Hardware Guide for Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV 4.0 (Version 4)

Administrator

Hardware Sizing Guide for Navision up to 250 users
Ramcel Gatchalian and Patrice Dupont-Roc from the Asia Pacific Navision Support Team have successfully co-authored a whitepaper which provides hardware sizing for Navision Installations up to 250 users.

Please note: this is a v1.0 document and we very much welcome feedback / suggested corrections.

http://www.mibuso.com/dlinfo.asp?FileID=587

Discuss this download here.

ara3n

Could somebody explain the following statement in the pdf document.

It is possible to run two or more Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV Database Servers with the same database.

The picture on page 6 shows two servers connected to the same database. Is that possible?

ajhvdb

Yes, can't believe this will work. How does service A know if service B locks a table? Maybe the 2 services talk to one (1) server.exe or slave.exe?

bbrown

I find this document rather vague and not very useful in its present format. Considering the vast choices available in hardware and the many configuration options, it would be helpful to have details on why these particular configurations were selected.

Why 2 processors in the 2 larger NAV DB systems. I thought the native server only supports 1 processor. Would not the money be better spend on upgrading the disk system?

Why Window Server Enterprise Edition in the larger NAV DB system? The standard edition will support the 4 GB of memory in this configuration. Again the money could be spend elsewhere. What is the reason for so much memory?

Why these particular disk configurations? When should you consider splitting the database? Are there any disk configurations to avoid?



That's all for now....

FranzP

Hi,

is there also a document which describes the needs for more than 250 concurrent users on a single database?

We are evaluating Navision and the limitation of 250 users is for us to low if we decide to work with the software for more than a few years.

Regards
Franz

Administrator

Hardware Guide for Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV 4.0 (Version 2)
The whitepaper provides hardware sizing for Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV (version 4.0) installations.

The whitepaper goes into specific detail as to the exact hardware requirements for a variety of Dynamics™ NAV configurations.

Version 1 was released on April, 19 2006.
Version 2 is now available.

Change log between version 1 and version 2:
• Change the document title to “Hardware Guide”
• Modify the section “Purpose, Terms & Conditions” to add the official positioning for Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV
• Remove the section “Executive Summary”
• New section “Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV Client”
• New section “References”
• Remove the recommendations for above 100 concurrent users - except for Microsoft SQL Server 2005
• Clarify the limitations of the Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV Database Server (clustering, RAM and CPU)
• Clarify the use of dual-core processors
• Increase the memory recommendati ons for Microsoft SQL Server
• Modify the recommended drive letters for storage for all servers
• Modify the RAID recommendations and increase the storage requirements for the Microsoft SQL Server transaction logs (all database sizes)
• Clarify and detail the storage requirements for all servers

http://www.mibuso.com/dlinfo.asp?FileID=587

Discuss this download here.

toor

Hi there,

how do you argue the changes in V2 for the storage recommendation in the following example (or in all other sql server examples)?

Guide Version 1 Guide Version 2
19.04.2006 19.06.2006
medium Size medium Size
DATA 12 HDD Raid 0+1 6 HDD Raid 0+1
LOG 6 HDD Raid 0+1 14 HDD Raid 1

What should i say to our customers, who have both guides and ask me why MS now recommends a total different storage system than 2 month ago?

Thanks for your help

regards
tobias

DenSter

I have a hard time believing that these are official Microsoft recommendations....

ofbridge

Hi,

Between version 1 and version 2, the recommended total number of disks is almost the same. The way to organize them in RAID arrays is different.
In version 1 of the document, we did not specify database size limits in the storage section: this is why the disk requirements were exagerated in some situations (medium size segment especially).
In version 2, we decided to specify database size limits for the small and medium size segment. Therefore, we were able to fine tune the recommendations. Therefore if you are still in the medium size segment in terms of users but with a database of more than 80GB, you now fall into the large segment (14 disks).

We changed the RAID strategy for the log file as stripping is not really necessary when a file is read and written sequentially on the disk.

As specified on the cover of the document, this guide reflects mostly the view of the Dynamics NAV Microsoft Technical Support team for the Asia Pacific region. If you do not feel confident with it, you should double check with the support team in your own region.

