New install -SQL local or remote?

Usage and Config
1

Hello, we are moving data centers and I am about to perform a new install of Bigfix. I haven’t done it in at least 5 years. In the past Bigfix did NOT play nice with other instances on the same DB. Has that changed or should I push for a local SQL install? Please advise…
Thank you!

2

Whether you go local or remote is generally your call. Some things to consider…

  • With dedicated physical hardware and multiple IO paths, you can make a single collocated instance work very, very well. However, note the multiple IO paths and you should have dedicated storage for the DBMS meeting our standard of >5k IOPS with <1ms latency (very each to achieve with NVME based flash).
  • With virtual hardware, smaller VMs can often schedule better and give you improved parallelism. As a result, here we often recommend remote. You still need proper IO and you need to make sure you do not overcommit.
  • When customers have a DBA pool with awesome DBA support, we tell them to go down that path. A great DBA with monitoring and maintenance can make your job a lot easier (a bad DBA on the other hand… :slight_smile: ).
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3

scale horizontally, its not much more work and will save you a headache if you ever decide to implement network segmentation in your shop

4

Thanks all. Looks like hardware has already been assigned for this deployment so I think our best option is to stay local. We will have a Windows 2012 server with SQL 2016 on the same unit. Deployment size is roughly 700. That said we will use your guideline of 4 CPU, 16 GB memory and 300 GB local storage. We When you say “multiple IO paths”, what are you referencing. NIC teaming?

5

NIC teaming is different. Multiple IO paths means segregating storage across, say, the OS, DBMS logs, and DBMS containers so you get maximum independence and the least contention. This will also “stack” IOPS and have minimum latency, and allow the OS schedulers to do their thing based on the different application workloads. Things differ if you have a storage appliance that may be doing this “under the covers”. We do see a fair number of legacy storage appliances that are not up to modern storage standards.

If you want to discuss directly at some point, just let me know. A little care in storage can go a long, long way.

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6

Thank you SO much Mark. I’ve provided your recommendations to storage and the server build team. We will see what they come back with. Your efforts on the Capacity Planning documentation is truly appreciated!

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