Anyone running SQL Server 2005 Express on their dedicated server?

[UserCBL]

I want to put a demo version of an ASP.Net 3.5 / SQL Server application I've written on to my web site.

I've currently got the Windows Starter VPS account and when I tried to install SQL Server 2005 Express everything came to a halt as it didn't have enough RAM.

I'm going to spend a bit on Google Adwords, so it's important the site can handle a lot of visitors, so I'm thinking of going for the Voyager Dedicated server.

But I've heard that putting SQL Server and IIS on the same box can cause performance issues, so just wondering if anyone has a high traffic website with SQL Server 2005 Express on the same box?

I've been testing the application out on a $10 a month shared hosting account with another provider, and I've been surprised how quick it was (with a single user) though they have their shared SQL Server on a dedicated box.

btw the application will only search the database, not update it. And the data is only test data.

Any pointers would be good

[Pawel Kowalski]

That's a really hard question to answer without knowing more information about your program and the amount of visitors you are anticipating.

I haven't done much work with SQL 2005 express but I've managed an intranet with MS SQL 2000 with IIS 6.0 running on one windows 2003 SBS. We saw absolutely no performance issues running it this way but this was for a fairly small intranet with no more than 4-6 people on at a time.

Microsoft is certainly trying to sell the idea that your SQL server and IIS should be on a different box. SBS 2008 will force you to do this. I'm not quite ready to buy in to that idea yet.

It's kind of strange your installation failed since the minimum requirement for SQL 2005 express is only 192MB ram. Maybe instead of dumping all that money in to a dedicated server you can upgrade your ram for now and see if that allows you to install the database and then see how well it runs. Dropping $10 right now would be much better than dropping $200 only to find out you over did it.

[UserCBL]

Thanks for the post.

The application allows the user to search for records in the database and view them in a grid. It is an application produced by a code generator I've written.

How many people will look at it is a good question - the ASP and PHP versions did really well in their hay day (I got several hundred downloads of the generator app per day), but asp.net is a completely different ball game so I don't know to be honest, but I want to spend a bit on advertising for the first 3 months after launch, so I'd like to be confident that it can handle a lot of traffic if I get it. After all, nobody wants to buy a code generator if the applications it generates run sluggishly!

Maybe the 192mb ram recommendation means on a PC that isn't running IIS, Mail etc?

An extra 128mb of Ram costs $10 per month, since it is crashing with 256mb, I get the feeling it needs a lot more to be comfortable. If I were to upgrade to say 1Gb of ram it would cost $60 for the extra memory + the $50 I'm already paying, $110 when I could go for the entry-level Orbiter dedicated for $117 per month (plus setup) and have all the cpu as well as 1Gb Ram.

Even before I installed SQL Server my VPS is sometimes quite sluggish, so a dedicated box seems like a good idea.

Voyager interested me as besides having a dual-core CPU it also has 2 hard drives, so thinking I could put the DB on one and IIS on the other. SQL Server Express only uses one core anyway, leaving the other one free for IIS, mail etc.

But then again, I've got the application installed on a cheap 10$ per month shared account with another host (with SQL Server on a seperate box, shared with 100 other users) and it's flying along at the moment (with a single user) so maybe a dedicated server is going too far!

Decisions Decisions!

[Pawel Kowalski]

If you have the money for the dedicated then by all means you can go that route and you would probably be fine (again, no way to tell you for sure without doing some real testing). But I like to subscribe to the idea that if you are going to spend money on something you don't really need you'd be better off investing the money in to something that you would actually use .

To give you an idea the SQL 2000 database I mentioned above which stores the company's share point services 3.0 data is currently only using 62MB of ram. A VPS would be more than enough to host this database.

Trying to upgrade your VPS to see how it would run really wouldn't hurt anything, then you can test actual loads on it.

Do you have a local computer you could set up as a test server? That might be another good thing to try.

You look up HP's loadrunner to simulate large traffic, I'm pretty sure they offer a free trial. But I can't really give much advice on this program as I've never personally used it.

[UserCBL]

Agreed, I don't want to spend more money than I need to (I could spend the extra on advertising) but I don't want to lose potential customers either because the site / demo app are too slow.

HP Load runner looks like a useful program, but it costs the same as a dedicated server for 3 months! I'll look into the free trial, though I suspect it may be limited. Also, not sure if Jaguar would be too happy if I start stress testing the VPS?

The SQL 2000 database on your intranet, do you know how much load there was on the CPU? Perhaps that is an issue as well as the Ram? Not sure what percentage of the CPU VPS's get, nor how fast the CPU is.

Sorry for all the questions!

[Pawel Kowalski]

Don't worry about asking too many questions, I don't mind helping out when I can.

I'm pretty sure the trial you get with load runner is a full feature trial. It would probably be wise to contact Jag if you are really going to be doing some insane testing, but if you are just going to be doing a small test I don't see why they would have a problem with it. From what I understand loadrunner lets you set the amount of requests that will be sent, keep this as small as possible if testing on the VPS. If you don't think you'll ever have more than 10 users on at a time then don't go above that on loadrunner.

What's actually nice about a VPS is you get a killer CPU as part of the deal. Don't quote me on this but I believe that Jag uses dual quad core opteron processors giving you access to 8 cores. As far as I know with equal share CPU you get access to the entire CPU and there are no limits put in place. However, if you abuse this they would contact you about it telling you that you have 3 days to stop using so many resources or to move to a dedicated server. You might want to contact their sales department to confirm what I am saying is true, I am going off my memory based on what I read here and the experiances I've had with the VPS servers I own.

With the database I mentioned the CPU load is nothing. When there are 5 or 6 people on at a time it might spike to about 10-15%, when idle it sits there around 0-4%. IIS might spike to about 25% with 5-6 users. And this is on a modest single core pentium 4 (3.06GHz) processor. I imagine you would probably use more than this perticular database uses but I don't think you need a power house of a server for your application.