Integrate Servers or Distribute

  • I work in a big company (>1500 employees) with over 50 applications and over 50 servers. Database of each application locates on separate SQLserver. In some cases these applications need data of each other so we face problems of cross database (double hop) in linked servers, performance etc.

    I myself believe that there should be one logical SQLserver (physically clustered servers) but I need to know if this is correct and if yes I need enough reasons to convince my boss.

  • you cannot generalise in this manner, there is no correct answer to this question. I don't see how clustering has a part of this within this context.

    When looking at consolidation of sql servers you have to consider a number of factors e.g.:

    Isolation - are some applications required to be isolated for regulatory or security reasons

    collations - are they all the same

    memory - do you have enough for them all

    cpu - ditto

    ( point with memory and cpu is will a couple of databases hog resource and give an imbalance.

    Users - do you actually want all the users from 50 servers connected to the same server?

    disk subsystem - will it cope - will one db swamp the io.

    growth -

    and so on and so on, I'm surprised no-one suggested you virtualise!

    [font="Comic Sans MS"]The GrumpyOldDBA[/font]
    www.grumpyolddba.co.uk
    http://sqlblogcasts.com/blogs/grumpyolddba/

  • Thanks Colin for the reply

    You're right! it's difficult to suggest a general solution however, let me ask another question: so far as I know there are a huge amount of users connecting Google and for sure there should be a large amount of data in Google co. I'd like to know how such companies manage their DB servers (which architecture?, etc.)

  • Thanks Colin for the reply

    You're right! it's difficult to suggest a general solution however, let me ask another question: so far as I know there are a huge amount of users connecting Google and for sure there should be a large amount of data in Google co. I'd like to know how such companies manage their DB servers (which architecture?, etc.) sorry if my question is so general again 🙂 help me explain it more please

  • In another section of this Forum (SSC) there is a thread about mySpace.com and how they are using the SQL Servers. Maybe you can take look at it to understand how they are doing it.

    -Roy

  • It doesn't really work that way - I'm currently working on a 100TB+ database(s) or perhaps I should say how to scale/design the underlying system. Yes I've heard a lot about myspace and read the whitepapers and spoken to the storage vendor, amongst others - but how many business apps have any relation to myspace - I'd probably suggest very few. It's all about understanding what you have, I'm all for consolidation where it makes sense, if you have lots of tiny ( <10GB ) databases then I'd probably suggest some consolidation would be good - one of the main points about consolidation is when you want to make a software release to a database which might need a restart of the service - how does that work with all your other dbs. To a certain extent you can resolve some of that with instances, but then you still have multiple sql servers to manage!

    [font="Comic Sans MS"]The GrumpyOldDBA[/font]
    www.grumpyolddba.co.uk
    http://sqlblogcasts.com/blogs/grumpyolddba/

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