Recommendation OS & SQL Server for Vault 4.12

[Tri]

Hi,

We are currently using Vault 3.53 on Windows 2003 standard 32 bits, SQL Server 2000. We plan to move to Vault 4.x. We would like to use this opportunity to bring our server infrastructure up to date.

Q1: What do you recommend as Operating System?

Q2: We'd like to upgrade SQL Server from 2000 to 2005 + SP2 + latest Cumulative Update patches. Does Vault 4.12 support SQL Server 2005 at the same performance and stability (or better?) than SQL Server 2000?

Q3: Any pre-requisite for Vault 4.x: .NET Framework, any particular IIS version, etc. ?

Q4: In the release notes of 4.12, there is now a 64 bits version of Vault server. Are there any guidelines for installing a 64 bits version? In particular any special tuning related to IIS and SQL Server (provinding of course we'd use the 64 bits version of Windows 2003 and SQL Server 2005). Do you have any estimate of the possible performance gain from usig 64 bits?

Thanks in advance for any help.

[lbauer]

Q1: What do you recommend as Operating System?.

We'd recommend Windows 2003, either 32-bit or 64-bit.

Q1: We'd like to upgrade SQL Server from 2000 to 2005 + SP2 + latest Cumulative Update patches. Does Vault 4.12 support SQL Server 2005 at the same performance and stability (or better?) than SQL Server 2000?

We have done more testing with Vault 4.x and SQL Server 2005, since SQL 2000 is several years old now. However I don't think we've done specific performance testing. I'd recommend SQL Server 2005.

Q1: Any pre-requisite for Vault 4.x: .NET Framework, any particular IIS version, etc. ?

Vault 4.x needs at least the 2.0 framework and also works with the 3.x frameworks.

Q1: In the release notes of 4.12, there is now a 64 bits version of Vault server. Are there any guidelines for installing a 64 bits version? In particular any special tuning related to IIS and SQL Server (provinding of course we'd use the 64 bits version of Windows 2003 and SQL Server 2005). Do you have any estimate of the possible performance gain from usig 64 bits?.

The new 4.1.2 installers for 64-bit OS's should Just Work, and do all the configuration that is necessary. Again, I don't know that we've specifically compared Vault performance on 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems. However with a 64-bit OS, you can have more RAM available than on 32-bit systems

[Tri]

We'll favor stability over performance. So based on your answer we'll go with SQL Server 2005.

As for Windows Server 2003 64 bits. My network admin said that it will involve quite some works to reinstall the OS from scratch. Adding the switch to SQL Server 2005, this is almost a rebuild of a new server. According to your in house testings, do you have any documents, caveats, observations, etc. to guide us to the move to 64 bits?

BTW, what is the likely to be the bottleneck in terms of scalability of Vault Server 4.1x? IIS, Network or Database? We have 100+ users and all connections are made over the Internet.

[lbauer]

I think you may need to reinstall the OS if you are going to a 64-bit OS.

Backup your Vault database first. Upgrade your server. Restore the database to your SQL Server 2005 installation, then run the Vault installer.

There are 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the 4.1.2 Vault Server. Use the 64-bit installer on the 64-bit machine.

Note: you don't have to go to 64-bit -- I'd only do it if you want more than 4 GB ram available on the server.

In terms of bottle necks -- certainly the network can be a bottleneck. For SQL Server, fast disks and regular database maintenance is important. The Vault Server should have a fast connection to the SQL Server machine or be on the same machine as SQL Server.