compare two text files

Dear all,

What software can compare two text files? They are contains about 100k data generated from Visual Basic 6.0 program and MS SQL 2000. I have many files to compare daily. Please give me some suggestions. Thanks.

Alex

I think VSS (source safe) is suitable for that|||

thanks Eisa. it is helpful.

Could you suggest some freewares?

|||Hi Alex,
I don't know if it is allowed to share free software here or not, howere you can serach google for compare text files free|||Thank your for your help|||Windows has a command line utility (fc) that compares two files. Type "fc /?" at a command prompt, and it will list the options/switches. It's a good solution if it has the features you need, because it's built into Windows, and you won't have to bother installing it everywhere you need it. If you want to use it in a job, you can invoke it with an operating system type step, or use xp_cmdshell if you need to call it after dynamically building the command at run-time. In a job, you would have to pipe the results to another text file, for review.|||

CompareIt! - cool

http://www.grigsoft.com/

|||thanks a lot

compare two text files

Dear all,

What software can compare two text files? They are contains about 100k data generated from Visual Basic 6.0 program and MS SQL 2000. I have many files to compare daily. Please give me some suggestions. Thanks.

Alex

I think VSS (source safe) is suitable for that|||

thanks Eisa. it is helpful.

Could you suggest some freewares?

|||Hi Alex,
I don't know if it is allowed to share free software here or not, howere you can serach google for compare text files free|||Thank your for your help|||Windows has a command line utility (fc) that compares two files. Type "fc /?" at a command prompt, and it will list the options/switches. It's a good solution if it has the features you need, because it's built into Windows, and you won't have to bother installing it everywhere you need it. If you want to use it in a job, you can invoke it with an operating system type step, or use xp_cmdshell if you need to call it after dynamically building the command at run-time. In a job, you would have to pipe the results to another text file, for review.|||

CompareIt! - cool

http://www.grigsoft.com/

|||thanks a lot

Compare SSIS to wherescape software?

I am just a beginner in SSIS and I like it, and somebody that has many years of experience in datawarehousing recommend me the software from this company, http://www.wherescape.com/, I just wanted to know if somebody has tried it, because I think its interface is poor and I dont think its better than SSIS, the only thing good I think, is that it can make datawarehouse in oracle and sql in the same tool.

If you can review it please advice me.

Hi Luis,

I am familiar with both products - we have just moved our data warehouse from using DTS on SQL 2000 to using WhereScape RED on SQL2005. We looked at and did not use SSIS. At a high level SSIS is an excellent general purpose tool for moving data around and sequencing tasks (much improved over DTS), but WhereScape RED is more focused on building and managing a data mart or data warehouse.

I agree the interface of WhereScape was not very good - this improved recently to more MS standard. But to build a data warehouse WhereScape RED generates tables and procedures at the same time - SSIS only caters to processing (table design is managed elsewhere) and applies no consistency to the packages. The processes that WhereScape RED generates follows a consistent approach, which makes management, extending and troubleshooting the dwh much easier. The lack of consistency in DTS or SSIS really hurts management of the data warehouse. In RED I can alter a table and regenerate the procedures associated with it, and regenerate the documentation automatically. Before RED I had to chase through DTS packages and tasks to find out what was affected before manually making these changes - and the documentation never seemed to catch up.

I hope this helps.

Simon

Commercial Audit Software

I'm looking for a good commercial, 3rd party solution, not a Trace solution.
Can anyone provide comments on something they have in production? So
far, my limited research has turned up Lumigent Entegra, and RippleTech
LogCaster.
My goal is to track DML changes by login with minimal impact on system
performance. Further, I need the audit data to be as secure as possible from
malicious updates and deletes. This is to implement audit tracking for SOX
compliance.
ThanksLumigent Entegra is probably the most mature product on the market for
server-level auditing. It isn't perfect, but it can go a long way towards
filling the audit requirements.
Geoff N. Hiten
Microsoft SQL Server MVP
Senior Database Administrator
"Garth Wells" <nobody@.ishome.com> wrote in message
news:uoCCTMXKFHA.2852@.TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...
> I'm looking for a good commercial, 3rd party solution, not a Trace
> solution.
> Can anyone provide comments on something they have in production? So
> far, my limited research has turned up Lumigent Entegra, and RippleTech
> LogCaster.
> My goal is to track DML changes by login with minimal impact on system
> performance. Further, I need the audit data to be as secure as possible
> from
> malicious updates and deletes. This is to implement audit tracking for SOX
> compliance.
> Thanks
>|||Manakoa Services Corporation is releasing a System Controls MP for MOM2005
which provides basic collection and reporting for windows security events.
You can review the features at http://www.manakoa.com/products/scmp/
The RTM is scheduled for May 31st. If your interested in particpating in the
beta you can contact me at jbeckett@.manakoa.com for more info.
"Garth Wells" wrote:

