Hope this is the right forum! Looking for hardware advice...

[Steve Z]

I've got a new customer in that we are going to develop an app for.

Basically they process lots and lots of documents - PDF's and Word Doc's.
Our app is going to let them drag-and-drop these files into a screen which
will then "move" then automatically into a share on a file server. The app
will also manage these files "via" a CASE NUMBER - so we are going to have MS
SQL running with a database of these cases.

Long story short...

At any rate - there are not many users - dozen or so - so the MS SQL part is
the least of our worries hardware wise.

But the documents get into the GB's in size.

Do you have any opinions on what a file server like this should be? Raid
setup? Is SAN a solution? I know nothing about this stuff. I'm looking to
help move them toward a solution and a vendor that can talk at this level
with them.

Any help you can give me would be greatly appreciated!

My initial thought was that we would simply run MS SQL on this file server -
since it's such a small part of the whole picture. No reason for another
server...

 

[Anthony [MVP]]

Re: Hope this is the right forum! Looking for hardware advice...

Steve,
That sounds similar to a video application I worked with. Very large video
files, together with small thumbnails and metadata. A standard HP server
worked fine.
There is some optimization you can do on the standard kit for handling very
large files.
I will guess that the amount of metadata in SQL and the volume of
transactions is quite low so it is probably not important.
Hope that helps,
Anthony
http://blogs.airdesk.com


"Steve Z" <SteveZ@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:069C89CA-F148-40F7-8154-BC51CEB84CFA@microsoft.com...
> I've got a new customer in that we are going to develop an app for.
>
> Basically they process lots and lots of documents - PDF's and Word Doc's.
> Our app is going to let them drag-and-drop these files into a screen which
> will then "move" then automatically into a share on a file server. The
> app
> will also manage these files "via" a CASE NUMBER - so we are going to have
> MS
> SQL running with a database of these cases.
>
> Long story short...
>
> At any rate - there are not many users - dozen or so - so the MS SQL part
> is
> the least of our worries hardware wise.
>
> But the documents get into the GB's in size.
>
> Do you have any opinions on what a file server like this should be? Raid
> setup? Is SAN a solution? I know nothing about this stuff. I'm looking
> to
> help move them toward a solution and a vendor that can talk at this level
> with them.
>
> Any help you can give me would be greatly appreciated!
>
> My initial thought was that we would simply run MS SQL on this file
> server -
> since it's such a small part of the whole picture. No reason for another
> server...
>
>

 

[Steve Z]

Re: Hope this is the right forum! Looking for hardware advice...

Anthony - thanks for that info. What do you mean by "optimization you can do
on the standard kit for handling very large files"?
Steve

"Anthony [MVP]" wrote:

> Steve,
> That sounds similar to a video application I worked with. Very large video
> files, together with small thumbnails and metadata. A standard HP server
> worked fine.
> There is some optimization you can do on the standard kit for handling very
> large files.
> I will guess that the amount of metadata in SQL and the volume of
> transactions is quite low so it is probably not important.
> Hope that helps,
> Anthony
> http://blogs.airdesk.com
>
>
> "Steve Z" <SteveZ@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:069C89CA-F148-40F7-8154-BC51CEB84CFA@microsoft.com...
> > I've got a new customer in that we are going to develop an app for.
> >
> > Basically they process lots and lots of documents - PDF's and Word Doc's.
> > Our app is going to let them drag-and-drop these files into a screen which
> > will then "move" then automatically into a share on a file server. The
> > app
> > will also manage these files "via" a CASE NUMBER - so we are going to have
> > MS
> > SQL running with a database of these cases.
> >
> > Long story short...
> >
> > At any rate - there are not many users - dozen or so - so the MS SQL part
> > is
> > the least of our worries hardware wise.
> >
> > But the documents get into the GB's in size.
> >
> > Do you have any opinions on what a file server like this should be? Raid
> > setup? Is SAN a solution? I know nothing about this stuff. I'm looking
> > to
> > help move them toward a solution and a vendor that can talk at this level
> > with them.
> >
> > Any help you can give me would be greatly appreciated!
> >
> > My initial thought was that we would simply run MS SQL on this file
> > server -
> > since it's such a small part of the whole picture. No reason for another
> > server...
> >
> >
>

 

[Anthony [MVP]]

Re: Hope this is the right forum! Looking for hardware advice...

Sorry I can't help you much more with that. Its a big subject. What I meant
was:
- Disk type and speed obviously
- RAID type (mirrored disks)
- Stripe size
- NTFS cluster size
And then you've got how the application handles the files.
Regards,
Anthony
http://blogs.airdesk.com

"Steve Z" <SteveZ@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
newsF3AAA97-771F-4466-9A57-4FF6BC4036D5@microsoft.com...
> Anthony - thanks for that info. What do you mean by "optimization you can
> do
> on the standard kit for handling very large files"?
> Steve
>
> "Anthony [MVP]" wrote:
>
>> Steve,
>> That sounds similar to a video application I worked with. Very large
>> video
>> files, together with small thumbnails and metadata. A standard HP server
>> worked fine.
>> There is some optimization you can do on the standard kit for handling
>> very
>> large files.
>> I will guess that the amount of metadata in SQL and the volume of
>> transactions is quite low so it is probably not important.
>> Hope that helps,
>> Anthony
>> http://blogs.airdesk.com
>>
>>
>> "Steve Z" <SteveZ@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
>> news:069C89CA-F148-40F7-8154-BC51CEB84CFA@microsoft.com...
>> > I've got a new customer in that we are going to develop an app for.
>> >
>> > Basically they process lots and lots of documents - PDF's and Word
>> > Doc's.
>> > Our app is going to let them drag-and-drop these files into a screen
>> > which
>> > will then "move" then automatically into a share on a file server. The
>> > app
>> > will also manage these files "via" a CASE NUMBER - so we are going to
>> > have
>> > MS
>> > SQL running with a database of these cases.
>> >
>> > Long story short...
>> >
>> > At any rate - there are not many users - dozen or so - so the MS SQL
>> > part
>> > is
>> > the least of our worries hardware wise.
>> >
>> > But the documents get into the GB's in size.
>> >
>> > Do you have any opinions on what a file server like this should be?
>> > Raid
>> > setup? Is SAN a solution? I know nothing about this stuff. I'm
>> > looking
>> > to
>> > help move them toward a solution and a vendor that can talk at this
>> > level
>> > with them.
>> >
>> > Any help you can give me would be greatly appreciated!
>> >
>> > My initial thought was that we would simply run MS SQL on this file
>> > server -
>> > since it's such a small part of the whole picture. No reason for
>> > another
>> > server...
>> >
>> >
>>