Patrice.

DenSter

It's just that there have been benchmark tests for Navision by Microsoft and out of those tests it came that the correct RAID level is 1+0, not 0+1. There are significant performance differences between a mirrored striped array, and a striped array of mirrored pairs, and one is better for NAV than the other.

Also, in this hardware document you are recommending multiple processors for Navision Database Server, which is false information. It is simply not capable of using more than one processor.

Please consider my comments as constructive criticism, because I do really appreciate this document. We've been trying to get MSFT in our region to give us recommendations like this they will not commit to anything.

ofbridge

No worries. Microsoft traditionally recommended for the NAV product RAID 0+1 instead of RAID10 in previously published documents and conferences. I guess it is because RAID 0+1 is more common with the low-end controllers than RAID 10 (“low-end” servers correspond more to the official target for the NAV product). Also RAID 10 is known to be more faults tolerant, but I do not think it makes a huge difference from a performance point of view. So go for RAID 01 or RAID 10 if you can!

Concerning the CPUs, we address this concern in version 2 of the document with some more detailed explanations. Since the server for a Small Business often hosts the Domain Controller, the Exchange server, the Anti-Virus server, the backup server and the NAV server, having more than 2 CPUs would definitely help even if NAV itself can only use 1. Same for the RAM.

ara3n

Hello ofbridge
Could you explain this quote.

It is possible to run two or more Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV Database Servers with the same database. With
this configuration you could have one server running TCP/IP and another one running NetBIOS on the
same database. All servers need to be installed on the same machine, and the limitations of the Microsoft
Dynamics™ NAV Database Server apply at the machine level:

Is this possible?

ofbridge

Yes. This is perfectly possible. The installation process is detailed on page 21 of the "Installation & System Management: Microsoft® Business Solutions–Navision® Database Server" guide on the product CD (Doc\w1w1ism.pdf) - section: "Two or More Servers, Same Database".

ara3n

I read the document and the catch is that it has to run from same folder. Which means you still have one slave.exe running which writes the data to the database. There is no info on what the advantages for this kind of setup. Anybody knows?

kriki

ara3n wrote:

I read the document and the catch is that it has to run from same folder. Which means you still have one slave.exe running which writes the data to the database. There is no info on what the advantages for this kind of setup. Anybody knows?

I think it is in case you have some PC's working with Netbios and others with TCP/IP. With this trick you are not forced to change the network-setup of those PC's. But this is VERY old stuff.
Now the standard is TCP/IP. The Netbios is still there for backward-compatibility. (Is there actually someone who still uses this?)

ara3n

I see, so no improvements on performance. No wonder, I never heard about it.

kriki

Probably it is even slower, because Netbios is easy to install but slower than TCP/IP (at least that is what I heard).

frgusto

I do not understand the storage section.
Why use 14 and 18 disks for the log file? And how do you configure 14 disks in RAID 1 ? As far as I know RAID 1 consists of 2 disks. As the log is written sequentially 2 big disks configured in RAID 1 is enough for log storage. More disks can be added only if more space is needed.

Administrator

Hardware Guide for Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV 4.0 (Version 3)
The whitepaper provides hardware sizing for Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV (version 4.0) installations.

The whitepaper goes into specific detail as to the exact hardware requirements for a variety of Dynamics™ NAV configurations.

Change log between version 2 and version 3:
• Introduce a recommendation using Small Business Server (SBS) for less than 5 users (SQL 2005 section)
• Introduce a recommendation for installation up to 25 users (SQL 2005 section)
• Update the limitations of Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV running with SQL 2005 with the latest fixes (SQL 2005 section)
• Introduce RAID 10 as an alternative to RAID 0+1 (Storage section)
• Remove references to 18GB disks. 18GB disks can hardly be found (Storage section)
• Increase the size of the disks for the SQL Transaction Log and reduce their number. It aligns the number of disks with the storage bays commonly available (Storage section)
• Introduce a sub-section on configuring Logical Units (Storage section)
• Introduce the Database Resource Kit (References section)