> I'm looking for a good commercial, 3rd party solution, not a Trace solutio
n.
> Can anyone provide comments on something they have in production? So
> far, my limited research has turned up Lumigent Entegra, and RippleTech
> LogCaster.
> My goal is to track DML changes by login with minimal impact on system
> performance. Further, I need the audit data to be as secure as possible fr
om
> malicious updates and deletes. This is to implement audit tracking for SOX
> compliance.
> Thanks
>
>|||You can try LiveAudit from www.datamirror.com. It captures inserts updates
and deletes from the ms_replcmds table in the distribution database. You
need to publish the tables that you need to track. In addition to the actual
change in a row, you can also add journal information such as who made the
change, when the change was made, and what type of change accured among
other journal control information the changes are then reported as table
entries in most databases available. From there, you can use something like
Crystal reports to look at the history or trail of the changes made to the
database.
Hope this helps,
RdR
"Jeremiah Beckett" <Jeremiah Beckett@.discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in
message news:B08EC974-72DB-461F-AAEB-98CE1687852A@.microsoft.com...[vbcol=seagreen]
> Manakoa Services Corporation is releasing a System Controls MP for MOM2005
> which provides basic collection and reporting for windows security events.
> You can review the features at http://www.manakoa.com/products/scmp/
> The RTM is scheduled for May 31st. If your interested in particpating in
> the
> beta you can contact me at jbeckett@.manakoa.com for more info.
>
> "Garth Wells" wrote:
>

Commercial Audit Software

I'm looking for a good commercial, 3rd party solution, not a Trace solution.
Can anyone provide comments on something they have in production? So
far, my limited research has turned up Lumigent Entegra, and RippleTech
LogCaster.
My goal is to track DML changes by login with minimal impact on system
performance. Further, I need the audit data to be as secure as possible from
malicious updates and deletes. This is to implement audit tracking for SOX
compliance.
Thanks
Lumigent Entegra is probably the most mature product on the market for
server-level auditing. It isn't perfect, but it can go a long way towards
filling the audit requirements.
Geoff N. Hiten
Microsoft SQL Server MVP
Senior Database Administrator
"Garth Wells" <nobody@.ishome.com> wrote in message
news:uoCCTMXKFHA.2852@.TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...
> I'm looking for a good commercial, 3rd party solution, not a Trace
> solution.
> Can anyone provide comments on something they have in production? So
> far, my limited research has turned up Lumigent Entegra, and RippleTech
> LogCaster.
> My goal is to track DML changes by login with minimal impact on system
> performance. Further, I need the audit data to be as secure as possible
> from
> malicious updates and deletes. This is to implement audit tracking for SOX
> compliance.
> Thanks
>
|||Manakoa Services Corporation is releasing a System Controls MP for MOM2005
which provides basic collection and reporting for windows security events.
You can review the features at http://www.manakoa.com/products/scmp/
The RTM is scheduled for May 31st. If your interested in particpating in the
beta you can contact me at jbeckett@.manakoa.com for more info.
"Garth Wells" wrote:

> I'm looking for a good commercial, 3rd party solution, not a Trace solution.
> Can anyone provide comments on something they have in production? So
> far, my limited research has turned up Lumigent Entegra, and RippleTech
> LogCaster.
> My goal is to track DML changes by login with minimal impact on system
> performance. Further, I need the audit data to be as secure as possible from
> malicious updates and deletes. This is to implement audit tracking for SOX
> compliance.
> Thanks
>
>
|||You can try LiveAudit from www.datamirror.com. It captures inserts updates
and deletes from the ms_replcmds table in the distribution database. You
need to publish the tables that you need to track. In addition to the actual
change in a row, you can also add journal information such as who made the
change, when the change was made, and what type of change accured among
other journal control information the changes are then reported as table
entries in most databases available. From there, you can use something like
Crystal reports to look at the history or trail of the changes made to the
database.
Hope this helps,
RdR
"Jeremiah Beckett" <Jeremiah Beckett@.discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in
message news:B08EC974-72DB-461F-AAEB-98CE1687852A@.microsoft.com...[vbcol=seagreen]
> Manakoa Services Corporation is releasing a System Controls MP for MOM2005
> which provides basic collection and reporting for windows security events.
> You can review the features at http://www.manakoa.com/products/scmp/
> The RTM is scheduled for May 31st. If your interested in particpating in
> the
> beta you can contact me at jbeckett@.manakoa.com for more info.
>
> "Garth Wells" wrote:

