Newbie DBA - which version do I buy?

[R7Dave]

Hello - I just received these details and was hoping I could get a fast answer or at least the questions I should be asking...


All internet traffic will be logged to ONE SQL cluster at a data center. Once the project is complete, the amount of data could reach 600-700Gb a month. Every agency will have the ability to run queries on their agencies internet use. I would expect 50 people could be running resource intensive queries at one time.

Do any of you know who would purchase the SQL licenses and what version of SQL I would need? I know I need SQL 2008 but do I need the enterprise version? Any recommendation for sizing of the hardware?

Thanks
Dave

 

[SQLBill]

If you are clustering the database, I believe only the Enterprise edition supports that.

About 600-700GB of data a month? That's quite a lot. Add lots of queries and your system could end up being slow.

I highly suggest considering another server and using replication to copy the data to a subscriber server. Then use the subscriber as a reporting server....everyone queries that server and not the publisher.

-SQLBill

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[mrdenny]

SQL Server standard edition supports clustering when using a 2 node cluster.

Can you normalize the data to reduce the amount of data coming into the database?

You'll probably want to move the report running to another server. This can be done using a variety of techniques like Replication, mirroring, log shipping, SQL Service Broker, etc. depending on what works best with the application load.

Sounds like you need a solutions architect to come in and help design the solution.

Denny
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