Our production Sharepoint server serves around 800 users and runs together with its SQL Server on a physical dual-core machine.
The network guys now to put as much as possible on VMWare. The Sharepoint server and the SQL Server will be put on different servers.
Does anyone have experience of running a production-level Sharepoint server on a VM?
The sharepoint server: yes. The database server: I wouldn't.
Our organisation is backing away from virtual database servers and going towards large multi-node, multi-instance clusters.
Most of our app/web servers are virtual.
We run SharePoint and SQL Server on separate VMs on VMWare ESX in our datacenter. ESX does not add much of a disk I/O performance hit, but the trick is to use fast drives (15K RPM). We found that SharePoint page load times were greatly improved by this simple change in the hardware. Since all of the configuration data for SharePoint is stored in SQL Server, all page loads are dependent on reading data out of the DB, and assembling it in IIS.
We run CRM under VMWare with no problems. If you have a properly configured ESX 3.0 or 3.5, with appropriate resources it is perfectly OK.
Have a look what Michael Noel says
http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/
He has a ppt where he also speaks about things to look after
http://www.google.se/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=&cd=5&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sharepointusers.org.au%2FSydney%2FUser%2520Group%2520Presentations%2FVirtualizingSPComponents%2520-%2520November%25202008.ppt&ei=4vTdScutFtbisAb6j92zDA&usg=AFQjCNF5D68IsDrtTqTlQj075BNJ9COi9A&sig2=pVr_iV_9Gvt9Icxx4iq7Eg
I have been in a project where we have had performance issues with Sharepoint and the feeling I have is that if you have a virtual environment this is what people mostly blame. Dependent if it is just a out of the box Sharepoint installation or a more customized mission critical environment I should at least think about doing some Load tests and see how the installation scales....
Regards
Magnus
Ps. lesson learned is that you have to test where the limits are...
Remember Microsoft's supportability before virtualizing any environment:
Microsoft server software and supported virtualization environments
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/957006/en-us
This link tells about which products are supported under virtualized environments
Windows Server Catalog
http://www.windowsservercatalog.com/results.aspx?&bCatID=1521&cpID=0&avc=0&ava=0&avq=0&OR=1&PGS=25
This link defines which hardware vitualization softwares Microsoft Supports
Sharepoint Portal Server 2003 isn't supported when vitualized, that means that if you have a problem and need Microsoft's help, you'll have to reproduce it in a physical box.
Related
I note that the full version of Windows 10 can be run on a RPI 3.
I wondered whether SQL Server Express (or any other edition) is available for the ARM version of Windows. I can’t see it anywhere so I suspect the answer is ‘no’ but want to check I have my missed a trick anywhere.
Effectively I am testing out working with a large SQL Server database. I don’t want my test code to touch the actual site, so my plan was to run a minimal example with some test records locally on my desk. I have an old Atom-based machine I can use - but the RPi is a much more convenient in terms of having a ‘portable’ demo server.
I am aware any such setup will perform awfully - performance not an issue for the demo.
There are two questions here :
Is there a SQL Server version that runs on ARM?
According to the Operating System requirements no. SQL Server is only available for Windows IoT Enterprise, essentially a Windows 10 Enterprise version with special licensing. It's the evolution of Windows Embedded and only meant for OEMs that produce 1000s of devices.
And the real question
I don’t want my test code to touch the actual site, so my plan was to run a minimal example
In that case you can use Windows 10 containers, a VM or a managed cloud version of SQL Server. SQL Server docker images are available for the Express and Developer edition.
No, in contrast with .net, powershell and other initiatives, up to this point there is no ARM version of SQL Server. And by knowing how existing version was ported, we hardly can expect that it will appear soon on this platform.
I have been supporting a product written in VB6 with an Access database for a long time. In many of the installations a mapped drive was used to allow multiple workstations to run simultaneously. Since it seems Microsoft has broken that recently, I need to re-write everything with a new set of tools.
I plan to use VB.net and I would like to use a SQL database this time for the stability. The problem is that the market I sell to cannot / will not support installing full blown SQL Server and all the complexities of managing it.
What I am not able to find any current info about is whether or not SQL Server Compact still exists, whether or not it can be added to a NON web based project and if it will be easy to deploy and be easy to manage like an Access database was.
When I try to follow the directions to add SQL Server Compact to my project, it isn't available in the Data Source drop down list (there are "Simple by ErikEJ" versions listed but they don't seem to work) I have seen SQL Server Compact talked about with regards to web projects but I am building a locally installed .exe. I can't find ANY current info about what flavors of SQL are available right now to add to a local program running over a peer to peer network.
SQL Server Compact is no longer supported and developed by Microsoft, I suggest that you use SQL Server Express, it allows remote connections (if configured to allow it) and has modest resource requirements. Supports a database up to 10 GB of size.
As suggested, SQL Server CE can still be used but is no longer supported. For file-based databases, Microsoft currently recommend SQLite.
For a multi-user system, SQL Server Express is probably your best bet. It's still server-based though, so the server needs to be installed somewhere. For local databases, you can install on the same machine as the application and attach a data file on demand. For multiple clients, you'll need the server installed on a machine accessible to all and a permanently-attached database.
I am getting a little bit confused about the difference of the followings:
SQL Server Express
SQL Server Compact
localDB
My requirement is to develop a desktop application that will use basic RDBMS features. I need to package the application and allow the user to install a single distributed package. I don't want the user to install even SQL server express.
In this case, which DB I should use? SQLite is not considered as too much re-coding has to be done.
