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. ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
