Disk Storage

mrealm1

We are planning to upgrade to Dynamics Nav 2009 and we are spec’ing out a new SQL Server and we are exploring the options in regards to disk storage. Along with the traditional SAN we were looking at the IBM XIV storage system (http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/storage/disk/xiv/http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/storage/disk/xiv/). Has anyone had any experience with or know of anyone using this storage device? Has anyone experimented with or used Solid State Storage with Nav?

Along with RAM and disk speed does anyone have any recommendations on any other hardware considerations that have a significant impact on Nav performance with SQL?

David_Singleton

Hi mrealm1,

How big do you expect your database to be, and how many transactions, how many users etc. Pretty hard to say anything without that sort of basic information.

mrealm1

Realistically I would estimate the database size to remain around 1 TB in size. The number of users we expect to get to will be around 450 (currently at 285) and a transaction average (based over a year without growth factored; of course size of documents varies):

Sales Credit Memos: 340/day with an average of 7 lines per
Sales Invoices: 3750/day with an average of 5 lines per
Item Ledger Entries: 227,60/day
GL Entries: 9,000/day

We are a high volume EDI organization that has a heavily customized solution. We are going to set up a pair of Clustered SQL 2008 servers.

bbrown

Maybe I'm missing something but I don't see a 1 TB database here. The tranaction volume doesn't equat to 285 users. Are a lot of thme just reading data?

davmac1

If your site is really that big, you should consult with the SQL Server enterprise group at Microsoft. They have done a number of studies on the best way to set up SQL Server under different scenarios.
Your biggest danger with SAN, is that the SAN specialists do not understand NAV requirements.

I believe the max disk speed is still 15K RPM, so you get your speed by lots of disks with your SQL database intelligently configured, and you could add RAM drives where it makes sense.

David_Singleton

What version are you upgrading from? If it is 4.00+ then the server requirements wont change very much, so if your current server is doing the job, you may be OK with it. If on the other hand you are on 2.xx then expect the database to almost double when you move to 2009. And also expect a huge difference in table blocking.

Also I agree with bbrown the numbers just don't add up. Is it because you have been using the system for many years, and we are looking at a lot of accumulated data?

mrealm1

The upgrade is from a version 4.0 SP3 database (5.0 SP1 exe). The size is a combination of many years of data as well as other area statistics that were not included from Manufacturing and Distribution areas of NAV. I have spoken to the Microsoft group and have worked with them on tuning techniques and other considerations for the implementation. My concern is getting a robust yet speedy disk system in our environment. Has anyone worked with SSD in a production environment or used IBM's XIV disk storage system?

bbrown

In the world of SAN systems, having it properly specified and configured is far more important then the brand. You can buy the best, and if you build it wrong, you will still have a crappy system. The first question is "why a SAN"? IMHO, if your focus is strictly disk performance then DASD will provide a much better performance to cost ratio.

David_Singleton

Here are my thoughts:

http://dynamicsuser.net/blogs/singleton/archive/2008/03/30/why-i-don-t-want-my-clients-to-use-sans-for-dynamics-nav-navision.aspx