Thank you.
SQL Server Express is full featured DBMS, with some limitations in terms of database size and resources it is allowed to use. You can see it's limitations (relative to SQL Server) on microsofts site (Features Supported by the Editions of SQL Server 2012)
SQL Server CE is embedded database, meaning that it runs in user mode, it's easy to deploy (requires you to copy just few assemblies), lightweight but fast, can be run by a low privileged user. It's supported by NHibernate. However, has more limitations. To me most notable is that there are problems when you try to have multiple connections to same database. Although MS claims that this is supported, if you try this in Windows 2008 server, you will fail. And what's worse, such use scenario may lead to DB corruption. This means that you will effectively not be able to use some Management tool to update data while your service/website is running. Also, SQL Server Management studio doesn't support SQL CE anymore, so you will have to use a 3rd party tool, like Database.NET. It also does not support subqueries.
localDB, having not used it, sounds like a compromise. It's a standalone database which is executed in user mode (can be used by low privilege user), but must be installed so you will need administrative privileges for that part. Offers set of capabilities of SQL Server Express. It's much larger than SQL CE, and also requires to be installed (unlike CE which is just binary drop in). Shortest overview of this DBMS can be found here.
Is it possible to host Sharepoint and SQL Server off the same server for small time testing. Environment would be set up for purely education purposes. Non-production. Thanks.
Yes. We do this also. Works like a charm.
Your best bet would be to use a simple virtual environment (I quiet like VirtualBox) and then run a server operating system on there, install SQL Server (if it is only for testing SQL Server express would be sufficient) and then install SharePoint. When you have installed SharePoint you will be better removing the default web application it adds for you and then adding your own as you will be able to link the new application's database easily to the instance of SQL on your SQL server.
Don't forget that if you are looking at using SharePoint 2010 it all has to be 64bit...
Minimum development environment for sharepoint 2007 webparts
Hope this helps anyway...
It is possible, but SQL server likes to use up all the RAM, making sharepoint really slow, and sometimes with sharepoint 2010 it crashes the web application.
Try to limit how much RAM sql server takes
http://blog.stevehorn.cc/2007/10/limit-memory-usage-in-sql-server-2005.html
We are a small company and would like to know the best possible (and affordable) hardware and software configuration we ought to be using for our development environment. At this moment we are a team of four people who work remotely from different locations and each one of us uses a laptop and ADSL connection to work on our projects.
This question should help us identify a path towards optimizing our hardware and software so as to make the most of these development environments. Do we need to run everything locally on the laptops or some sort of distributed solution is possible? Which software versions do you recommend given that both Windows 2008 and SQL Server 2008 are available options? Do we use a central server or run these locally on our laptops?
We're a young team so any help would be welcome and much appreciated! Thanks!
Ym
For a team, I would suggest that you set up the local environments (laptops) as development environments, with a local DB copy and running CF developer version. Version control (VSS, Subversion, Git, etc.) is pretty much mandatory.
Have a testing/staging/QA server with the same configuration as the live version (as much as this is possible). It should have its own CF license to follow the licensing agreement. You should put checked-in code here for everyone to test and to check integration. Several version control systems offer ways to automate this, or you could do this manually.
Production, obviously, should be its own thing. I would suggest that you separate the database and app/web server on two separate boxes.
I know this might be a little more/less than you were asking, so feel free to ask for clarification.
For either ASP.NET or ColdFusion, You'll want to have the developers set up with their own local development environments on their Laptops. With ColdFusion, this probably means ColdFusion 8 Developer Edition (Free) and either MySQL (Free) or MS SQL Express Edition 2008 (also Free). For the actual development, you'll want Visual Studio 2008 ($170 -> $1400) for ASP.NET development, or Eclipse with CFEclipse plugin (Free) for ColdFusion Development.
You will almost certainly need a testing/QA string of servers, with ColdFusion 8 ($1300) you can run Linux, MacOS X, or Windows Server. ASP.NET pretty much requires Windows Server 2003, but if you're feeling adventurous, you could probably use Linux or MacOSX with Mono (Free) For your database engine, you can use MySQL (Free), PostgreSQL(Free), MS SQL ($6000), or one of many others.
Your production environment should be basically the same as your testing/QA environment, though depending on your traffic, you may end up with some esoteric load-balancing solutions. If you reach the point where this is necessary, you'll be able to afford to hire someone to answer this question for you :)
MS SQL Server 2008 Express, it's free.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=B5D1B8C3-FDA5-4508-B0D0-1311D670E336&displaylang=en
Windows XP (prof. edition) is stable and use less resources than Vista.
For asp.net I suggest using Dev Studio 2008 Pro.
For the computer itself, you want lots of memory (2-4 GB). A fast dual-core CPU. And you will see a difference using a faster HD (on a laptop, 5400 RPM HD are fast and 4500 RPM are the standard)
I recommend working locally and update all on a central location (with source control as Ben wrote).
I would use whatever server hardware you can afford 1/2/3 machines with plenty of ram and disk space and use Virtual server, or vmware server. That way you can simulate a ntier architecture. You can VPN/rdp/sslvpn etc to the virtual machines for your QA environment.
My QA environment has 7 machines, I have 3 physical servers, the biggest server runs SQL 2005 ent on the physical machine, it hosts 2 virtual machines one being the domain controller that all machines use for authentication. the 2 other server each host a virtual machine each.
That way i have a 3 tier architecture for QA and a separate 3 tier architecture for UAT.
Virtual machines are easy to spin up/ copy etc.