Hi, I have to change the hardware of my navision Server (2.60, DBMS,15 users) and I wold like to which is the better hardware configuration to have a good performance. The same machine will run terminal server or cytrix and will act as a print/file server. I will use a windows server 2003 standard edition. The questions are: - One or two processors? I read in this forum that native database will use only one, but OS and other applications will use both? The general performance of the server will be better? - 1 Gb RAM memory or more? I read in this form that navision DBMS can use only 800 Mb for cahce, but OS will use the memory above 1 Gb? - I will use a 4 disk configuration (2 RAID1 arrays) one for the OS and the other for the database ¿any experiences with SATA? Thanks.
Hi! Here some advice: First, a database server should always be a dedicated server - no TS or Citrix or PrintServer running there … You should use two CPU: The NAVISION server can only use one, but normally the OS is handling the network traffic with the last CPU in the system. Means, the first CPU will be used by the NAV server and the OS, the second one basically by OS/network. Also, if you have other applications (which you should not!) maybe you could define a CPU affinity for them, to provide maximum CPU time to the NAV server. With Win2003 you should go for 2GB RAM. The max. DBMS cache is 1GB, so the second GB will be used by “all others”. If you still really want to put other services on this machine, you should consider to have even more CPU and RAM. Regarding to disks: You need a dedicated drive for the OS, and - ideally - a dedicated drive for the NAV server. On the C:\ drive you need the same amount of free space as the size of the largest key in NAVISION (you need it in case of a restore)! The database should be splitted into more files (depends on the size), each on a single disk; so the NAV server will perform a kind of load balancing. RAID1 is ideal. (RAID5 is not an option - never, no matter what some documents say) The disks can be a major bottleneck! From the ISM doc: “When ever you double the amount of disks, you increase performance by 100%” And: don’t use the write chaches of the disks. Hope this helps a little … P.S.: Maybe these recommendations seem to be somewhat “oversized” for “just 15 users” - but I know that even 15 users can procudes a huge amount of transactions … and maybe there will be more users in future …
To put in my five cents… and some experience from same sized customer instalations… [;)] I agree with Joerg’s recomendations, but for 15 users you can go for something “cheaper”… 1Mb RAM will do fine, 1 processor will be fine, I agree to seperate TS/Citrix form the Navision server (mainly security and procesor load), and put in as many disks as posible. Usually you should have a 4GB database part on each disk, having formated only 6GB of the total HD… obviously is should be SCSI HD with 15krmp if you really look for high performance. My recomendation is rather put in the money for fast disks, instead of RAM and procesor… Saludos Nils
My first idea was to put only fast server for all the network services but following your suggestions I will split it in two smaller machines, one for navision and the other for other services. Tanks, muchas gracias!
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having formated only 6GB of the total HD…
Could you give more info about this? and did you try other “allocation unit” sizes when formatting.