mibuso.com

I see, so no improvements on performance. No wonder, I never heard about it.

Probably it is even slower, because Netbios is easy to install but slower than TCP/IP (at least that is what I heard).

I do not understand the storage section.
Why use 14 and 18 disks for the log file? And how do you configure 14 disks in RAID 1 ? As far as I know RAID 1 consists of 2 disks. As the log is written sequentially 2 big disks configured in RAID 1 is enough for log storage. More disks can be added only if more space is needed.

Hardware Guide for Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV 4.0 (Version 3)
The whitepaper provides hardware sizing for Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV (version 4.0) installations.

The whitepaper goes into specific detail as to the exact hardware requirements for a variety of Dynamics™ NAV configurations.

Change log between version 2 and version 3:
• Introduce a recommendation using Small Business Server (SBS) for less than 5 users (SQL 2005 section)
• Introduce a recommendation for installation up to 25 users (SQL 2005 section)
• Update the limitations of Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV running with SQL 2005 with the latest fixes (SQL 2005 section)
• Introduce RAID 10 as an alternative to RAID 0+1 (Storage section)
• Remove references to 18GB disks. 18GB disks can hardly be found (Storage section)
• Increase the size of the disks for the SQL Transaction Log and reduce their number. It aligns the number of disks with the storage bays commonly available (Storage section)
• Introduce a sub-section on configuring Logical Units (Storage section)
• Introduce the Database Resource Kit (References section)

Change log between version 1 and version 2:
• Change the document title to “Hardware Guide”
• Modify the section “Purpose, Terms & Conditions” to add the official positioning for Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV
• Remove the section “Executive Summary”
• New section “Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV Client”
• New section “References”
• Remove the recommendations for above 100 concurrent users - except for Microsoft SQL Server 2005
• Clarify the limitations of the Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV Database Server (clustering, RAM and CPU)
• Clarify the use of dual-core processors
• Increase the memory recommendati ons for Microsoft SQL Server
• Modify the recommended drive letters for storage for all servers
• Modify the RAID recommendations and increase the storage requirements for the Microsoft SQL Server transaction logs (all database sizes)
• Clarify and detail the storage requirements for all servers

http://www.mibuso.com/dlinfo.asp?FileID=587

Discuss this download here.

Does anyone can explain why log disk size need to be larger than the database disk itself??? It doesn't make sence!!!! check it out
(Hardware Guide for Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV 4.0) /page 17, Released: szept 29. 2006/

Operations such as a Navision restore (*.fbk) are logged and can grow the transaction log quite large. It is not uncommon to result in a transaction log of 1.5 - 2 times the database. SQL restores are not logged therefore do not have this issue.

I see this as a remaining issue with Navision SQL. The initial restore requires you to allocate disk space that will serve no purpose later.

Especially if you don't do a backup after it to truncate the logfile...

Page 16.

Why does there stand 4x32GB RAID 1 in Storage for Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV Database Server for small database size? So, it means that we have to have 2 mirrored disks, both 36GB in size. OS on 1st disk, DB on 2nd? In this case, shouldn't 4x32GB in RAID 10 (separate partition for OS & DB) be faster?

We are purchasing based on this document and are very grateful for it. Have there been any changes/adjustments since it was published? I'm particularly interested in the number of disks recommended for Data and Transaction Logs for a Small SQL Database with <50 users.

Hi

I have just come accross with the Hardware Guide, version 3. One of my client is using version 3.70 SQL Server. I just wanted to know what will be the impact if the configration mention is used with 3.70 or is there some specific Hardware Sizing available for version 3.70.

The client is using the RAID 5 and want to know How this can affect their performance and How RAID 0+1 as siggested in the document can improve the performance?

I would appriciate if you can provide the explaination for that.

Thanks in advance

Best Regards
NewVision

Well...

RAID5: the controller has to calculate a parity for each chunk of data.
RAID0+1: no calculation needed, just writing at double speed, because half is written on each disk.

This means that for each write, FIRST a read must be done on the other disks!

And that's a huge delay ...

Let me give you three pieces of advise to get you started in Navision:

1/ Don't use RAID 5.
2/ Don't use RAID 5
and 3/ Don't use RAID 5.

there was a fourth thing I was going to add, but I can't remember what it was.

I remember:

Take someting else then RAID5!