Change log between version 1 and version 2:
• Change the document title to “Hardware Guide”
• Modify the section “Purpose, Terms & Conditions” to add the official positioning for Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV
• Remove the section “Executive Summary”
• New section “Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV Client”
• New section “References”
• Remove the recommendations for above 100 concurrent users - except for Microsoft SQL Server 2005
• Clarify the limitations of the Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV Database Server (clustering, RAM and CPU)
• Clarify the use of dual-core processors
• Increase the memory recommendati ons for Microsoft SQL Server
• Modify the recommended drive letters for storage for all servers
• Modify the RAID recommendations and increase the storage requirements for the Microsoft SQL Server transaction logs (all database sizes)
• Clarify and detail the storage requirements for all servers

http://www.mibuso.com/dlinfo.asp?FileID=587

Discuss this download here.

bab

Does anyone can explain why log disk size need to be larger than the database disk itself??? It doesn't make sence!!!! check it out
(Hardware Guide for Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV 4.0) /page 17, Released: szept 29. 2006/

bbrown

Operations such as a Navision restore (*.fbk) are logged and can grow the transaction log quite large. It is not uncommon to result in a transaction log of 1.5 - 2 times the database. SQL restores are not logged therefore do not have this issue.

I see this as a remaining issue with Navision SQL. The initial restore requires you to allocate disk space that will serve no purpose later.

kriki

bbrown wrote:

Operations such as a Navision restore (*.fbk) are logged and can grow the transaction log quite large.

Especially if you don't do a backup after it to truncate the logfile...

ridczak

Page 16.

Why does there stand 4x32GB RAID 1 in Storage for Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV Database Server for small database size? So, it means that we have to have 2 mirrored disks, both 36GB in size. OS on 1st disk, DB on 2nd? In this case, shouldn't 4x32GB in RAID 10 (separate partition for OS & DB) be faster?

lois

We are purchasing based on this document and are very grateful for it. Have there been any changes/adjustments since it was published? I'm particularly interested in the number of disks recommended for Data and Transaction Logs for a Small SQL Database with <50 users.

nEWvision

Hi

I have just come accross with the Hardware Guide, version 3. One of my client is using version 3.70 SQL Server. I just wanted to know what will be the impact if the configration mention is used with 3.70 or is there some specific Hardware Sizing available for version 3.70.

The client is using the RAID 5 and want to know How this can affect their performance and How RAID 0+1 as siggested in the document can improve the performance?

I would appriciate if you can provide the explaination for that.

Thanks in advance

Best Regards
NewVision

Waldo

nEWvision wrote:

Hi

I have just come accross with the Hardware Guide, version 3. One of my client is using version 3.70 SQL Server. I just wanted to know what will be the impact if the configration mention is used with 3.70 or is there some specific Hardware Sizing available for version 3.70.

The client is using the RAID 5 and want to know How this can affect their performance and How RAID 0+1 as siggested in the document can improve the performance?

I would appriciate if you can provide the explaination for that.

Thanks in advance

Best Regards
NewVision

Well...

RAID5: the controller has to calculate a parity for each chunk of data.
RAID0+1: no calculation needed, just writing at double speed, because half is written on each disk.

kriki

Waldo wrote:

RAID5: the controller has to calculate a parity for each chunk of data.

This means that for each write, FIRST a read must be done on the other disks!

Waldo

kriki wrote:

Waldo wrote:

RAID5: the controller has to calculate a parity for each chunk of data.

This means that for each write, FIRST a read must be done on the other disks!

And that's a huge delay ...

David_Singleton

nEWvision wrote:

Hi

...
The client is using the RAID 5 and want to know How this can affect their performance ...

Let me give you three pieces of advise to get you started in Navision:

1/ Don't use RAID 5.
2/ Don't use RAID 5
and 3/ Don't use RAID 5.

there was a fourth thing I was going to add, but I can't remember what it was. ](*,)

Waldo

I remember:

Take someting else then RAID5!

David_Singleton

Waldo wrote:

I remember:

Take someting else then RAID5!

Yes that was it, thanks.

By the way do you see how Hardware vendors have sneakily changed the meaning of RAID.

The "I" always meant Inexpensive i.e. CHEAP, now most vendors are saying I= independent.