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> Sorry, but 64GB of RAM is a LOT.. It's $500. When you consider that bringing in a performance tuning consultant can easily cost thousands of dollars per day,

> Sorry, but 64GB of RAM is a LOT.. It's $500. When you consider that bringing in a performance tuning consultant can easily cost thousands of dollars per day, $500 worth of memory isn't much at all. > for that matter a db install that would need 64GB of memory is probably not something you would call short of "Enterprise" ... Remember that database servers use memory for at least 4 things: caching data, workspace for running queries, workspace for TempDB, and caching execution plans. If you run DMV queries against sys.dm_os_buffer_descriptors, you might be surprised at how little of your memory is being used to cache data. Even a 50GB database can get to a point where it's having to hit the disk in order to satisfy queries. This is the age of "big data", as much as I hate to use that term. It's the age of 256GB USB thumb drives, laptops with 32GB of memory, and storing files in the database server. 64GB isn't large for databases anymore - in fact, it's a fairly unusual week when I'm dealing with a database that small.

Lendal 13y ago
Sorry I still don't get it. A database that actually used all 64GB of MEMORY--not disk--would store billions of customer records, and yet this is a small business? What small business stores billions of records of anything? Yes I have seen many extremely poorly designed schemas that did take up huge amounts of memory, but that is easily corrected before launch. Don't store everything as a string, that's one way. But there are more reasons such a schema needs to be fixed, other than the $ cost of memory.
- BrentOzar 13y ago
  These days, it's fairly common to store larger fields or even files in the database. SQL Server's FileTable and FileStream fields are designed for that exact use. Plus, remember that one server can be used for multiple databases. In SQL Server, it's fairly common to see a single server housing the accounting software, the payroll software, the email auditing back end, VMware Virtual Center's databases, etc.
- warrenrumak 13y ago
  How do you figure you could store "billions" of customer records in a 64GB memory space? That's 68 billion bytes, and you lose a very significant portion of it to things that aren't base table storage. Never mind cached query plans.... how about indexes? If you consider a table containing a customer name, address, telephone number, and a couple of other basic pieces, you could be looking at a few kb for each record. That'll get you closer to a total potential storage of 20m records. Not billions. Oh, and I have seen small businesses running SQL Standard with databases exceeding 500GB and individual tables with over 1.5 billion rows -- and the tables were designed efficiently! They couldn't afford Enterprise because of the tight profit margin nature of their line of work. What I'm saying is, don't discount the data needs of small business.
- MichaelGG 13y ago
  Telecom. We store tight, tiny columns. We've got 100s of GB of data. Many records are transactions that earned us nothing (call didn't connect, yet tried several attempts). We're not a large business by any measure. Even smaller companies in other fields might want to store tons of rows. User action data, for instance. Living in the past and insisting 64GB of MEMORY is somehow huge is just being silly.
supernovae 13y ago
64GB for database systems is still fairly large amount of ram for Databases and still largely considered an enterprise class server.. I know lots of several multi billion dollar companies running their financials and oltp systems on servers with <64gb ram. Also, people don't generally by over the counter ram for their servers, they're spending extra on ECC memory correcting ram.
- lmz 13y ago
  The blog post did link to ECC RAM (4 x 16GB DDR3 RDIMMs)[1]. It does seem that most of them are above $600 though. [1]: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007952%20600336949&IsNodeId=1&name=64GB%20%284%20x%2016GB%29 http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=...

Lendal 13y ago

Sorry I still don't get it. A database that actually used all 64GB of MEMORY--not disk--would store billions of customer records, and yet this is a small business? What small business stores billions of records of anything? Yes I have seen many extremely poorly designed schemas that did take up huge amounts of memory, but that is easily corrected before launch. Don't store everything as a string, that's one way. But there are more reasons such a schema needs to be fixed, other than the $ cost of memory.

BrentOzar 13y ago
These days, it's fairly common to store larger fields or even files in the database. SQL Server's FileTable and FileStream fields are designed for that exact use. Plus, remember that one server can be used for multiple databases. In SQL Server, it's fairly common to see a single server housing the accounting software, the payroll software, the email auditing back end, VMware Virtual Center's databases, etc.
warrenrumak 13y ago
How do you figure you could store "billions" of customer records in a 64GB memory space? That's 68 billion bytes, and you lose a very significant portion of it to things that aren't base table storage. Never mind cached query plans.... how about indexes? If you consider a table containing a customer name, address, telephone number, and a couple of other basic pieces, you could be looking at a few kb for each record. That'll get you closer to a total potential storage of 20m records. Not billions. Oh, and I have seen small businesses running SQL Standard with databases exceeding 500GB and individual tables with over 1.5 billion rows -- and the tables were designed efficiently! They couldn't afford Enterprise because of the tight profit margin nature of their line of work. What I'm saying is, don't discount the data needs of small business.
MichaelGG 13y ago
Telecom. We store tight, tiny columns. We've got 100s of GB of data. Many records are transactions that earned us nothing (call didn't connect, yet tried several attempts). We're not a large business by any measure. Even smaller companies in other fields might want to store tons of rows. User action data, for instance. Living in the past and insisting 64GB of MEMORY is somehow huge is just being silly.

supernovae 13y ago

64GB for database systems is still fairly large amount of ram for Databases and still largely considered an enterprise class server.. I know lots of several multi billion dollar companies running their financials and oltp systems on servers with <64gb ram. Also, people don't generally by over the counter ram for their servers, they're spending extra on ECC memory correcting ram.

lmz 13y ago
The blog post did link to ECC RAM (4 x 16GB DDR3 RDIMMs)[1]. It does seem that most of them are above $600 though. [1]: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007952%20600336949&IsNodeId=1&name=64GB%20%284%20x%2016GB%29 http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=...