Mick Anderson


Hi,

can anyone point me in the direction of any articles or whitepapers that give some ideas on memory requirements for running SQL Server 2005 analysis services.

Say we have 250 concurrent users, can anyone tell how much memory I would require. I know this will also depend on cube sizes and number of dimensions, in our case we have approximately 20 AS databases with an estimated 300 cubes in total. Some of the dimensions get up to 100,000 members.

Thinking that 3gb (32bit mode) isn't going to cut it and we will need to run in 64 bit mode for the additional memory availability.

Need some help with concret figures, and how I can prove that we need to run in the 64bit mode.

Any assistance much appreciated.

Thanks Mick




Re: memory

Edward Melomed


You are correct about going with 64bit hardware. That is better choice for enterprise-level applications.

About memory consumption. It is hard to predict what it is going to be. Memory consumption can go up depending on various conditions:

You using dimension or some kind of security where you have many different security settings for different users. In this case Analysis Server would have to create separate caches for every set of users with similar security settings.

Your dimensions are large and users are querying lots of dimension data.

You've defined calculations on your cube requiring lots of memory to compute.

Besides these considerations, you should definitely try and run some simulations with your application. Memory often is something you can add later to your system. Try getting machine with 6 or 8 gigs try running with it and see if you need some more.

If your simulations show the bottelneck for application is not memory, but CPU, you should also look into setting another machine side by side with the first one. Set them to work in NLB cluster to be able to handle greater load.

Edward.
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