Feedback appreciated on following H/W config for 8.12

Hi List

We plan to buy the following for our Enterprise Server, Database Server and Web Server for our 8.12 upgrade scheduled next year. We have 240 named users. We are moving from 8.0 Wintel blue stack to 8.12 on Red Stack (including OAS). We havent yet decided whether we want to use Linux(Red Hat) or Windows as the OS. Your feedback on this config will be greatly appreciated, so that we can avoid any obvious mistakes.

P/N Description

Config
HS21, 2 x Xeon 5160 3.0GHz, 8GB Ram, 2 x 146GB SAS Internal HDD

BladeCenter HS21
DualCore
8853L6A - HS21 Xeon 5160 3.0GHz/ 1333MHz, 4MB L2, 2x 512MB, SAS, Dual GB

Standard Features
- Blade servers supported in all IBM BladeCenter chassis
- Powerful, dual core processors
- Shared 2 MB L2 cache per core (4 MB per processor)
- 1066 MHz or 1333 MHz front-side bus speed (FSB)
- Dual Gigabit Ethernet connections
- Up to 32 GB of high-speed memory with ECC (four DIMM slots x 4 GB/DIMM on 30mm blade and eight DIMM slots x 4 GB/DIMM with Memory and I/O Expansion Blade)
- Up to two non-hot-swap SAS SFF HDDs (36 and 73 GB) with RAID 0, 1 in the single-wide configurations
- Optional IBM BladeCenter Storage and I/O Expansion Blade with support for up to three additional hot-swap SAS SFF HDDs with RAID 0,1 and optional RAID 5 as well as two additional I/O expansion slots
- Advanced high-availability and systems-management features
- Concurrent keyboard, video, mouse (KVM) support with addition of the optional IBM BladeCenter Concurrent KVM feature card (planned availability of fourth quarter 2006)
- Installation in your choice of BladeCenter, BladeCenter H, or BladeCenter T chassis3
- Service and support perfected for On Demand Business
- IBM Director and Remote Deployment Manager?
- ServerProvenR compatibility testing and Web support
- Three-year, on-site4 limited warranty5


Optional IBM BladeCenter Memory and I/O Expansion Blade allows expansion up to 32 GB of high-speed memory with ECC (eight DIMM slots x 4 GB/DIMM), one additional I/O Expansion '- slot, and additional two Dual Gigabit Ethernet connections (total of four)
40K1229 - Intel Dual Core Processor Model 5160
39M5791 - 4GB (2x2GB) PC2-5300 CL5 ECC DDR2 Chipkill FB-DIMM 667MHz
42D0421 - 146GB SAS 10K SFF HDD


Blade Server Expansion Cards for HS21
26R0890 - QLogic 4GB SFF Fibre Channel Expansion Card for BladeCenter


Warranty Upgrade
SP01S02 Upgrade to 3 years On-site warranty 24x7x4 (per BladeCenter HS20 with SCSI Expansion)


Best regards
Shrek

Additional Information
We are planning on deploying the following servers (physical boxes) with similar config as mentioned below



Enterprise Server – OS not decided (Linux or Windows?)
Database Server – OS not decided (Linux or Windows?) - Oracle 10G or above (whichever latest supported by 8.12 tools release 8.97)
Reporting Server – OS not decided (Linux or Windows?) - XML Publisher, Crystal Reports & Batch Server probably
Web Server 1 - OS not decided (Linux or Windows?) – Oracle Application Server
Web Server 2 - OS not decided (Linux or Windows?) – Oracle Application Server
Deployment Server - OS not decided (Linux or Windows?)

Shrek,

The decision on OS depends on what you are comfortable supporting. Does your IT staff have familiarty with Linux? Do you want to spend time learning to support OAS? You will already be spending time getting to know the new release of JDE and getting the new hardware stable, how much other change are you looking to introduce? Add in those questions to your decision process. Don't underestimate the new skills required, that will add in additional expenses in training and learning curve time.

Shrikanth,

1. Windows is the only OS supported for the dep server.

2. Unless your staff is trained on Linux/UNIX, I could only recommend Linux on the db server.

3. Consider running Windows Enterprise on the enterprise server. JDE can use the additional memory.

4. Run at least 2 RAID sets: mirror the OS and RAID 5 the app drives (for the DB, Ent and Dep servers).

5. For the DB servers, consider quad dual-core processors instead of 2 dual-core processors.



Are you planning to run Oracle 10G RAC?

