Pau Lo
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multi purpose / corporate SQL Servers
Can I ask (I am not a DBA), if you work in larger organisations is it common to have a few servers dedicated to SQL Server (and/or Oracle). I’ve recently received a database inventory for some risk/assessment information governance purposes, and it lists number of databases per SQL Server instance. Looking down the list it seems SQL is installed on over 40 servers, but there’s 2 or 3 servers with generic sounding names, whereby there are loads of databases. Is this common?
Can you have databases for multiple purposes on the same servers/instances – why so? What do you refer to these master / corporate SQL Servers as in your organisation?
Why cant you put every database on these same systems, i.e. why do some servers require a server for their own database only?
Can you have databases for multiple purposes on the same servers/instances – why so? What do you refer to these master / corporate SQL Servers as in your organisation?
Why cant you put every database on these same systems, i.e. why do some servers require a server for their own database only?
As for the multiple databases per instance on one server , it largely depends on the load placed on the servers, your storage and backup requirements, all these things costs money so where you can you should consolidate these things.
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So for apps you can control where to put the database you cluster them together on one primary sql server - can I ask why organisations do this, i.e. put all sql databases on the same server?
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Do you call these central single database servers as anything particular in your organisation ?
On a SQL server(box) you can have multiple SQL server instances. Instances act independently from each other but obviously will share the box resources, cpu, memory and drive units. Normally you have multiple instances on non production environments where the resources management is not so critical and you want to save costs on hardware and licenses.
On a SQL server instance you can have as many databases as you want. There are no rules here and every company will do accordingly to their need and possibilities.
So in a dev, qa environment you could have multiple instances on a box but in prod is better to have one instance on a box or VM.
It is common for database hub and hosting companies to have multiple servers with one ore more instances on each and on each instance as many databases as they need. The number of databases can also be a result of the design just to group different kind of data in different databases. On Oracle there is a different approach with one database but multiple workspaces and schemas.
Back to SQL the idea is that there are no rules or best practices in regards to how many databases can be created on an instance or how many instances to have on a server, still with instances is not very practical to have too many on the same box due to hardware limitation.
On a SQL server instance you can have as many databases as you want. There are no rules here and every company will do accordingly to their need and possibilities.
So in a dev, qa environment you could have multiple instances on a box but in prod is better to have one instance on a box or VM.
It is common for database hub and hosting companies to have multiple servers with one ore more instances on each and on each instance as many databases as they need. The number of databases can also be a result of the design just to group different kind of data in different databases. On Oracle there is a different approach with one database but multiple workspaces and schemas.
Back to SQL the idea is that there are no rules or best practices in regards to how many databases can be created on an instance or how many instances to have on a server, still with instances is not very practical to have too many on the same box due to hardware limitation.
With our new build of SQL Server 2008 we have used SQL in the server's name, however previously we have named the servers sequentially (SVR01, SVR02, SVR03, etc...) and SVR03 happened to be the SQL server, it largely depends on the naming scheme in existence at the time the servers were created, frankly so long as they 15 characters or less and contain just AlphaNumerics the server names can be anything you like.
The larger and more complex your infrastructure the more relevant to their task the names should be.
The larger and more complex your infrastructure the more relevant to their task the names should be.
SME's will usually have at least one primary database server (depending on the data they handle), we are a 350+ user organisation and we have 1 primary SQL server, with probably 10 - 20 other SQL instances installed by various apps on various servers.