August 7, 2007 at 1:05 pm
Anyone have any suggestions, know of any tips on specing out a SQL 2005 server as a BizTalk database server?
Thanks.
August 8, 2007 at 8:23 am
To what scale will your BizTalk solution be used? We use BizTalk at my company, albeit for one function. However that one function is running all the time, performs some basic encryption/decryption, transformations, and the obvious messaging. This takes up hardly any space or resources on one of our current production databases.
My suggestion is if you are going to gradually ramp up your BizTalk solution (like our approach) start off by putting BizTalk on an existing server and then re-evaluate with every new function you make BizTalk handle.
If you're strapped for server resources and your company is going to let you use the BizTalk solution as a catalyst to get a new box, I say swing for the fences and try to get something beefy that would act as a good enterprise database server. If you're looking to keep costs down and your BizTalk solution isn't going to be initially intensive I say throw it on an existing server.
Hope that helps,
John
August 8, 2007 at 9:03 am
John,
Thanks for the feedback. Unfortunately this is an all too familiar scenario for me. I get about 15 minutes to search the web before a meeting on "what kind of server do we need to host SQL 2005 for BizTalk?". I read that if we have an idea of the type and size of messages with which we will be dealing then I can calc disk space requirements. Beyond that things get very vague. I find out that our BizTalk consultant and our other guys can't really say what kind and size of messages for this first project so the spec for a SQL 2005 server (to host the MessageBox database) is a SWAG (which gets pointed out by me).
The expectation appears to be that this project will be the starting point and that BizTalk use in our company will continue to grow.
jl
August 8, 2007 at 2:39 pm
Well to give you a hint to the size of the database with the minimal project I described above, BizTalk installs 5 databases upon installation. Here are the databases and their sizes in my environment to give you a gauge:
BizTalkDTADb - 47.44 MB
BizTalkHwsDb - 4.25 MB
BizTalkMgmtDb - 14.00 MB
BizTalkMsgBoxDb - 31.88 MB
BizTalkRuleEngineDb - 3.50 MB
These have been in use for around 2 months now so you can see they're not that large.
John
August 9, 2007 at 12:08 pm
The 'strength' of sql server that you need is actually depended on the requirements of your application. The most important factor in my experience is the response time required. For real time applications that require low latency with very fast responses you will need a good box and a good SAN (storage area network).
-Evan
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