Commercial Audit Software

I'm looking for a good commercial, 3rd party solution, not a Trace solution.
Can anyone provide comments on something they have in production? So
far, my limited research has turned up Lumigent Entegra, and RippleTech
LogCaster.
My goal is to track DML changes by login with minimal impact on system
performance. Further, I need the audit data to be as secure as possible from
malicious updates and deletes. This is to implement audit tracking for SOX
compliance.
ThanksLumigent Entegra is probably the most mature product on the market for
server-level auditing. It isn't perfect, but it can go a long way towards
filling the audit requirements.
Geoff N. Hiten
Microsoft SQL Server MVP
Senior Database Administrator
"Garth Wells" <nobody@.ishome.com> wrote in message
news:uoCCTMXKFHA.2852@.TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...
> I'm looking for a good commercial, 3rd party solution, not a Trace
> solution.
> Can anyone provide comments on something they have in production? So
> far, my limited research has turned up Lumigent Entegra, and RippleTech
> LogCaster.
> My goal is to track DML changes by login with minimal impact on system
> performance. Further, I need the audit data to be as secure as possible
> from
> malicious updates and deletes. This is to implement audit tracking for SOX
> compliance.
> Thanks
>|||Manakoa Services Corporation is releasing a System Controls MP for MOM2005
which provides basic collection and reporting for windows security events.
You can review the features at http://www.manakoa.com/products/scmp/
The RTM is scheduled for May 31st. If your interested in particpating in the
beta you can contact me at jbeckett@.manakoa.com for more info.
"Garth Wells" wrote:
> I'm looking for a good commercial, 3rd party solution, not a Trace solution.
> Can anyone provide comments on something they have in production? So
> far, my limited research has turned up Lumigent Entegra, and RippleTech
> LogCaster.
> My goal is to track DML changes by login with minimal impact on system
> performance. Further, I need the audit data to be as secure as possible from
> malicious updates and deletes. This is to implement audit tracking for SOX
> compliance.
> Thanks
>
>|||You can try LiveAudit from www.datamirror.com. It captures inserts updates
and deletes from the ms_replcmds table in the distribution database. You
need to publish the tables that you need to track. In addition to the actual
change in a row, you can also add journal information such as who made the
change, when the change was made, and what type of change accured among
other journal control information the changes are then reported as table
entries in most databases available. From there, you can use something like
Crystal reports to look at the history or trail of the changes made to the
database.
Hope this helps,
RdR
"Jeremiah Beckett" <Jeremiah Beckett@.discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in
message news:B08EC974-72DB-461F-AAEB-98CE1687852A@.microsoft.com...
> Manakoa Services Corporation is releasing a System Controls MP for MOM2005
> which provides basic collection and reporting for windows security events.
> You can review the features at http://www.manakoa.com/products/scmp/
> The RTM is scheduled for May 31st. If your interested in particpating in
> the
> beta you can contact me at jbeckett@.manakoa.com for more info.
>
> "Garth Wells" wrote:
>> I'm looking for a good commercial, 3rd party solution, not a Trace
>> solution.
>> Can anyone provide comments on something they have in production? So
>> far, my limited research has turned up Lumigent Entegra, and RippleTech
>> LogCaster.
>> My goal is to track DML changes by login with minimal impact on system
>> performance. Further, I need the audit data to be as secure as possible
>> from
>> malicious updates and deletes. This is to implement audit tracking for
>> SOX
>> compliance.
>> Thanks
>>

Comments on Software RAID for O/S volume?

