SQL server hardware

[Undertoad]

At my workplace we do the big DB stuff with Oracle on HP running Linux. We have two massive HP disk arrays, and HP and Dell servers accessing them. My experience so far is that HP is utterly expensive but service is good; while Dell will dispatch contractors who know the Dell gear but are not quite as motivated. The HP arrays ("EVAs") are beautiful, and so easy to configure that it's hard to do it wrong. A single array contains multiple switches and controllers so the whole thing is just a massive cluster. No s. p. of f. out of the box.

Also, Oracle clustering is a bitch to understand from scratch.

[SteveDallas]

Originally Posted by BigV

I have been tasked

You do realize that in modern corporate-speak, "tasked" is synonymous with "bent over and fucked hard, with no lubricant," right? Just sayin'.

Originally Posted by BigV

Redundant systems so that there is no single point of failure, including the server itself

Originally Posted by BigV

I don't want a colo for this. This is strictly in house equipment.

This whole project is out of my league, but these last two statements may be contradictory. If you really are looking at 100% up-time, then you really need to consider a failover mirror at a remote location.

I would suggest googling around for some of the recent stuff about disk reliability that Google has come up with in running their own data centers. (It's too late on Friday for me to find primary cites myself.) I believe the bottom line is they're starting to come to the conclusion that it's more reliable to buy dirt cheap systems and mirror the hell out of them (I'm talking 3 or 4 mirrors here) rather than put a shitload of money into some fancy-pants SAN that becomes a single point of failure. But again, this is out of my league.

You said nothing about networking or bandwidth requirements... what's the prognosis for a server that's up and running, and the network switch it's connected to barfs?

Originally Posted by Undertoad

At my workplace we do the big DB stuff with Oracle on HP running Linux.

I'm not even going to touch the one about "no single point of failure" and "Windows OS"!