Our current environment is HP-UX\Oracle\Baan IVc3. We are moving to a Windows 2000\MS-SQL 2000\Baan IVc4 environment. We are licensed for 30 Baan users (and don't expect much growth), we run very little batch processing during the day, and are planning on implementing PDM after we complete the migration.

I am working with two different consulting groups, and they seem to differ greatly in their approach to configuring the server hardware.

The first consulting group is recommending a server with dual-Xeon 2.8Ghz processors, 4 GB RAM, and a sufficient amount of disk storage utilizing RAID5 technology. The OS, database, and Baan application would be installed in a single RAID5 drive array.

The second consulting group is recommending a server with the same CPU and RAM configuration, but they feel it is extremely important that we install the OS on a set of mirrored disks, do the same with the database (MS-SQL 2000) on a separate set of mirrored disks, and install the Baan application on a RAID5 disk array.

I'm curious what other shops with the same approximate user count have done when configuring their servers, and whether the second consulting groups approach is necessary for the application to perform in an acceptable fashion.

As a side note, we will be purchasing a second server for our Baan test environment, and this server will be configured IDENTICALLY to the production server. This approach to our test environment should allow us to perform in-depth testing at all levels, including the OS, database, and Baan application. The test server can also act as a "backup server", and we're also thinking about automating the updating of data on this server (from the production server), and using it to run some of our reporting.

All input/comments are GREATLY APPRECIATED!!

Our system is approximately same size as yours so should be quite representative. We don't have PDM but we do use PCF which is apparently quite system resource hungry.

When we went live with Baan (1999) we were advised to have storage setup more similar to your second scenario.

OS - mirrored
Baan APP- mirrored
DB - RAID 5
logs - mirrored

We have had other consultants since who have pretty much agreed so I would go with that. Although 1 consultant did suggest the use of RAID 0 for ( I think, it was a year ago so I can't quite say for certain) the logs to improve performance.

Not quite the same issue, but we have a system with redundant array controller and hot online spare disks - these have been a life saver!

Any consultant his money worth will not only recommend a single setup, but is able to give reasons for it and compare it to alternatives.

Here is my view:

a) For performace reasons, I would recommand to have the database in a raid 0. Raid 5 will be more storage efficient, but without doubt always slower. With current prices for disk space, Raid 0 is the obvious choice. If you have the financial ressources, then you might consider putting the redologs on seperate disks.

b) Baan itself doesn't do a lot of IO (apart from accessing the database), so wether you put Baan in Raid5 or Raid 0 doesn't matter. Wether you put it on the same disks as the database or the OS doesn't matter, from a performance point of view.

c) From a maintainance and backup/recovery point of view, I would seperate the dynamic database from the more static components of your system, i.e. the OS and the applications.

d) From a crash recovery point of view, you might want to minimize your actuall boot disk/LUN, so that you can use tools like GHOST etc. to create an image of your system disk, which fits on a CD.

Regards

Markus

P.S.:Just out of curiosity, why are you moving from HP to WINTEL? We are operating both kind of systems and find maintaining BAAN/Oracle on Wintel a bit of a constraint:

- Did you find something similar to HP-Ux Ignite on Wintel?
- Dow do you open a 3 GB alertlog file on Wintel?

The first thing, I would do in your case, is to install cygwin. :-)

If you find good admin utilities on Wintel, then let me know.

RAID-0 on a production environment? Seriously? If one of your disks dies, you're whole environment becomes unusable and you will need to recover from backup. RAID-5 seems an absolute minimum to me.

Hi Pat,

sorry, mistyped.

I meant Raid 0/1, ie. striped and mirrored.

Even on most test systems we mirror, because disks are cheap.

sorry again,

Markus

Ah that explains alot :)

Hi:

If you still need any assistance with Baan PDM please let me know at vjdr@hotmail.com