Reporting services server disk configuration

I haven't been able to find the recommened disk configuration for a new
Reporting services install. I am fairly new to reporting services.
>From what I can tell, it is not going to be too disk intensive so a
mirrored single drive should do the trick, correct? There isn't any
reason to have anything more than a single disk is there? From the
reading I have done, it looks like the place to spend the money on is
the memory.
If anyone has any recommendations, I would appreciate the feedback.
Thanks!
JohnRS is not disk intensive. It uses a SQL Server database for its
metadata/object caching. But again not very intensive. More CPUs and more
memory will make more difference than money spent on a fancy disk subsystem.
RS renders all reports in memory.
Now, if you are running RS on the same box as the data you are reporting off
of then you need to make sure that your box is suitable for doing both
tasks.
Bruce Loehle-Conger
MVP SQL Server Reporting Services
"John" <johnd@.rbc.org> wrote in message
news:1165837962.328970.199340@.16g2000cwy.googlegroups.com...
>I haven't been able to find the recommened disk configuration for a new
> Reporting services install. I am fairly new to reporting services.
>>From what I can tell, it is not going to be too disk intensive so a
> mirrored single drive should do the trick, correct? There isn't any
> reason to have anything more than a single disk is there? From the
> reading I have done, it looks like the place to spend the money on is
> the memory.
> If anyone has any recommendations, I would appreciate the feedback.
> Thanks!
> John
>|||Thanks Bruce for confirming that for me. We are looking into putting
RS on its own server. I am specing out the server box.
Next decision is whether to go to Enterprise edition. We are still
deciding whether we will need to use the scale-out functionality. Any
idea on the number of users/reports that a single RS server should be
able to accomodate? Obviously this number is very arbitrary depending
on the environment. I am just trying to get a general idea. We have
about 50 report users & around 175 reports but usually don't have any
more than 10 on at a time. Some reports are fairly heavy duty but most
are straight forward.
The other option I like about scale out is that one server can be down
& the other server is still functioning. We currently have that with
our Crystal reports enterprise environment. Comes in very handy at
times.
We are working on a proposal to upgrade to RS from Crystal reports.
Thanks for the info!
John
Bruce L-C [MVP] wrote:
> RS is not disk intensive. It uses a SQL Server database for its
> metadata/object caching. But again not very intensive. More CPUs and more
> memory will make more difference than money spent on a fancy disk subsystem.
> RS renders all reports in memory.
> Now, if you are running RS on the same box as the data you are reporting off
> of then you need to make sure that your box is suitable for doing both
> tasks.
>
> --
> Bruce Loehle-Conger
> MVP SQL Server Reporting Services
> "John" <johnd@.rbc.org> wrote in message
> news:1165837962.328970.199340@.16g2000cwy.googlegroups.com...
> >I haven't been able to find the recommened disk configuration for a new
> > Reporting services install. I am fairly new to reporting services.
> >>From what I can tell, it is not going to be too disk intensive so a
> > mirrored single drive should do the trick, correct? There isn't any
> > reason to have anything more than a single disk is there? From the
> > reading I have done, it looks like the place to spend the money on is
> > the memory.
> >
> > If anyone has any recommendations, I would appreciate the feedback.
> >
> > Thanks!
> > John
> >|||If you are doing html format with some rendering to pdf and excel then I
don't think you will have a problem with a single server. PDF is much more
intensive (order of magnitude). I assume you are talking RS 2005 (which I
highly recommend). Also, it depends on how you design your reports. If you
go to RS strengths then again I don't see a problem with a single server.
For instance, don't create reports with a result of 100,000 rows. People
don't look at that much data (heck, you can't even bring that much into
Excel). Create reports that are perhaps 20 pages at the most. Use drill
through (not drill down). Drill through means they click on a link and bring
up the detail information they want. Drill down means they have a plus and
the data expands. The user interface for drill down is nice but it can mean
bringing a whole lot of data over. Use SQL Server to do what it does best
and RS what it does best. Let SQL Server get you the data you want to see.
Bruce Loehle-Conger
MVP SQL Server Reporting Services
"John" <johnd@.rbc.org> wrote in message
news:1165850881.324332.187530@.f1g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
> Thanks Bruce for confirming that for me. We are looking into putting
> RS on its own server. I am specing out the server box.
> Next decision is whether to go to Enterprise edition. We are still
> deciding whether we will need to use the scale-out functionality. Any
> idea on the number of users/reports that a single RS server should be
> able to accomodate? Obviously this number is very arbitrary depending
> on the environment. I am just trying to get a general idea. We have
> about 50 report users & around 175 reports but usually don't have any
> more than 10 on at a time. Some reports are fairly heavy duty but most
> are straight forward.
> The other option I like about scale out is that one server can be down
> & the other server is still functioning. We currently have that with
> our Crystal reports enterprise environment. Comes in very handy at
> times.
> We are working on a proposal to upgrade to RS from Crystal reports.
> Thanks for the info!
> John
> Bruce L-C [MVP] wrote:
>> RS is not disk intensive. It uses a SQL Server database for its
>> metadata/object caching. But again not very intensive. More CPUs and more
>> memory will make more difference than money spent on a fancy disk
>> subsystem.
>> RS renders all reports in memory.
>> Now, if you are running RS on the same box as the data you are reporting
>> off
>> of then you need to make sure that your box is suitable for doing both
>> tasks.
>>
>> --
>> Bruce Loehle-Conger
>> MVP SQL Server Reporting Services
>> "John" <johnd@.rbc.org> wrote in message
>> news:1165837962.328970.199340@.16g2000cwy.googlegroups.com...
>> >I haven't been able to find the recommened disk configuration for a new
>> > Reporting services install. I am fairly new to reporting services.
>> >>From what I can tell, it is not going to be too disk intensive so a
>> > mirrored single drive should do the trick, correct? There isn't any
>> > reason to have anything more than a single disk is there? From the
>> > reading I have done, it looks like the place to spend the money on is
>> > the memory.
>> >
>> > If anyone has any recommendations, I would appreciate the feedback.
>> >
>> > Thanks!
>> > John
>> >
>