Re: SQL Server 2005 and file systems, any recommendations

Erland Sommarskog wrote:
DA Morgan (damorgan@xxxxxxxxx) writes:
Erland Sommarskog wrote:
Correct. A binary collation comes with a price. So does raw partitions.
Would you please explain what you intend with this comment about block
devices. With any database, other apparently than Microsoft's, there is
an advantage that accrues to those who forgo file systems. Why is SQL
Server different?

I referred previously in the thread to a fellow MVP who had found a 20%
improvement with raw devices over the file system.

The price I'm talking about is the more complex administration that raw
devices buy you.

As for why they are complex... Many years ago when I worked with Sybase, I had to travel to customer to perform a triple upgrade: upgrade HP-UX
from 8.0 to 9.0, Sybase from 4.2 to 4.9 and our own application. The
customer had adequate staff to run the OS upgrade themselves, but still
they wanted us to it. The reason: in this OS upgrade HP-UX introduced
logical volumes, having had only fixed partitions before, and the customer
did not know how to handle Sybase, where all data was on raw partitions. Had the databases been on plain files, the OS upgrade would have been trivial for them. But in those days, Sybase strongly discouraged you from
running production databases on file-system devices, and with a good reason,
since buffering in the file system could cause problems.

Thanks. The "price" is well understood and there are a lot of good
solutions for simplifying block device administration: Just not with
SQL Server (for example AIX makes it very easy). Thanks.
--
Daniel A. Morgan
University of Washington
damorgan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
(replace x with u to respond)
Puget Sound Oracle Users Group
www.psoug.org
.

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