Computer specs for a large database

Posted by SpeksETC on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by SpeksETC
Published on 2010-11-25T15:56:36Z Indexed on 2011/02/15 7:26 UTC
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sql-server

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Performance

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database

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scale

What sort of computer specs (CPU, RAM, disk speed) should I use for running queries on a database of 200+ million records? The queries are for a research project, so there is only one "user" and only one query will be running at a time.

I tried it on my own laptop with SQL Server with an i3 processor, 2GB RAM, 5400 RPM disk and a simple query didn't finish even after 8+ hours. I have an option to connect a SSD via eSata and upgrade to 4GB RAM, but not sure if this will be enough...

Thanks!

Edit: The database is about 25 GB and the indexes are not setup properly. When I tried to add an index, I let it run for about 8 hours and it still hadn't finished so I gave up. Should I have more patience :)?
In general, the queries will run once in a while and its ok even if it takes a couple hours to complete....

Also, the queries will produce probably about 10 million records which I need to process using Stata/Matlab and I'm concerned that my current laptop is not strong enough, but unsure of the bottleneck....

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