Hi,
We're going to be purchasing a database server from IBM. Although the
database itself will be housed on a 10-drive SCSI-based external storage
unit, the operating system will reside on two drives housed in the server
itself. The drives will be mirrored (RAID 1). I noticed that the server
quote makes no mention of a RAID card to handle these two drives so I asked
our sales rep about it. He stated that RAID for the O/S volume will be
handled "in the software."
I need to get a handle on exactly what this means. It seems to me that
if RAID is handled by software, the CPU would have to get involved each time
a read/write occurs to this volume. I was hoping to keep the CPU focused on
SQL Server without it getting distracted by handling the RAID mirror. The
sales rep makes the case that most of the O/S is loaded into memory at
startup anyway so there shouldn't be too much reading/writing to the O/S
volume in the course of the day. I do buy his argument, but I figured I'd
get your opinions first to see if what he's saying is in fact correct.
Thanks,
Hulio
The One We Call 'Dave' wrote:
> Hi,
> We're going to be purchasing a database server from IBM. Although the
> database itself will be housed on a 10-drive SCSI-based external storage
> unit, the operating system will reside on two drives housed in the server
> itself. The drives will be mirrored (RAID 1). I noticed that the server
> quote makes no mention of a RAID card to handle these two drives so I asked
> our sales rep about it. He stated that RAID for the O/S volume will be
> handled "in the software."
> I need to get a handle on exactly what this means. It seems to me that
> if RAID is handled by software, the CPU would have to get involved each time
> a read/write occurs to this volume. I was hoping to keep the CPU focused on
> SQL Server without it getting distracted by handling the RAID mirror.
About the only conditions where the CPU would be significantly
'distracted' by handling the mirroring would be after one of the disks
failed and it was rebuilding a new replacement. Otherwise, any
additional overhead on reads should be virtually undetectable, though
for writes the CPU will have to coordinate two disk accesses in parallel
rather than the single access it would perform to a hardware-supported
mirror.
The
> sales rep makes the case that most of the O/S is loaded into memory at
> startup anyway so there shouldn't be too much reading/writing to the O/S
> volume in the course of the day.
As noted above, save for active restoration of a failed disk the only
overhead that should be noticeable at all is for write operations. If
the system is paging its little heart out then the additional write
overhead could start to become an issue, I suppose - but then again if
it's paging that frantically you've got far worse problems to worry
about. Otherwise, writes to the system disk likely shouldn't be
frequent enough for it to matter much, so software mirroring sounds like
inexpensive but effective insurance.
- bill
|||Software RAID normally refers to RAID algorithms implemented by the
operating system (Windows server O/S's can handle RAID1 & RAID5 from
memory, XP can handle RAID1 only from memory). If that's indeed what
the sales rep is talking about then I fail to see how that's possible
for the OS itself.
Many servers (I haven't checked out any offerings from IBM) come with a
RAID controller on-board (a hard-wired board or IC on the motherboard
itself) and don't need a daughter-board card to implement RAID for the
internal drives. This is often called ROMB ("RAID on main-board" or
"RAID on mother-board"). Perhaps this is what the rep is talking about.
In any case, the only RAID calculation that is CPU intensive is writes
across stripes (especially with parity) - so we're talking RAID5
particularly (and RAID 0 to a lesser degree I think). If you're just
mirroring the volume then "in-software" RAID can often be just as good
as hardware RAID. This is, in fact, a strategy sometimes used for data
volumes - to create two RAID 0 stripes (of the same size) with a
hardware RAID controller and then mirror those two volumes with the
operating system RAID to get a good RAID 1/0 volume with very basic RAID
algorithms.
*mike hodgson*
http://sqlnerd.blogspot.com
Bill Todd wrote:

> The One We Call 'Dave' wrote:
>
> About the only conditions where the CPU would be significantly
> 'distracted' by handling the mirroring would be after one of the disks
> failed and it was rebuilding a new replacement. Otherwise, any
> additional overhead on reads should be virtually undetectable, though
> for writes the CPU will have to coordinate two disk accesses in
> parallel rather than the single access it would perform to a
> hardware-supported mirror.
> The
>
> As noted above, save for active restoration of a failed disk the only
> overhead that should be noticeable at all is for write operations. If
> the system is paging its little heart out then the additional write
> overhead could start to become an issue, I suppose - but then again if
> it's paging that frantically you've got far worse problems to worry
> about. Otherwise, writes to the system disk likely shouldn't be
> frequent enough for it to matter much, so software mirroring sounds
> like inexpensive but effective insurance.
> - bill
|||Mike Hodgson wrote:[vbcol=seagreen]
> Software RAID normally refers to RAID algorithms implemented by the
> operating system (Windows server O/S's can handle RAID1 & RAID5 from
> memory, XP can handle RAID1 only from memory). If that's indeed what
> the sales rep is talking about then I fail to see how that's possible
> for the OS itself.
> Many servers (I haven't checked out any offerings from IBM) come with a
> RAID controller on-board (a hard-wired board or IC on the motherboard
> itself) and don't need a daughter-board card to implement RAID for the
> internal drives. This is often called ROMB ("RAID on main-board" or
> "RAID on mother-board"). Perhaps this is what the rep is talking about.
> In any case, the only RAID calculation that is CPU intensive is writes
> across stripes (especially with parity) - so we're talking RAID5
> particularly (and RAID 0 to a lesser degree I think). If you're just
> mirroring the volume then "in-software" RAID can often be just as good
> as hardware RAID. This is, in fact, a strategy sometimes used for data
> volumes - to create two RAID 0 stripes (of the same size) with a
> hardware RAID controller and then mirror those two volumes with the
> operating system RAID to get a good RAID 1/0 volume with very basic RAID
> algorithms.
> --
> *mike hodgson*
> http://sqlnerd.blogspot.com
>
> Bill Todd wrote:
We are running IBM servers, and I think it's standard that they comes
with a RAID controller for the build in disks. At least that's what we
get with all the servers we're using and I don't remember that I've ever
specifically specified that it should be with a RAID controller.
Regards
Steen

Comments on Software RAID for O/S volume?

