Dell R810 User Manual
Page 6
Servers: Database consolidation on Dell PowerEdge R810 servers
6
In this database-specific Guide, we address the consolidation of
multiple stand-alone SQL Server 2000 instances to a system
powered by the latest Intel Xeon Processor 7500 series. As we will
demonstrate, consolidating multiple instances to one physical
machine saves on space, hardware costs, licensing costs, power,
cooling, and administrative overhead.
Why consolidate?
An effective server consolidation effort has the potential to yield an
environment with more consistent management practices and
improved reliability, security, and hardware utilization—all while
maintaining the previous level of application performance.
Consolidation can also yield a variety of cost savings:
Hardware savings. Buying, powering, and supporting fewer
servers brings obvious savings. Other potential hardware cost
savings include the need for fewer racks and network switches: as
the number of servers decreases, these costs decrease as well.
Software license savings. Consolidation can save an
organization significant money in software licenses. We present a
detailed example of potential license savings in our earlier guide,
―Consolidating SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005 databases to
SQL Server 2008 on Windows Server 2008 Enterprise on Dell
Servers.‖
1
Maintenance and staff savings. A consolidated infrastructure
offers many opportunities for maintenance, support, and staffing
cost savings. Less hardware and associated equipment means
fewer servers that require security patches, monitoring, and other
ongoing maintenance.
Reduced support costs. The cost of a given level of support is
typically proportional to the size of the installation. By reducing the
number of servers, support costs are also likely to decrease.
Power and cooling savings. Consolidating servers saves power
and cooling by using fewer more efficient systems.
Sizing and baseline performance
One key to a successful consolidation is sizing, the process of
gathering different performance baselines so you have an
approximate set of requirements the new hardware platform must
meet. You do this by determining the performance characteristics
of existing hardware during normal business operations, and then
applying growth and scalability estimates.
1