Hi,

We are going to be setting up an e-commerce web site that runs on SQL Server 2000 Standard and we need to purchase a database server and are not sure whether we will have a use for SCSI hard drives or can stick with IDE RAID.

The server will just run SQL SERVER 2000, nothing else. There are no images, or anything like that being stored in the database or on the server, but credit card transactions, and orders will be taking place so we want that to be efficient.

Can someone give a good explanation of which (IDE or RAID) would server us better and why?

Thank you,

Mark

If you're going to be using more than 2 IDE harddrives, you'll want to go SCSI. If you're expecting a high server load that is constantly reading/writing from databases, you'll probably want 10000rpm or faster SCSI drives. Otherwise, 7200rpm IDE harddrives should be just fine.

Thanks for the reply. Could explain exactly what makes SCSI better than IDE when using MSSQL... does MSSQL constantly read and write to the hard drive when you perform queries and inserts? I have no clue how it actually works and just want to know why SCSI is better for my own knowledge.

Thanks,

Mark

It used to be that the biggest difference between SCSI vs. IDE was speed. But with the latest IDE drives hitting 10k RPM and large Caches, there really is very much difference in speed.

However, there are other factors to consider. One being CPU processor utiliation and the other being data integrity. SCSI drives used lesser CPU cycles as most come with an on board processor. In addition, they have some some sort of parity checking built that ensures the integrity of data being written to your drive, which is very critical when it comes to enterprise level databases.

I would definitely say that if you're considering running a Database Server, go with a SCSI drives.

cheers

Mark you asked a good question but you almost answered it yourself. You mentioned that it was for CC transactions. for something like that you want redundancy.

cheapest redundancy = raid 5 ide set up with 7200 drives. drop 5 of them in your server and your good to go against any scsi drives, plus you get the added bonus of reduced down time and backing up.

odds are that a drive crash will happen, if so you would have to take down the server. here is where the time savings and backup savings kick in

in a raid 5 system you would not have to go to your backup tapes, you would only have to swap the drive and rebuild it ( if you had a hot swap then you would not even have to worry about that )

with the scsi you would have to pull tapes and restore, worst off is that you lost transaction data.

mike

How many orders do you expect to be handling each second? If it's less than 20 -- that's around a million orders each day -- and all you're handling is credit cards, a low-end IDE system will do fine.

There seems to be a trend towards vast over-specification of servers these days; if you stop and think about how much -- or how little -- a server is likely to be doing you'll save yourself lots of money in the long run.

Originally posted by cperciva
International munitions smuggler, as defined by Wassenaar

By any chance would that be catagory 4 or 5 :)

Originally posted by ADEhost
By any chance would that be catagory 4 or 5 :)

Yes, both.