Hi,
We're going to be purchasing a database server from IBM. Although the
database itself will be housed on a 10-drive SCSI-based external storage
unit, the operating system will reside on two drives housed in the server
itself. The drives will be mirrored (RAID 1). I noticed that the server
quote makes no mention of a RAID card to handle these two drives so I asked
our sales rep about it. He stated that RAID for the O/S volume will be
handled "in the software."
I need to get a handle on exactly what this means. It seems to me that
if RAID is handled by software, the CPU would have to get involved each time
a read/write occurs to this volume. I was hoping to keep the CPU focused on
SQL Server without it getting distracted by handling the RAID mirror. The
sales rep makes the case that most of the O/S is loaded into memory at
startup anyway so there shouldn't be too much reading/writing to the O/S
volume in the course of the day. I do buy his argument, but I figured I'd
get your opinions first to see if what he's saying is in fact correct.
Thanks,
HulioThe One We Call 'Dave' wrote:
> Hi,
> We're going to be purchasing a database server from IBM. Although the
> database itself will be housed on a 10-drive SCSI-based external storage
> unit, the operating system will reside on two drives housed in the server
> itself. The drives will be mirrored (RAID 1). I noticed that the server
> quote makes no mention of a RAID card to handle these two drives so I asked
> our sales rep about it. He stated that RAID for the O/S volume will be
> handled "in the software."
> I need to get a handle on exactly what this means. It seems to me that
> if RAID is handled by software, the CPU would have to get involved each time
> a read/write occurs to this volume. I was hoping to keep the CPU focused on
> SQL Server without it getting distracted by handling the RAID mirror.
About the only conditions where the CPU would be significantly
'distracted' by handling the mirroring would be after one of the disks
failed and it was rebuilding a new replacement. Otherwise, any
additional overhead on reads should be virtually undetectable, though
for writes the CPU will have to coordinate two disk accesses in parallel
rather than the single access it would perform to a hardware-supported
mirror.
The
> sales rep makes the case that most of the O/S is loaded into memory at
> startup anyway so there shouldn't be too much reading/writing to the O/S
> volume in the course of the day.
As noted above, save for active restoration of a failed disk the only
overhead that should be noticeable at all is for write operations. If
the system is paging its little heart out then the additional write
overhead could start to become an issue, I suppose - but then again if
it's paging that frantically you've got far worse problems to worry
about. Otherwise, writes to the system disk likely shouldn't be
frequent enough for it to matter much, so software mirroring sounds like
inexpensive but effective insurance.
- bill|||This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
--010705080102070101090808
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Software RAID normally refers to RAID algorithms implemented by the
operating system (Windows server O/S's can handle RAID1 & RAID5 from
memory, XP can handle RAID1 only from memory). If that's indeed what
the sales rep is talking about then I fail to see how that's possible
for the OS itself.
Many servers (I haven't checked out any offerings from IBM) come with a
RAID controller on-board (a hard-wired board or IC on the motherboard
itself) and don't need a daughter-board card to implement RAID for the
internal drives. This is often called ROMB ("RAID on main-board" or
"RAID on mother-board"). Perhaps this is what the rep is talking about.
In any case, the only RAID calculation that is CPU intensive is writes
across stripes (especially with parity) - so we're talking RAID5
particularly (and RAID 0 to a lesser degree I think). If you're just
mirroring the volume then "in-software" RAID can often be just as good
as hardware RAID. This is, in fact, a strategy sometimes used for data
volumes - to create two RAID 0 stripes (of the same size) with a
hardware RAID controller and then mirror those two volumes with the
operating system RAID to get a good RAID 1/0 volume with very basic RAID
algorithms.
--
*mike hodgson*
http://sqlnerd.blogspot.com
Bill Todd wrote:
> The One We Call 'Dave' wrote:
>> Hi,
>> We're going to be purchasing a database server from IBM. Although
>> the database itself will be housed on a 10-drive SCSI-based external
>> storage unit, the operating system will reside on two drives housed
>> in the server itself. The drives will be mirrored (RAID 1). I noticed
>> that the server quote makes no mention of a RAID card to handle these
>> two drives so I asked our sales rep about it. He stated that RAID for
>> the O/S volume will be handled "in the software."
>> I need to get a handle on exactly what this means. It seems to me
>> that if RAID is handled by software, the CPU would have to get
>> involved each time a read/write occurs to this volume. I was hoping
>> to keep the CPU focused on SQL Server without it getting distracted
>> by handling the RAID mirror.
>
> About the only conditions where the CPU would be significantly
> 'distracted' by handling the mirroring would be after one of the disks
> failed and it was rebuilding a new replacement. Otherwise, any
> additional overhead on reads should be virtually undetectable, though
> for writes the CPU will have to coordinate two disk accesses in
> parallel rather than the single access it would perform to a
> hardware-supported mirror.
> The
>> sales rep makes the case that most of the O/S is loaded into memory
>> at startup anyway so there shouldn't be too much reading/writing to
>> the O/S volume in the course of the day.
>
> As noted above, save for active restoration of a failed disk the only
> overhead that should be noticeable at all is for write operations. If
> the system is paging its little heart out then the additional write
> overhead could start to become an issue, I suppose - but then again if
> it's paging that frantically you've got far worse problems to worry
> about. Otherwise, writes to the system disk likely shouldn't be
> frequent enough for it to matter much, so software mirroring sounds
> like inexpensive but effective insurance.
> - bill
--010705080102070101090808
Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<meta content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="Content-Type">
<title></title>
</head>
<body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000">
<tt>Software RAID normally refers to RAID algorithms implemented by the
operating system (Windows server O/S's can handle RAID1 & RAID5
from memory, XP can handle RAID1 only from memory). If that's indeed
what the sales rep is talking about then I fail to see how that's
possible for the OS itself.<br>
<br>
Many servers (I haven't checked out any offerings from IBM) come with a
RAID controller on-board (a hard-wired board or IC on the motherboard
itself) and don't need a daughter-board card to implement RAID for the