[ QUOTE ]
Additional Information [...]
Enterprise Server – OS not decided (Linux or Windows?)
Database Server – OS not decided (Linux or Windows?) - Oracle 10G or above (whichever latest supported by 8.12 tools release 8.97)
Reporting Server – OS not decided (Linux or Windows?) - XML Publisher, Crystal Reports & Batch Server probably
Web Server 1 - OS not decided (Linux or Windows?) – Oracle Application Server
Web Server 2 - OS not decided (Linux or Windows?) – Oracle Application Server
Deployment Server - OS not decided (Linux or Windows?)

[/ QUOTE ]

Since it seems you are currently on Windows, I have to echo the sentiment that unless you already used to dealing with Linux in house, I would keep everything Windows.

Now that that's out of the way ... Oracle 11g is certified for use with E1. I have only seen installations as high as 10.2.0.3, however, so I can't say how good performance or ease of use is for 11g. I will say that for 240 users on 8 GB of RAM, I would go for the 64-bit versions of Windows and Oracle DB. The memory ceilings of Oracle on 32-bit Windows would not be good. By the way, how many concurrent users are there?

For the Reporting Server, the Oracle Crystal Reports download is only available for 32-bit Windows, so that will drive your choice of OS there. Because of that, rather than deal with the complexity of having a Reporting Server on 1 OS, and an Enterprise Server on a different OS, the use of Windows necessitated on the Reporting Server would also drive me to choose 32-bit Windows for the Enterprise Server.

For the Web Servers, either Windows or Linux versions of Oracle Application Server (OAS) are available. Many people, including myself, have found that the OAS gives a faster client experience, and is more easily clustered.

As noted, the Deployment Server must be 32-bit Windows.

Hope this helps.

Reading your hardware "configuration" looks like you copied a product brochure verbatim. It doesn't tell us what you proposed configuration is for the DS, the ES, etc. Basically it tells me nothing re proposed memory, storage amount, RAID type/config, etc.

Net, net this is not a proposed configuration - its a product brochure.

Hi All

I know I am pushing my luck here asking silly questions and displaying my utter ignorance of all matters related to hardware, but i appreciate all the advice I am getting.

If I had to over-size our hardware for future proofing it and supposing we had the budget, would the following setup be more than adequate?

Enterprise Server
8GB RAM
2 Quad Core Processors
64 Bit
Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition

Web Server
12GB RAM
2 Quad Core Processors
64 Bit
Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition

Database Server
16GB RAM
2 Quad Core Processors
64 Bit
Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition

Batch Server
12GB RAM
2 Quad Core Processors
64 Bit
Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition

Your feedback will be highly appreciated.

Best regards

Shrek

[ QUOTE ]

Database Server
16GB RAM
2 Quad Core Processors
64 Bit
Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition


[/ QUOTE ]

This is good. Hopefully, you'll be able to size the disk space you need based on your existing database, and add your annual data growth rate.

[ QUOTE ]

Enterprise Server
8GB RAM
2 Quad Core Processors
64 Bit
Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition


[/ QUOTE ]

This should be plenty, except that if you are going to use Windows, you'll have to go to 32-bit Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition. The JDE Tools Releases are not certified for use on 64-bit Windows.

[ QUOTE ]

Web Server
12GB RAM
2 Quad Core Processors
64 Bit
Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition


[/ QUOTE ]

This would be great, but it seems like a single point of failure for 200 users. You might want to think about getting 2 smaller servers to handle the JAS duties, and load balance between the 2. If you use OAS (red stack) instead of WebSphere Network Deployment (blue stack), it's a lot easier to configure multiple instances across the 2 servers.

At least disk space is not much of a consideration, as even a small 36 GB SCSI or SAS drive should be enough to hold the OS and JAS Tools Release.

Oh, and again you'll have to go back to 32-bit Windows.

[ QUOTE ]

Batch Server
12GB RAM
2 Quad Core Processors
64 Bit
Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition


[/ QUOTE ]

Again, like the Enterprise Server, you have to go back to 32-bit Windows to run the JDE Services.

By the way, 12 GB of RAM and 8 CPUs seems like you're running an awful lot of batch processing through there.

So what were you going to use for the Deployment Server? Not that it needs to be on the same level as these machines ...

Just a hint that you may think about using an exclusive disk array for production environment to improve performance. I am not sure if you use disk array in your AS/400 but a good plan on database storage, batch queues, table indexes also contribute a lot to your performance. It might be a good time to review your plan when you think about new hardware. --Harry

There's no AS/400 mentioned in this thread Harry; just Wintel to and from