Dedicated vs. shared servers

The first step in planning Adaptive Server resources is understanding the resources required by other applications running on the same machine. In most cases, System Administrators dedicate an entire machine for Adaptive Server use. This means that only the operating system and network software consume resources that otherwise might be reserved for Adaptive Server. On a shared system, other applications, such as Adaptive Server client programs or print servers, run on the same machine as Adaptive Server. It can be difficult to calculate the resources available to Adaptive Server on a shared system, because the types of programs and their pattern of use may change over time.

In either case, it is the System Administrator’s responsibility to take into account the resources used by operating systems, client programs, windowing systems, and so forth when configuring resources for Adaptive Server. Configure Adaptive Server to use only the resources that are available to it. Otherwise, the server may perform poorly or fail to start.