test server requirments ?

rhdr

I will need a test server. On this server i wil do some classes with the users and some tests. Maximum number of clients/users on the classes will be 25.
The computer i can use is a P4 2.8 GHz HT with 1 Gb memory and 2 160 Gb HDD.
Software: Windows 200 server and sql 2000.
Will it work?
Thank you,

David_Singleton

Sure,

split the DB over the two drive. If its training it doesn't need to be perfect. The only problem you will have is that generally in a class, all 25 users will try to post an invoice at the same time, so this can load things up, so use as much cache as possible.

Personally though, I think you are better of training with each user having their own Database on their local training machine.

Waldo

David Singleton wrote:

Personally though, I think you are better of training with each user having their own Database on their local training machine.

Indeed, than each user:
- post the SAME invoice (same number, ...)
- will have the same (1) result in the registers
- can modify the same object at a time
- ...
can do the same that the instructor is doing at the moment on his local db, and having the same results.

Server seems find to me though if you go for the server-option. In stead of splitting, you could put the HD's in RAID1? (allthough, that's pretty difficult if the server is already installed :-k )

David_Singleton

Actually RAID 1 would of course be slower in this case.

Waldo

You're right, i know.

But whenj the server would already be in raid 1, it would be enough, I guess... . It's a bit easier to set up for some people...

David_Singleton

A little off topic, but ...

I once was asked to help out with some performance issues. The NSC had a very angry customer with a very slow system. Its a long storyu, so just to cut it short, after eventually insisting to the NSC that I could not do anything without a site visit, I went on site, to investigate.

The system had 1Gig ram, but ran default 8Meg cache (common problem) but the real issue was the drive, the client was told by the NSC that they must use RAID one, and that the DB must be split over multiple RAID 1 arrays, which they did, but since the Server had only 2 drives, what they did, was put the OS on the first physical drive, then using NT's built in SOFTWARE RAID, they created 8 partitions on the one drive, then out of them created 4 RAID 1 pairs in software. ](*,)

It was sort of easy to see why the system was slow. #-o

I suppose it could have been worse, they could have built a software RAID 5 on one physical drive.

Waldo

Software raid ... there should exist a prison penalty for that ...

rhdr

Thank you for help. The less system what I use was a P IV 1.7 Gb with 512 Mb memory and run for one week, because the sql server has some problems. On that time I have around 15 users.

David_Singleton

Sorry I didn't see at first that you are using SQL on the test machine, my comments were actually for Native database. :oops:

Anyway still its enough, but you would really be better off installing native DBs on each training machine.

Waldo

And you don't even have to install a server ... just work with a local fdb ...
8)