SQL Server Performance Forum – Threads Archive

Difference in H/W configurations

What would be the hardware differences between a PC and a server? will a PC which says it has got configuration similar to given below, would perform the same as that of a server which has the same below mentioned configuration? "Intel Xeon processors 3.80GHz with 2MB L2 cache, 2x1024MB DDR2 RAM, 250 MB SATA Hard Drive"
Seems out of topic. donno where to include. so added here… Thanks,
Ram "It is easy to write code for a spec and walk in water, provided, both are freezed…"

Both are based as machine solution for desktop operating systems. Server systems, on the other hand, is a solution for server operating systems. And PC and Server shares many features in common, they are designed for different purposes. As a result, some of their features are also quite different. If you think about the capabilities of a PC – graphics display, RAM, CPU, storage capacity, networking – the desktop PC is designed to give you the best graphics, a good amount of RAM, single CPU, fair storage and basic networking. A server would be the opposite – basic graphics, lots of RAM, multi CPU, lots of storage and excellent networking. The hard drives may be higher quality designed to cope with higher workloads. The whole system is designed to service multiple tasks for multiple clients elsewhere on the network.

quote:Size does not mater in the server world. Its all about configuration. A server is simply a PC that is loaded with the proper software to be classified as a server. Most servers have more ram than your average desktop although thats starting to change as more and more people put excessive amounts of memory in their personal systems. Servers also often have more storage capacity than the standard personal system. This also is changing as 100+GB disks are becomming more commonplace. Good servers have dual processors if not quad or more. SCSI is the bus interface of choice for a good server. This is because SCSI is faster than EIDE when it comes to disk transfer an you can connect up to 16 devices to a SCSI chain where as you can only have 2 on a EIDE chain. SCSI drives can spin upward to 15K RPM’s where as most of the fastest EIDE drives are 7200K or 10K RPM. Good servers have redundant power supplies and hot swappable disks. A hardware RAID solution is also common with fast servers. This is not only for performance but also for data safty. In a RAID-5 setup if any one given disk fails no data is lost and a new disk can be added back to the RAID array with out taking the server down thanks to the hot swap function. Graphics is not a priority with servers so they often have a very basic video card. Dual NICs are common for both redundancy as well as performance. You can configure one nic to listen and one nic to talk or you can set one up to be a fall over.

Satya SKJ
Microsoft SQL Server MVP
Contributing Editor & Forums Moderator
http://www.SQL-Server-Performance.Com
This posting is provided AS IS with no rights for the sake of knowledge sharing.

Thanks Satya. Thanks,
Ram "It is easy to write code for a spec and walk in water, provided, both are freezed…"

Does the explanation clarifies your doubts? Satya SKJ
Microsoft SQL Server MVP
Contributing Editor & Forums Moderator
http://www.SQL-Server-Performance.Com
This posting is provided AS IS with no rights for the sake of knowledge sharing.

Yes of course!!! There was a small debate between my friend and myself and i said there should be some hardware differences (i put forth my points on diff in RAID) though i couldnt explain him clearly in words. your point clarifies a lot and won me the argument.[<img src=’/community/emoticons/emotion-1.gif’ alt=’

‘ />] Thanks, Ram "It is easy to write code for a spec and walk in water, provided, both are freezed…"

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