what is the best specifications server to work with SQLSEVER 2008

Thank you for quick respond .

• What else will you be doing on this box? SSRS.

• How many users will this server be servicing? 20 clients make scan and send the images to the database server and the size per image is 6 mb. and maybe per user scan and send 500 denouements .

What's your data set size? as I I mentioned below for 20 computer scan and send to sql server , the other 500 computer I don't now

What are your I/O requirements? could you plz tell me what you mean.

By IO requirements, I mean:

• how much data is to be transferred from disk to users per second (in Mb per second)
• how long are the users prepared to wait for that data? (in milliseconds)

These two figures may provide more information about the storage requirement - for example, a system with a very high data throughput with low latency would need to be serviced either by a very large number of physical disks in a RAID configuration, or could be handled by just a couple of SSDs...

Thanks a lot Thomas for your great notes and Anuj "SQL Server Hardware Choices Made Easy" Really it's very good book thank you

Now Thomas asked me a question "What are your I/O requirements?"

Is this query good to answer the question

SELECT DB_NAME(DB_ID()) AS [Database Name] ,
[file_id] ,
num_of_reads ,
num_of_writes ,
num_of_bytes_read ,
num_of_bytes_written ,
CAST(100. * num_of_reads / ( num_of_reads + num_of_writes )
AS DECIMAL(10,1)) AS [# Reads Pct] ,
CAST(100. * num_of_writes / ( num_of_reads + num_of_writes )
AS DECIMAL(10,1)) AS [# Write Pct] ,
CAST(100. * num_of_bytes_read / ( num_of_bytes_read
+ num_of_bytes_written )
AS DECIMAL(10,1)) AS [Read Bytes Pct] ,
CAST(100. * num_of_bytes_written / ( num_of_bytes_read
+ num_of_bytes_written )
AS DECIMAL(10,1)) AS [Written Bytes Pct]
FROM sys.dm_io_virtual_file_stats(DB_ID(), NULL) ;

Now , let say we did it to simple database like AdventureWorks abd the result was

how will be useful for us ? I hope I answer one of your Question Thomas .

@WilliamD +1.

@MuhSQL Now a days with virtualization so common, general trend is to get one big machine instead of 2/3 mediocre machines. But it all depend upon the usage patterns, workload etc. The point is to keep bigger picture in mind which can save you licensing costs, physical maintenance etc. Also, the most common hurdle in such situations could be the company's budget. You may want to buy a bigger machine but may end up with a mediocre one ;)