internal drives. This is often called ROMB ("RAID on main-board" or
"RAID on mother-board"). Perhaps this is what the rep is talking about.<br>
<br>
In any case, the only RAID calculation that is CPU intensive is writes
across stripes (especially with parity) - so we're talking RAID5
particularly (and RAID 0 to a lesser degree I think). If you're just
mirroring the volume then "in-software" RAID can often be just as good
as hardware RAID. This is, in fact, a strategy sometimes used for data
volumes - to create two RAID 0 stripes (of the same size) with a
hardware RAID controller and then mirror those two volumes with the
operating system RAID to get a good RAID 1/0 volume with very basic
RAID algorithms.<br>
</tt>
<div class="moz-signature">
<title></title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; ">
<p><span lang="en-au"><font face="Tahoma" size="2">--<br>
</font></span> <b><span lang="en-au"><font face="Tahoma" size="2">mike
hodgson</font></span></b><span lang="en-au"><br>
<font face="Tahoma" size="2"><a href="http://links.10026.com/?link=http://sqlnerd.blogspot.com</a></font></span>">http://sqlnerd.blogspot.com">http://sqlnerd.blogspot.com</a></font></span>
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<br>
<br>
Bill Todd wrote:
<blockquote
cite="midS8mdneeDnu1SE5bZnZ2dnUVZ_tednZ2d@.metrocastcablevision.com"
type="cite">The One We Call 'Dave' wrote:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">Hi,
<br>
<br>
We're going to be purchasing a database server from IBM. Although
the database itself will be housed on a 10-drive SCSI-based external
storage unit, the operating system will reside on two drives housed in
the server itself. The drives will be mirrored (RAID 1). I noticed that
the server quote makes no mention of a RAID card to handle these two
drives so I asked our sales rep about it. He stated that RAID for the
O/S volume will be handled "in the software."
<br>
<br>
I need to get a handle on exactly what this means. It seems to me
that if RAID is handled by software, the CPU would have to get involved
each time a read/write occurs to this volume. I was hoping to keep the
CPU focused on SQL Server without it getting distracted by handling the
RAID mirror.
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
About the only conditions where the CPU would be significantly
'distracted' by handling the mirroring would be after one of the disks
failed and it was rebuilding a new replacement. Otherwise, any
additional overhead on reads should be virtually undetectable, though
for writes the CPU will have to coordinate two disk accesses in
parallel rather than the single access it would perform to a
hardware-supported mirror.
<br>
<br>
The
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">sales rep makes the case that most of the O/S
is loaded into memory at startup anyway so there shouldn't be too much
reading/writing to the O/S volume in the course of the day.
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
As noted above, save for active restoration of a failed disk the only
overhead that should be noticeable at all is for write operations. If
the system is paging its little heart out then the additional write
overhead could start to become an issue, I suppose - but then again if
it's paging that frantically you've got far worse problems to worry
about. Otherwise, writes to the system disk likely shouldn't be
frequent enough for it to matter much, so software mirroring sounds
like inexpensive but effective insurance.
<br>
<br>
- bill
<br>
</blockquote>
</body>
</html>
--010705080102070101090808--|||Mike Hodgson wrote:
> Software RAID normally refers to RAID algorithms implemented by the
> operating system (Windows server O/S's can handle RAID1 & RAID5 from
> memory, XP can handle RAID1 only from memory). If that's indeed what
> the sales rep is talking about then I fail to see how that's possible
> for the OS itself.
> Many servers (I haven't checked out any offerings from IBM) come with a
> RAID controller on-board (a hard-wired board or IC on the motherboard
> itself) and don't need a daughter-board card to implement RAID for the
> internal drives. This is often called ROMB ("RAID on main-board" or
> "RAID on mother-board"). Perhaps this is what the rep is talking about.
> In any case, the only RAID calculation that is CPU intensive is writes
> across stripes (especially with parity) - so we're talking RAID5
> particularly (and RAID 0 to a lesser degree I think). If you're just
> mirroring the volume then "in-software" RAID can often be just as good
> as hardware RAID. This is, in fact, a strategy sometimes used for data
> volumes - to create two RAID 0 stripes (of the same size) with a
> hardware RAID controller and then mirror those two volumes with the
> operating system RAID to get a good RAID 1/0 volume with very basic RAID
> algorithms.
> --
> *mike hodgson*
> http://sqlnerd.blogspot.com
>
> Bill Todd wrote:
>> The One We Call 'Dave' wrote:
>> Hi,
>> We're going to be purchasing a database server from IBM. Although
>> the database itself will be housed on a 10-drive SCSI-based external
>> storage unit, the operating system will reside on two drives housed
>> in the server itself. The drives will be mirrored (RAID 1). I noticed
>> that the server quote makes no mention of a RAID card to handle these
>> two drives so I asked our sales rep about it. He stated that RAID for
>> the O/S volume will be handled "in the software."
>> I need to get a handle on exactly what this means. It seems to me
>> that if RAID is handled by software, the CPU would have to get
>> involved each time a read/write occurs to this volume. I was hoping
>> to keep the CPU focused on SQL Server without it getting distracted
>> by handling the RAID mirror.
>> About the only conditions where the CPU would be significantly
>> 'distracted' by handling the mirroring would be after one of the disks
>> failed and it was rebuilding a new replacement. Otherwise, any
>> additional overhead on reads should be virtually undetectable, though
>> for writes the CPU will have to coordinate two disk accesses in
>> parallel rather than the single access it would perform to a
>> hardware-supported mirror.
>> The
>> sales rep makes the case that most of the O/S is loaded into memory
>> at startup anyway so there shouldn't be too much reading/writing to
>> the O/S volume in the course of the day.
>> As noted above, save for active restoration of a failed disk the only
>> overhead that should be noticeable at all is for write operations. If
>> the system is paging its little heart out then the additional write
>> overhead could start to become an issue, I suppose - but then again if
>> it's paging that frantically you've got far worse problems to worry
>> about. Otherwise, writes to the system disk likely shouldn't be
>> frequent enough for it to matter much, so software mirroring sounds
>> like inexpensive but effective insurance.
>> - bill
We are running IBM servers, and I think it's standard that they comes
with a RAID controller for the build in disks. At least that's what we
get with all the servers we're using and I don't remember that I've ever
specifically specified that it should be with a RAID controller.
Regards
Steen

