CPU I/O Best Practices

Not sure if this is the proper place but i felt that this would be a good
start, i have some general questions and hope that someone with real world
experience can elaborate on these...thanks in advance
I'm familiar with this hardware but I was hoping to ask some DBs/Devs for
some real world experience to shed some light on these...Thanks in advance!
1. Why use an AMD vs an Intel processor for certain applications and
solutions – what are the advantages in a VMWare world vs a physical server
environment
2. Why use Dual Core and what does that mean in different
environments/applications
3. Raid Configurations – Why use RAID 1 for the OS and why how/why would you
create RAID sets for SQL or other high IO applications. What are best
practices
> 1. Why use an AMD vs an Intel processor for certain applications and
> solutions – what are the advantages in a VMWare world vs a physical server
> environment
There are different approaches to selecting a processor architecture. Our
approach is simple. We evaluated AMD-based servers from tier-1 system
suppliers, and found them to perform well and to be stable. Power consumption
was good as well. So we picked AMD, but we also use Intel-based servers as
well. You may find one is ahead of the other at times, and that may change at
different times, and you should take advantage of that.
But this is quite a complex issue requiring a lot of detailed tests on your
own. It's dangerous to rely on the second-hand info, such as the comments I'm
giving here :-)

> 2. Why use Dual Core and what does that mean in different
> environments/applications
The primary reason for us is that's where you can find the most powerful
x86/x64 servers.

> 3. Raid Configurations – Why use RAID 1 for the OS and why how/why would you
> create RAID sets for SQL or other high IO applications. What are best
> practices
RAID 1 is simple and good for writes, and you want good write performance
for your paging files. For apps, you need to determine what kind of I/O
requirements you must meet, and use those requirements (e.g. I/Os per second,
throughput, I/O sizes, read/write ratios, etc) to scope out your RAID
configurations. One of the key factors is how many spindles you need in your
RAID to achieve the level of the target performance. Generally speaking, the
more spindles you have, the better the RAID performance (up to a point and
within the other constraining factors such as the RAID controller specs).
Linchi
"Lyghtnin" wrote:

> Not sure if this is the proper place but i felt that this would be a good
> start, i have some general questions and hope that someone with real world
> experience can elaborate on these...thanks in advance
> I'm familiar with this hardware but I was hoping to ask some DBs/Devs for
> some real world experience to shed some light on these...Thanks in advance!
> 1. Why use an AMD vs an Intel processor for certain applications and
> solutions – what are the advantages in a VMWare world vs a physical server
> environment
> 2. Why use Dual Core and what does that mean in different
> environments/applications
> 3. Raid Configurations – Why use RAID 1 for the OS and why how/why would you
> create RAID sets for SQL or other high IO applications. What are best
> practices
>