Jaguar,
When you run 2K, you want to move pagefile.sys to a different physical drive, on its own controller or RAID channel. On commercial servers you can just set up a RAID partition to do it.
Pagefile.sys gets hit on by Win2K more than a woman at a Linux or Amiga fest.
The reason why is because 2000 and NT like big pagefiles, and they will get huge, whether you like it or not. Just like Solaris or Linux, except that Linux's installer progs make you put one on your install whether you want to or not when you install it on a raw drive. Unless you run Slackware or Debian, in which case you can do whatever you want
.
I always recommend a pagefile size at least 2x RAM (which is the metric I use on the Sun servers, and any Windows NT/2K database server [yes, Oracle owns on my NT4 box with a nice tuned installation of SP6a, much moreso than 2000
]).
Putting that on its own channel prevents the nastiness that occurs when your c: drive gets hit. If you're doing anything, its recommended.
The issue I've just seen with anything IDE and writing fast is the fact that IDE is just not that disciplined, and SCSI is a way better multitasker.
I've had the chance to play with some serious PERC RAID configurations. I have a PII/333 at a former client's that runs SQL Server 7 Service Pack 3, and you'd think it ran on a dual processor machine with twice the RAM that Dell sells as a "database server" because I'm using dual channels, one for the database and one for the software itself. I've also got backup devices segmented on channel 3, with 64MB cache. The swap, system drives, and database are all on different partitions (4 of them at last count). I've got the DB only on RAID 1. I'm proud of the fact I tuned that PERC adapter and its NT drivers for maximum performance (and hint: download their drivers from the site and don't overclock
).
However, it smokes. As in "properly configured SCSI RAID on a PC can smoke anything IDE can and will ever do". When you configure right to have everything separate, you can seriously smack down everything else.
Here's another story about that from my day job:
My latest Oracle server is like that as well. It's a Sun E6500 with 16GB RAM and an EMC Symmetrix with several redundant FC-AL connections. It costs more than anything I would want to afford. I've got one big-ass swap partition on it (32GB), and partitions for all the standard Solaris fun things such as /usr, /opt (which in Solaris is the default install directory for all third-party packages), the / fs, and a couple of client-specific ones. We should be running 4 18GB drives in a RAID 0+1 for the pagefile partition, with 2 9GB drives for everything else
.
Then there are the Oracle partitions on the Symmetrix
We've got it split across 13 partitions of its own, and have interleaving going for performance across all data files to keep the data file size low while allowing for maximum switching speed. And, it's got dedicated partitions for rollback segments and archived redo log. EMC handles all that nasty stuff like physical drive allocation.
When you start getting big, think interleaving as well
.
I think it'll handle like 1,000 concurrent connections or something, depending on how the developers coded their SQL and paid attention to Roger the Apps DBA, who works from Mitch the Performance/Physical DBA (that be me), who spends most of his time tuning Oracle and database queries so that the apps don't crap themselves in production because some developers don't like using indexes or use the IN statement with non-scalar values.
At least Solaris can handle crap gracefully when used with SCSI and/or RAID. IDE even on Solaris, which is one of the few OS'es that is truly industrial-strength (up there with AIX and Tru64 UNIX), is crap under heavy loads. SCSI and Solaris have survived the Slashdot effect many times, because the whole system is more efficient.
Win2K is actually recommended to run SCSI with. Part of the reason is that Microsoft optimized the OS around the Adaptec SCSI cards. I'm a big fan of Adaptec SCSI.
However, SCSI and RAID are your friends for doing anything, since you want your system to be at maximum performance. I recommend an 18GB Cheetah and Adaptec Ultra2 adapter, with a SCSI CD-RW in there too. Need a doorstop, you can use your old IDE drive
. I've got a friend with that configuration. Windows 2K Advanced Server boots in under 20 seconds from his 18GB 10K cheetah, and it's INCREDIBLE for playing games or watching DVD movies, since the system is just more responsive and uses less CPU.
Take care. Hope I didn't go on too long here.
Mitch