MS SQL Server Requirements
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I work for a software company and sales wants an update to our system requirements.
Specifically, they want an update to our recommended memory requirements for the MS SQL Server.
The way everything is structured, I'm not really sure it makes sense for us to be giving out recommended requirements for the MS SQL server, since technically we don't take responsibility for their SQL server, that's all in their tech's responsibility.
Practically though, potential clients need to be able to see what is required to use our software.
Right now, we have a recommended RAM requirement that is more designed towards physical servers, and making sure they are starting out with enough. We then have a note about needing more RAM as the database gets bigger. And then we have an example of how much RAM you might need if you have a bigger database.
This doesn't really work because 1. it gives the impression that we have a large base requirement of RAM for a blank database, which would mean the software is does some crazy stuff, which it doesn't.
2. It gives the impression that we have a formula based on the database size for how much RAM is recommended.Sales wants this magical formula that we don't have.
Some of our clients have 100GB database that are only utilizing 6GB of RAM (by the SQL buffer cache), while our biggest client has a 400GB database and 200GB of RAM.
There's too many factors to be able to come up with some kind of formula. How do we make this clear on our system requirements info?
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Do you have a least the minimum requirements to start with?
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@black3dynamite said in MS SQL Server Requirements:
Do you have a least the minimum requirements to start with?
I don't think we actually list minimum requirements for the SQL Server, I believe the recommended requirements are 12GB RAM and then the note about database size
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This is literally impossible to gauge as each system will depend on far to many factors, disk speed, disk utilization, database size, number of concurrent users, number of concurrent operations etc.
A blanket statement of fine tuning of each system is required and professional setup and evaluation should be recommended.
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These are the requirements you should give out for MS SQL alone: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/sql-server/install/hardware-and-software-requirements-for-installing-sql-server
Then, you should have your own requirements for your software, separate from any SQL requirements.
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@flaxking said in MS SQL Server Requirements:
How do we make this clear on our system requirements info?
Tell people to treat it like any database and do their own due diligence. It's MS SQL Server, make them get their own people to do it like any IT shop would. You don't need to tell people the requirements for the OS, you don't need to for database basics either.
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@scottalanmiller said in MS SQL Server Requirements:
@flaxking said in MS SQL Server Requirements:
How do we make this clear on our system requirements info?
Tell people to treat it like any database and do their own due diligence. It's MS SQL Server, make them get their own people to do it like any IT shop would. You don't need to tell people the requirements for the OS, you don't need to for database basics either.
This would be ideal, but I fully expect a lot of pushback
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@flaxking said in MS SQL Server Requirements:
@scottalanmiller said in MS SQL Server Requirements:
@flaxking said in MS SQL Server Requirements:
How do we make this clear on our system requirements info?
Tell people to treat it like any database and do their own due diligence. It's MS SQL Server, make them get their own people to do it like any IT shop would. You don't need to tell people the requirements for the OS, you don't need to for database basics either.
This would be ideal, but I fully expect a lot of pushback
no good answer then, as the need is political, not technical. Just come up with something to make the politicians happy.
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@scottalanmiller said in MS SQL Server Requirements:
@flaxking said in MS SQL Server Requirements:
@scottalanmiller said in MS SQL Server Requirements:
@flaxking said in MS SQL Server Requirements:
How do we make this clear on our system requirements info?
Tell people to treat it like any database and do their own due diligence. It's MS SQL Server, make them get their own people to do it like any IT shop would. You don't need to tell people the requirements for the OS, you don't need to for database basics either.
This would be ideal, but I fully expect a lot of pushback
no good answer then, as the need is political, not technical. Just come up with something to make the politicians happy.
Just do a Betsy DeVos and you'll be fine.
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I have seen so many people do SQL Server wrong, and then they end up throwing hardware at the problem when it was designed wrong in the first place.
take the mystery out of the equation. Make a suggestion that someone run LiveOptics on your current environment(s) to see how they are performing at peak. You can base your recommendation on that and let the numbers speak for themselves in regard to database size and RAM usage.
