the tables being worked on. In other words, if the tables were 1 megabite, we reserved at least 4 meg to cover any possible need. Since only the data was on the server, the operations were run from a dedicated worstation that worked directly on that data. We never knew what kind of server our data tables were going to reside on.

The first step was always a backup to the dedicated workstation.

You did not mention the server. Is it a windows machine, Unix, linux, or?? for instance a windows machine, could have alpha on it and operational so it could do the work from a seperate adb at night. If it is a unix or other, the dedicated work station would come in to play.

Memory: It seems to me like a 4gig job.

Speed of the hard drive and it's bandwith might be a greater concern than the space. Working with smaller apps than yours, we noticed a difference with faster drives with greater bandwidth like ide to asa was a big help. Possibly a scsi would be best and it can be run all the time, and it sounds like it will be running 24-7. With that much activity and data, a mirrored hard drive might be good.

You did not mention it, but is your server going to have more than one processor. I believe I heard V9 can use more than one processor if properly set up. There is a thread on here about that.

At least all the supporting files will be on the workstations so that takes a load off the server with shadowing.

These are my thoughts and I want to see what others say. Please post here how it works out and what you decided on?


.

[Tom Henkel]

Re: Server Sizing

Dave,

Thanks for your reply. We are going to be using a Windows server, most likely with multi processors, and a scsi raid 5 disk layout.

We currently are using a big Dell with multi zeon processors and a raid 5 disc array. The machine is becoming old and close to unreliable, so we are just fishing for some responses.

Since we have the app server software, we might be looking to use that as well.

If Alpha can answer the question as to whether the software will actually take advantage of multiple processors or not, we should be set.

Tom

[NoeticCC]

Re: Server Sizing

Since we have the app server software, we might be looking to use that as well.

You might want to look at a combination of both, e.g. using a desktop app that has HTML content hosted on your web server, which gives you the best of both worlds - and changes to the web content can be made without needing to upgrade an individual user's local copies of files etc. :)

As far as data is concerned, a SQL back end might work better for you, in which case you can have a "pure" client server app (with some web server interfacing, for example to check versioning etc) where each install is just on the user's machine and data is stored on a SQL database without the need for any other files to be hosted centrally.

[Tom Henkel]

Re: Server Sizing

Andrea,

Thanks for your reply. We will, probably, look into going to the SQL back end, but not necessarily right away. We want this to be a quick swap as we can't have the system down for the users.

[NoeticCC]

Re: Server Sizing

Andrea,

Thanks for your reply. We will, probably, look into going to the SQL back end, but not necessarily right away. We want this to be a quick swap as we can't have the system down for the users.

I have to say that as long as the tables are created from Alpha5, conversion to say mySQL has been astonishingly painless for ourselves as well as those who have posted on here about this... :)

[martinwcole]

Re: Server Sizing

from what I've heard, switching a large app like Tom's to sql would require a lot of work. Like field rules don't work, scripts, queries, etc. would all have to be redone.

as regards Tom's speed, if he uses a gigabit 10-1000 lan rather than a 10-100 lan, would that make a difference in performance?

my own philosophy has always been that once you reach 1/2 disk capacity, its time to get a bigger drive. I always use the 15,000 rpm sccsi's

[Finian Lennon]

Re: Server Sizing

I wonder who will be the first to take the plunge? Those of us with big, mature apps are in something of a bind. The move to an SQL back end looks very inviting from the distance, but as you get closer it's a lot less attractive.

Unless you have a compelling reason to do so or decide that a complete rewrite of an application is in order, the effort involved isn't worth it. It's not just a matter of exporting the tables to MySQL. Everything in the app will have to be modified/rewritten.

Fortunately, V9 has other benefits besides SQL, so it's still a worthwhile upgrade.

[martinwcole]

Re: Server Sizing

Finnian, I'm having slow performance on a 2003 server, where we have 10-100. Do you think jumping to a 10-1000 would make an appreciable difference? It seems like it would. But I've never done it before, so I don't know. I figure we can bump a 15 workstation system for less than 2,000, which would be cheap if we get a big boost in performance.

[Tom Henkel]

Re: Server Sizing

We can't realisticlly go to a gigabit lan. It would require too many PC upgrades not to mention the 3 rooms of switches.

Gigabit would be great, but you also must see if the wiring that is in place can handle it.

We will use 2 lan cards in the server connected directly to a 100MB port on a switch.

[martinwcole]

Re: Server Sizing

thanks Tom

in this case there are only 15 w/s's and the greatest distance is about 150', so we can easily pull all new cat 6 lines, although I am told that cat5-e will work just fine.

[Tom Henkel]

Re: Server Sizing

Our wiring was here before me. enough said...

[asawyer13]

Re: Server Sizing

Depending on how the current A5 application is written, I don't believe it would be a total rewrite to move it to client/server.

The basic structure of the forms, reports, etc, would be able to stay the same or similar, however xbasic code, etc would very possibly need to be changed. You also wouldn't have to select indexes, pack tables, etc.

It wouldn't be simple, but definitely doable. It would be an interesting thing to work on.

If someone has a completed app that they would like to move to client/server, let me know. I would entertain the thoughts to contract to do it. All my consulting is done with a complete satisfaction guarantee, so you can't lose. I can let you know if I don't think it would be feasible, though I suspect it can be done. I'm currently rewriting 2 internal apps from Access and Real Basic over to A5 Client/Server, and though I'm not completed yet, I'm happy with the results so far. Taking an existing A5 app and converting to Client/Server would be easier than what I'm doing now.

My expertise is MySQL, however I have knowledge in PostgreSQL, though I really prefer MySQL at this point.
I have also used Sqlite however not much with A5 yet.


Alan

[DRW]

Re: Server Sizing

You need to assess the nature of your application and the types of read/write activity which it generates, i.e. more writes or more reads as well as sizes of typical data writes. Without really knowing anymore about your application I would recommend RAID10 over RAID5 almost invariably. It is more fault tolerant and is generally much faster in overall performance, particularly in smaller data writes. The only real downside to RAID 10 is that you need minimally twice hard disk capacity for what you have in mind as your storage requirments. That means it is more somewhat expensive than RAID 5, buit not exhorbitantly so. Knowing nothing else about your application or budget, I would be inclined to utilize a 4 drive RAID10 setup rather than a a three drive RAID 5 setup. I would also think real seriously about adding a fifth drive as a hot spare for rebuilding a failed drive. Also make sure that you have both a dependable UPS adequate battery life for the server and auto shutdown software, plus a reliable backup device, whether removable storage or online. I'm not so sure that your performance will be affected as much by choice of ethernet speed as it will be by the RAID. Converting to SQL running on the server would undoubtedly improve speed, but at the cost of the convsersion time and expense from the DBF format. I'm not qualified to address that aspect being pretty much still a neophyte with A5.

[Tom Henkel]

Re: Server Sizing

Never thought about the raid 10 setup. I have forwarded it on to our Hardware person. He will be doing the final configuration. We always run a nightly backup, and we have 6 hours of battery backup on our whole room UPS.