2.0 - matchIT SQL System Requirements

Specification for matchIT SQL: matchIT SQL has been designed for use on Microsoft Windows-based systems running Microsoft SQL Server (2008 and later). To get the best performance you need to match the hardware to the volume of data that you need to process. For small databases where performance isn’t likely to be an issue, we would normally recommend a standard desktop machine. For larger databases you should consider upgrading the hardware according to the recommendations below. For suppression processing, please look further down this page for a section that specifically covered the hardware we recommended. matchIT SQL is integrated into SQL Server so the key technical requirements relate specifically to those requirements that are required to run SQL Server itself. We have identified the main areas which affect the software’s performance below.

Processor Speed: The processor or CPU frequency (typically measured in GHz) influences the rate at which information can be processed. The higher the CPU speed, the faster the processing.  matchIT SQL is a multi-threaded application and will deliver a significant increase in performance if your computer has multiple CPUs and/or cores.

Hard Disk Speed: The faster the hard disk the better. Depending upon data volumes and available RAM, matchIT SQL and SQL Server can be disk intensive processes, and so the rate with which the data can be read from and written to the hard disk can be a critical factor. For traditional hard drives, the higher the drives speed (RPM) and cache (MB), the greater the data transfer rate.

A SCSI interface will further increase the transfer rate from the disk and so is beneficial especially when processing large volumes of information, although ATA is sufficient for the great majority of organizations. Where performance is a priority we recommend using Solid State Drives (SSDs) and in particular the PCIe SSD drives wherever possible, as these are capable of significantly faster data access rates.

RAM: Having sufficient RAM is vital for matchIT SQL to process data at optimum speeds; having too little will create a bottleneck within the computer that could result in dramatically decreased performance, particularly with large data volumes where SQL Server will be constantly reading data from the disk.

We strongly recommend at least 8GB of RAM for small- and medium-sized jobs, but for larger jobs (in excess of 10 million records) a minimum of 16GB of RAM is preferable.

Network: If you are running matchIT SQL on one computer with your main database located on a different computer, then it is likely to run more slowly than if matchIT SQL and the database were located on one computer. As matchIT SQL is integrated into SQL Server, for optimum performance we would recommend having matchIT SQL installed on the same computer as your database.

Operating System: matchIT SQL is compatible with Microsoft Windows XP/2003/Vista/2008/7/10 operating systems, and requires Microsoft SQL Server 2008 or later, and Visual Studio 2008 or later. We strongly recommend using a fully up-to-date and patched operating system, as this will benefit matchIT SQL in terms of robustness, stability, and security.

System Requirements

Minimum

• Microsoft Windows Vista
• 1GB of free RAM (not recommended however)
• 1GB of free disk space

Please also refer to Microsoft SQL Server Hardware requirements:

> http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms143506.aspx

> https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms143506(v=sql.105).aspx

Recommended

• Microsoft Windows Server 2012 or Microsoft Windows 8
• Intel Xeon 3GHz CPU, or equivalent, with 8 or more cores
• 8GB RAM (small/medium databases) 16GB+ RAM (large databases)
• SSD Hard Drives

Suppression Processing Requirements

The volume of suppression data means that suppression processing is very a resource intensive task and places high demands on the systems running them. We therefore strongly recommend running your suppression processing on dedicated physical machines due to the very high processor and hard drive access requirements, particularly if processing time is a key requirement.

Whilst suppressions can be run in virtualised environments, performance will be significantly impacted even on the highest specification virtual servers, particularly if the server performs other roles and/or there are other virtual servers hosted on the same machine. There can also be initial teething issues while we assist you in tuning the suppression package to run under the restrictions of virtual environments.

The system requirements below are for physical machines, if you have to use virtual environments then please contact us.

The minimum spec we would suggest for suppression processing is the same as recommended specification listed above but we recommend the following:

• Microsoft Windows Server 2012 or Microsoft Windows 8
• Intel Xeon 3GHz CPU, or equivalent, with 10 or more cores
• 32GB+ RAM
• 2 SSD PCIe Fast Access Hard Drives (the suppression data alone when using all files uses 450GB therefore we recommend a minimum of 500GB, second drive is for load balancing to improve processing performance)