measuring quantity of transactions

HI everyone!

How can I measure the hardware capacity of my server to handle
transactions?
This is the situation.
A customer ask us if we can handle the incoming grow of transactions of
their systems(about 25% more than the current quantity of transactions)
The database server never shows more than an average use of 10% CPU and
uses 2 GB of PF with 6 GB of RAM. I know for sure that our server is
handling quite good the current charge and there is no problem to accept
a 25% more but, How can I explain this to my client? The client
understood as successful transaction entering a row to their DB.
How can I determine how many transactions can my server handle.

Greetings.

Diego.

Wishmaster ("sysadmin.rock[SINESTO]"@gmail.com) writes:
> How can I measure the hardware capacity of my server to handle
> transactions?
> This is the situation.
> A customer ask us if we can handle the incoming grow of transactions of
> their systems(about 25% more than the current quantity of transactions)
> The database server never shows more than an average use of 10% CPU and
> uses 2 GB of PF with 6 GB of RAM. I know for sure that our server is
> handling quite good the current charge and there is no problem to accept
> a 25% more but, How can I explain this to my client? The client
> understood as successful transaction entering a row to their DB.
> How can I determine how many transactions can my server handle.

Such questions are not trivial to answer with certainty, because there
may be points where something gets saturated, and the performance
decreases drastically. From what I say, I would not expect that to happen
only because of a 25% increase.

Is 6 GB the entire amount of memory for the server? That is very timid
these days.

What do you mean with PF?

Do you have 32-bit or 64-bit SQL Server? In the former case is AWE and
PAE enabled?


--
Erland Sommarskog, SQL Server MVP, esquel@sommarskog.se

Links for SQL Server Books Online:
SQL 2008: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlserver/cc514207.aspx
SQL 2005: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlserver/bb895970.aspx

Erland Sommarskog schreef op 06-09-2011 21:04:

> What do you mean with PF?

My money's on Paging File

>
> Do you have 32-bit or 64-bit SQL Server? In the former case is AWE and
> PAE enabled?
>
>

On 06-09-2011 16:04, Erland Sommarskog wrote:
> Wishmaster ("sysadmin.rock[SINESTO]"@gmail.com) writes:
>> How can I measure the hardware capacity of my server to handle
>> transactions?
>> This is the situation.
>> A customer ask us if we can handle the incoming grow of transactions of
>> their systems(about 25% more than the current quantity of transactions)
>> The database server never shows more than an average use of 10% CPU and
>> uses 2 GB of PF with 6 GB of RAM. I know for sure that our server is
>> handling quite good the current charge and there is no problem to accept
>> a 25% more but, How can I explain this to my client? The client
>> understood as successful transaction entering a row to their DB.
>> How can I determine how many transactions can my server handle.
>
> Such questions are not trivial to answer with certainty, because there
> may be points where something gets saturated, and the performance
> decreases drastically. From what I say, I would not expect that to happen
> only because of a 25% increase.
>
> Is 6 GB the entire amount of memory for the server? That is very timid
> these days.
>
> What do you mean with PF?
>
> Do you have 32-bit or 64-bit SQL Server? In the former case is AWE and
> PAE enabled?
>
>
PF: Page File Usage

Server specs: IBM X3650
-Intel Xeon X5450 3 Ghz
-6 GB RAM
-MS Windows Server 2003 R2 (Enterprise.Ed) SP 2
-SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Ed.

Awe is not enabled.

Erland
Thanks for your answer.

Diego.

Wishmaster ("sysadmin.rock[SINESTO]"@gmail.com) writes:
> PF: Page File Usage

Preferrably, SQL Server should not use the page file at all. OK, so that
is probably a metric you see in Task Manager, but it's an odd way of
expressing it.

> Server specs: IBM X3650
> -Intel Xeon X5450 3 Ghz
> -6 GB RAM
> -MS Windows Server 2003 R2 (Enterprise.Ed) SP 2
> -SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Ed.
>
> Awe is not enabled.

Is that 64-bit or 32-bit SQL Server? The number of 2GB makes me think that
you have 32-bit SQL Server, and in that case you have some memory you are
not using (unless there are other applications running on the server as
well.) I would recommend that you enable /PAE in BOOT.INI and enable
AWE and set max server memory to 4GB.

I would also recommend that you install Service Pack 4 of SQL Server.

--
Erland Sommarskog, SQL Server MVP, esquel@sommarskog.se

Links for SQL Server Books Online:
SQL 2008: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlserver/cc514207.aspx
SQL 2005: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlserver/bb895970.aspx

On 07-09-2011 4:29, Erland Sommarskog wrote:
> Wishmaster ("sysadmin.rock[SINESTO]"@gmail.com) writes:
>> PF: Page File Usage
>
> Preferrably, SQL Server should not use the page file at all. OK, so that
> is probably a metric you see in Task Manager, but it's an odd way of
> expressing it.
>
>> Server specs: IBM X3650
>> -Intel Xeon X5450 3 Ghz
>> -6 GB RAM
>> -MS Windows Server 2003 R2 (Enterprise.Ed) SP 2
>> -SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Ed.
>>
>> Awe is not enabled.
>
> Is that 64-bit or 32-bit SQL Server? The number of 2GB makes me think that
> you have 32-bit SQL Server, and in that case you have some memory you are
> not using (unless there are other applications running on the server as
> well.) I would recommend that you enable /PAE in BOOT.INI and enable
> AWE and set max server memory to 4GB.
>
> I would also recommend that you install Service Pack 4 of SQL Server.
>
Yes, is a 32-bit sql server. It's estrange but this server it is the
only one whitout AWE enabled. It has a SQL server SP3.
On Windows system properties shows 6,00 GB (PAE) but there is no
evidence of that in BOOT.ini (how it's that possible?)

I'm going to check sp4.