Comments on Software RAID for O/S volume?

Hi,
We're going to be purchasing a database server from IBM. Although the
database itself will be housed on a 10-drive SCSI-based external storage
unit, the operating system will reside on two drives housed in the server
itself. The drives will be mirrored (RAID 1). I noticed that the server
quote makes no mention of a RAID card to handle these two drives so I asked
our sales rep about it. He stated that RAID for the O/S volume will be
handled "in the software."
I need to get a handle on exactly what this means. It seems to me that
if RAID is handled by software, the CPU would have to get involved each time
a read/write occurs to this volume. I was hoping to keep the CPU focused on
SQL Server without it getting distracted by handling the RAID mirror. The
sales rep makes the case that most of the O/S is loaded into memory at
startup anyway so there shouldn't be too much reading/writing to the O/S
volume in the course of the day. I do buy his argument, but I figured I'd
get your opinions first to see if what he's saying is in fact correct.
Thanks,
HulioThe One We Call 'Dave' wrote:
> Hi,
> We're going to be purchasing a database server from IBM. Although the
> database itself will be housed on a 10-drive SCSI-based external storage
> unit, the operating system will reside on two drives housed in the server
> itself. The drives will be mirrored (RAID 1). I noticed that the server
> quote makes no mention of a RAID card to handle these two drives so I aske
d
> our sales rep about it. He stated that RAID for the O/S volume will be
> handled "in the software."
> I need to get a handle on exactly what this means. It seems to me that
> if RAID is handled by software, the CPU would have to get involved each ti
me
> a read/write occurs to this volume. I was hoping to keep the CPU focused o
n
> SQL Server without it getting distracted by handling the RAID mirror.
About the only conditions where the CPU would be significantly
'distracted' by handling the mirroring would be after one of the disks
failed and it was rebuilding a new replacement. Otherwise, any
additional overhead on reads should be virtually undetectable, though
for writes the CPU will have to coordinate two disk accesses in parallel
rather than the single access it would perform to a hardware-supported
mirror.
The
> sales rep makes the case that most of the O/S is loaded into memory at
> startup anyway so there shouldn't be too much reading/writing to the O/S
> volume in the course of the day.
As noted above, save for active restoration of a failed disk the only
overhead that should be noticeable at all is for write operations. If
the system is paging its little heart out then the additional write
overhead could start to become an issue, I suppose - but then again if
it's paging that frantically you've got far worse problems to worry
about. Otherwise, writes to the system disk likely shouldn't be
frequent enough for it to matter much, so software mirroring sounds like
inexpensive but effective insurance.
- bill|||Software RAID normally refers to RAID algorithms implemented by the
operating system (Windows server O/S's can handle RAID1 & RAID5 from
memory, XP can handle RAID1 only from memory). If that's indeed what
the sales rep is talking about then I fail to see how that's possible
for the OS itself.
Many servers (I haven't checked out any offerings from IBM) come with a
RAID controller on-board (a hard-wired board or IC on the motherboard
itself) and don't need a daughter-board card to implement RAID for the
internal drives. This is often called ROMB ("RAID on main-board" or
"RAID on mother-board"). Perhaps this is what the rep is talking about.
In any case, the only RAID calculation that is CPU intensive is writes
across stripes (especially with parity) - so we're talking RAID5
particularly (and RAID 0 to a lesser degree I think). If you're just
mirroring the volume then "in-software" RAID can often be just as good
as hardware RAID. This is, in fact, a strategy sometimes used for data
volumes - to create two RAID 0 stripes (of the same size) with a
hardware RAID controller and then mirror those two volumes with the
operating system RAID to get a good RAID 1/0 volume with very basic RAID
algorithms.
*mike hodgson*
http://sqlnerd.blogspot.com
Bill Todd wrote:

