For Day 28 of this series, we are going to talk about some factors to consider if you are thinking about building a desktop SQL Server 2012 system for development or testing use. I get lots of questions about this subject, and I have been thinking about it some anyway, hence today’s topic. In many [...]
Glenn Berry
Semi-random musings about SQL Server performance
A SQL Server Hardware Tidbit a Day – Day 28
Posted on: April 30, 2013 8:22 am
A SQL Server Hardware Tidbit a Day – Day 25
Posted on: April 25, 2013 7:58 am
For Day 24 of this series, I want to talk about the recent history of Dell rack-mounted servers, to help illustrate how processor performance and server capacity has dramatically improved over the past seven years. Back in 2005-2006, you could buy a two-socket Dell PowerEdge 1850, with two hyper-threaded Intel Xeon “Irwindale” 3.2GHz processors and [...]
A SQL Server Hardware Tidbit a Day – Day 23
Posted on: April 23, 2013 6:07 am
For Day 23 of this series, I am going to briefly discuss hardware RAID controllers, also known as disk array controllers. Here is what Wikipedia has to say about RAID controllers: A disk array controller is a device which manages the physical disk drives and presents them to the computer as logical units. It almost [...]
A SQL Server Hardware Tidbit a Day – Day 22
Posted on: April 22, 2013 3:21 pm
I have written previously about Building a Workstation for SQL Server 2012 Development and Testing and Building a Larger Capacity SQL Server 2012 Workstation. In those posts, I talked about the fact that it becomes increasingly expensive to build a system from parts as you move beyond mainstream desktop systems based on an Intel Core [...]
Two Database Server Models Compared
Posted on: October 24, 2012 2:49 pm
If you have read my SQL Server Hardware book, or ever heard me do one of my hardware presentations, you have probably heard my exhortations to “Never let anyone talk you into reusing old hardware for a new version of SQL Server”. This is especially true with SQL Server 2012 Enterprise Edition and its core-based [...]
Dell 12th Generation Rack Mounted Server Comparison
Posted on: September 27, 2012 10:05 pm
I think it is useful to examine the various 12th generation, rack-mounted server models available from Dell, comparing them from a SQL Server perspective. There are currently seven models in this line, ranging from an entry-level, single-socket server to a four-socket server. All of these servers use the Intel Xeon E5 processor (Sandy Bridge), but [...]
