Re: SE and big databases or RAID

> mac@antares-dev.com (Miguel A. Caldera) writes: > > I know this is will generate remarks like "Use Online, stupid!", but... > > I have a customer running SE for the obvious cost savings over Online. > We are projecting a database size in the 2 to 4 million rows size for > one of the big tables. The records are not large, 15 rows for a total of > 126 bytes. The database will probably take over a year to get > there, but it is expected to get that big. Has anybody ever run SE that > large? I expect to see some performance degradation, but the customer > is prepared to throw more money at the hardware before he will hire > someone to maintain Online. The customer already has 250,000 records > and is very pleased with current performance. > > Also, he plans on placing the SE dbs on a RAID system. Anybody ever done > this? I can't think of a reason to hae a problem, but hey, anything > is possible. Use Online, not so stupid! We used to run SE up to about a gigabyte total database size. At that time the main problem was batch report that started to use to much time. Particularly large sorts where a significant problem as these prevented anybody else from using the database. (During the sortface the database didn't respond to any other user.) This where on SE 5.0 and may be better on later releases. On interactive access (select, insert, update) we never had any real problems with access time, but had no single table with more than about 700,000 rows. We still run SE on smaller databases with greate success. Using RAID with SE should be no problem except for a possible degradation of performance. Some RAID solutions may give better performance. I have no experience, so this is only from what I have read. If mirrored disks are supported by the OS you may see better performance. However: He shouldn't need to hire someone to maintain OnLine if the database design is reasonably stable. He will need you to help him out in case of any problems and to check the whole setup every now and then. We do have an OnLine database of something like this size, but hardly ever do any work on it. It simply runs! Some time ago we even had a power outage that stopped the machine (something wrong with the UPS). We simply restarted the machine, started OnLine, ran all the oncheck's we should, found no errors and the users could continue working. You must of course expect to have to restore from backup sometime, but noone should need to hire a person for that. A support contract with a consultant should be much cheaper. You set up OnLine for automatic maintenance by doing nightly backups, run update statistics and oncheck as needed. You may let all these print reports on a printer and teach your customer how to look for errors. If you wantit a little better you write a shellscript that looks for errors and print or possibly mail reports on any problems detected. You need to hire a DBA on large sites with large databases or where the database requires constant changes and additions. OnLine is easy and very stable. Nils.Myklebust@ccmail.telemax.no NM-data, Aasesvei 71, 1300 Sandvika, Norway My opinions are those of my company