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How Many CPUs for Microsoft's SQL Server?
adrian asks: "I've been wrestling with this problem some time now. I'm looking to buy a new machine to act as a SQL server. Unfortunately, we have to use M$ SQL Server 2000 and the per CPU unlimited licensing is very expensive. My question is this: Is there a benefit to running 4 slower CPUs as opposed to running 2 faster CPUs on a MS SQL box? I've found some people seem to think having more processors is better for SQL server... But, getting only two CPUs is certainly cheaper for licensing. Will performance suffer even if the two CPUs are faster? I've searched high and low using google and have yet to find any good hard numbers or benchmarks. Take these machines as an example: A quad PIII Xeon 550Mhz/512k cache box versus a dual P4 Xeon 2Ghz/512k cache box. The P4 machine would be more expensive, but we would save about $10,000 on licensing. And I know a 2Ghz P4 wouldn't be as fast as a 2Ghz PIII (if it existed) but yet I still want to think the dual P4 rig would be faster. The machines I am looking at are both IBM boxes with the same RAID and disk configs, 4 gigs of RAM, etc. Maybe some Slashdot. readers, who have experience with similar situations, could shed some light on this topic?"
You said you are looking at IBM boxes -- get a sales rep, ask for them to get you benchmarks for SQL server on each of these boxes. They should have numbers for you. If not, tell them that if they can't get you these numbers, you are going to have to try Dell, HP-Compaq, etc...
For $$$ like this (and the potential of future business), they should scurry, and get their R&D kicking real quick....
10b||~10b -- aah, what a question!
For SQL servers (Oracle, IBM, Microsoft) more CPU's are typically better.
I would suggest buying a machine that is capable of going to 4 processors and only installing 2 in it at first. That way you can save money on software licenses and give yourself room for growth. Something like the Dell 6650 would be perfect.
-Vince
To be honest, unless you're working with cubes (and you aren't if you're installing the plain, vanilla MSSQL server), your limiting factor will be IO then network. You *probably* won't run into a CPU-bound issue. Go with the two CPUs and invest the rest in ram, disk controllers and disks.
And when I say invest in disks and controllers, I mean multiple raid controllers with multiple channels and several drives on each channel. MSSQL server gets supremely cranky of the IO backs up. Same goes for the network traffic, but the random reads/writes will cause more havoc before you flood your NIC.
Of course, if you can buy enough ram so all your reads and writes can happen in memory (maybe a ramdisk?), you'll be very happy. Hey, if you have to use an M$ product, MSSQL server is about the most solid product they sell.
Amateurs discuss tactics. Professionals discuss logistics.