As the need to process more and more data becomes a matter of necessity for small and medium firms, a large many of them are looking at using SQL Server as their data repository. With large enterprises, the availability of trained manpower makes the installation of SQL server a hassle free process. However the reverse is true for small companies where the generic IT guy is called out to run the server implementation. In many such companies capacity planning is typically avoided and it can lead to hassles at a later date.
Getting the right Hardware
The SQL Server application does not run in isolation and it comes with a whole array of elements. You need to consider different aspects from Backups to the estimated number of transactions the server is expected to handle in the near future. Thus the hardware configuration for the server should be on the higher side and suitable processing power is needed. So you should go for very top end multi-core processors and also consider having at least eight gigabytes of RAM.
Selecting the optimal number of Hard Drives
Getting a fix on the number of hard drives you wish to use for your SQL Server installation is often a tricky subject. Some small organizations in order to cut down on costs can even go with a single hard drive installation. However such a measure is risky can lead to unfortunate incidents. At the very least one should implement a RAID 1 standard and use two hard drives which will keep your application running even if one of the disks gets crashed. Now if you are going to run critical applications on the SQL Server backend then a minimum standard of RAID 5 should be enforced and it would involve the use of four hard drives. With Windows Server 2008 and its later iterations, implementing a RAID 5 array is quite easy and any competent technician can achieve the same in quick time.
Most small and medium businesses would look at traditional hard drives for implementing SQL Server. However this approach may not work well if the amount of requests you need to process is high. Typically SSDs are recommended in case the storage requirements are moderate while the process requests are on the higher side.
Planning for Business Continuity
While capacity planning for SQL Server implementation is invariably critical, one also needs to consider business continuity planning to remain prepared for unfortunate scenarios. The SQL Server application comes with a very effective backup and recovery tool, however in some cases it may not be enough. Thus you also need to keep a sql recovery tool like DataNumen SQL repair handy and thus guarantee the security of your SQL files. Besides its capacity to extract data from large compromised SQL files, this versatile software gives you the flexibility for repairing a damaged MDF files from right within the Windows context menu. Also the application can recover data from a variety of media formats including flash drives which are often used to store backup sql files.
Author Introduction:
Alan Chen is President & Chairman of DataNumen, Inc., which is the world leader in data recovery technologies, including access recovery and sql recovery software products. For more information visit https://www.datanumen.com/