> The One We Call 'Dave' wrote:
>
>
> About the only conditions where the CPU would be significantly
> 'distracted' by handling the mirroring would be after one of the disks
> failed and it was rebuilding a new replacement. Otherwise, any
> additional overhead on reads should be virtually undetectable, though
> for writes the CPU will have to coordinate two disk accesses in
> parallel rather than the single access it would perform to a
> hardware-supported mirror.
> The
>
>
> As noted above, save for active restoration of a failed disk the only
> overhead that should be noticeable at all is for write operations. If
> the system is paging its little heart out then the additional write
> overhead could start to become an issue, I suppose - but then again if
> it's paging that frantically you've got far worse problems to worry
> about. Otherwise, writes to the system disk likely shouldn't be
> frequent enough for it to matter much, so software mirroring sounds
> like inexpensive but effective insurance.
> - bill|||Mike Hodgson wrote:[vbcol=seagreen]
> Software RAID normally refers to RAID algorithms implemented by the
> operating system (Windows server O/S's can handle RAID1 & RAID5 from
> memory, XP can handle RAID1 only from memory). If that's indeed what
> the sales rep is talking about then I fail to see how that's possible
> for the OS itself.
> Many servers (I haven't checked out any offerings from IBM) come with a
> RAID controller on-board (a hard-wired board or IC on the motherboard
> itself) and don't need a daughter-board card to implement RAID for the
> internal drives. This is often called ROMB ("RAID on main-board" or
> "RAID on mother-board"). Perhaps this is what the rep is talking about.
> In any case, the only RAID calculation that is CPU intensive is writes
> across stripes (especially with parity) - so we're talking RAID5
> particularly (and RAID 0 to a lesser degree I think). If you're just
> mirroring the volume then "in-software" RAID can often be just as good
> as hardware RAID. This is, in fact, a strategy sometimes used for data
> volumes - to create two RAID 0 stripes (of the same size) with a
> hardware RAID controller and then mirror those two volumes with the
> operating system RAID to get a good RAID 1/0 volume with very basic RAID
> algorithms.
> --
> *mike hodgson*
> http://sqlnerd.blogspot.com
>
> Bill Todd wrote:
We are running IBM servers, and I think it's standard that they comes
with a RAID controller for the build in disks. At least that's what we
get with all the servers we're using and I don't remember that I've ever
specifically specified that it should be with a RAID controller.
Regards
Steen