At 17:16 27/01/2004 +0000, you wrote:

>according to which rules of thumb does one establish the right RAM
>qty of a FB server ?
>
>In my case, I need to run about 10 similar databases, each of which
>runs SPs that are both computation-heavy and disk-RW-heavy SPs.
>
>Regards
>
>Peppe Polpo

Hi Peppe,

There is no rule of thumb for server configuration/sizing...

A bunch of things should be known...

1.) Wich OS (Linux have SS and CS, Windows SS only I don't know if CS
version is ok for production)
2.) How Many users
3.) Classic or Super Server
4.) What is computation intensive
5.) What is disk-RW-heavy
6.) What the performance expected
7.) What the size of the DB
8.) The system will be a OLTP or DataWareHouse (does anyone still uses this
term ?)
9.) Could you spare the databases across multiple servers ?
10.) and a lot more that I don't think right know...

But.

The bottleneck generally are Disk I/O and network bandwidth.

So.
Having RAID disks with good controller(s) is a good starting point
Having an applications that reduces the bandwidth use is good too...

I have read some messages that if you can afford a lot of RAM CS will be
better, and runs better than SS and can take some advantage on SMP
machines. I don't use CS just SS, and don't have any SMP machine... so
can't say much on this...

If you cannot afford a lot of RAM SS is the right choice (since cache is
shared).
I think if you have a lot of RAM FB 1.5 will be happy in using it to sort
data...

AFAIK if you set page buffers too high the speed will decrease... (more
than 10000 pages if I remember right). I think you will need to test...
Incresase the page buffers do some tests, change the value of page buffers,
max sort memory, etc, rinse and repeat the tests... I think this is the
only way you could know what is better for you.

If the computation is heavy a good processor will help.


HTH [for not giving any direct answer :(]


Alexandre Benson Smith
Development
THOR Software e Comercial Ltda.
Santo Andre - Sao Paulo - Brazil
www.thorsoftware.com.br

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