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Database Consultant Services

Introduction

For the large convenience chain like Xpress Mart, managing the large flow of database due to increased annual flow and expensing business operation is genuine. The increased flow of database is difficult to manage within the current hard drive space. A large amount of data in current hard drive space cause delay of system performance. to reduce the overburden on the main server, the organization is required capacity planning and upgrading of the server to meet the new capacity requirements of the firm. Hence, the database consultant service is essential to form capacity planning and system up gradation. The paper is based on assessing the physical storage requirements of the system of the organization to handle the capacity issue in order to take the first step to seek out the issue. The contribution of the growth database and the growth of the business in the current capacity issue will be assessed. Next, the proposed changes will be outlined to accommodate the database capacity changes. The method to maintain and monitor the database will be recommended under the proposed solution to ensure the effective performance of the company.

Physical Storage Requirements and Summary of the Initial Steps

Design of physical architecture including physical storage capacity is an essential initial step in supporting the logical topology of the system and to meet the expected demand.  The hardware specifications provide a solution to overcome the issue of cost. Power and space issues. Selecting a hardware is a crucial and initial step of planning and managing the increasing need for capacity building for the organization. hardware specifications must match with the individual server design of the firm. In the case of Xpress, the main categories of consideration are to ensure the performance and core capacity features of the hardware which can ensure network capacity, processing power, memory capabilities, and disk performance. Secondly, the physical storage requirements must include required the use of a virtualized machine. For example, virtualizing SQL Server-based computers may not be a good idea but virtualizing the application server or web server is a good idea. Other physical storage requirements include choosing processors, memory, network and disk and storage.

The SQL server processor capacity requirements depend on the depend on the SQL Server-based computer hosting service database. Secondly, choosing a memory is a critical step where the varying amount of memory required to perform the functions. The current capacity planning in Xpress required the initiation of web servers that can take benefits of SQL Server 2012 by acquiring a large amount of memory so that document can read in memory quickly and cause less delay in system performance (Larson,English &Purington, 2012).The SQL Server 2012 installation will also provide the benefits by first choosing a network that can provide fast access to data and fast inter-server communication access. The network requirement is an essential physical requirement to distribute service across the multiple servers. The SQL Server-based computer should be close enough to the consuming application server to host the database of each service application and the network must be at least 1 Gbps of bandwidth between the farm servers.

Another critical physical storage requirement is choosing storage and disks. To meet the ongoing demand of Xpress increasing business capacity, the additional disk speed is required. For this purpose, the at least 30% of additional capacity is required to meet the data requirement and to meet the traffic needs. the system must also need to manage the storage requirements by allocating Operating System with 200 GB disk space and 150 GB of disk space for logs.

Outline of the Foreseeable Issues of Xpress Mart

Xpress has decided to upgrade the SQL 200 to SQL 2012. For this purpose, the organization needs to upgrade the technology. The technology upgrade may cause some issues which must be closely considered to install the updates successfully. Synchronous replication technology always required more servers. The upgrade to SQL 2012 will increase the database capacity but the upgrade path always creates some obstacles which need to be overcome. The foreseeable risks can be overcome through understanding and awareness. Otherwise, the organization may have to bear the consequences in the form of inefficiency, high cost and system errors. The foreseeable issues that may encounter by Xpress include backward compatibility, automatic failover, read/write split, replication awareness and licensing changes (Singh, 2015). These are some issues which may be encountered while upgrade the SQL 2012. These issues should be catered pre handed.

Influence on Design

Xpress is enjoying the business growth which is causing more inflow of data. The company tack approximately 4 million transaction each year and pull increasing number of daily based information. The design needs a review and upgrades database capacity to meet the increasing database management needs of the business. of course, the database growth and business growth will enhance the need for upgrade design of the system to manage the increasing needs. because the growth of the database create the event of auto-growth where the database size expands and runs out of space (Maier, 1983). 

An auto-growth event is a process by which the SQL Server engine expands the size of a database file when it runs out of space. The amount by which a database file grows is based on the settings that you have for the file growth options for your database. Each auto-growth event will demand additional disk space by SQL server with the growth of the database. When the disk space will not provide the right physical space for existing data, this cause fragmentation of database file on the disk (Ben-Gan, 2012). The number of auto-growth events due to expanding database will create more physical fragmentation. In this way, the SQL server will take more time to read the database. This issue will impact the design and demand a more organized system and expanded capacity to minimize the auto growth events.

Outline of the Proposed Changes

To manage the need for capacity planning and enhancing the space for more database, the capacity changes are required. Firstly, the firm needs to reduce the number of occurrence of auto-growth events. For this purpose, the system must organize the auto growth setting. The default auto growth setting is not an appropriate setting for the Xpress in the current situation because its database is frequently growing. To manage the growth profile of the firm database, it needs to set the auto growth property based on firm growth projections. Xpress can project the growth rate and manage the auto growth events accordingly (Larsen, 2011).

Recommendations of a Solution

The maintenance and monitoring of the database are significantly important. SQL Server Management Studio is effective to manage the auto growth setting of the database. T-SQL is another effective method to change the existing database auto-growth settings (Cannan & Otten, 1993).  In the case, if the firm will not be able to project the growth, the firm is recommended to monitor the auto growth events frequently in order to manage the database. The management would surely have the database growth idea to some extent which will help to plan future capacity.

Conclusion

Xpress is enjoying the complementary growth. The number of users presence is causing the issue of enhancing database quantity. The upgrade capacity by installing SQL 2012 can compose wide space for the firm to manage the increasing database needs. But the firm needs to manage the foreseeable risk related to the backward compatibility, automatic failover, read/write split, replication awareness and licensing changes in order to ensure a successful upgrade. The system existing design will be highly influenced by the increasing business database but monitoring, control, and upgrade design will help to overcome the issue.

References

Ben-Gan, I. (2012). Microsoft SQL Server 2012 T-SQL Fundamentals. Pearson Education.

Cannan, S. J., & Otten, G. A. (1993). SQL – The Standard Handbook. McGraw-Hill Book Company.

Larson, B., English, D., & Purington, P. (2012). Delivering business intelligence with Microsoft SQL server 2012. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Larsen, G. (2011). SQL Server database growth and auto growth settings. Retrieved from https://www.red-gate.com/simple-talk/sql/database-administration/sql-server-database-growth-and-autogrowth-settings/.

Maier, D. (1983). The theory of relational databases (Vol. 11). Rockville: Computer science press.

Singh, V. (2015). Upgrading to SQL Server 2012/2014 – How to overcome the top 5 ‘gotchas. Retrieved from http://www.dbta.com/Editorial/Trends-and-Applications/Upgrading-to-SQL-Server-2012-2014—How-to-Overcome-the-Top-5-Gotchas-101394.aspx

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