Required components

The following database components are required.

• Database service and shared tools
• Workstation client connectivity management tools

Replication and full text search are not required.

Supported SQL Server Versions

• SQL Server Express Edition is not supported. You must install Standard or Enterprise versions.
• Depending on the volume of traffic at your site, Enterprise Edition of SQL Server may be required.
• For more information, consult support.

Recovery model

To help reduce log file growth, use the SIMPLE recovery model for all Tealeaf databases.

SQL Server does not support automatic backup of log files in SIMPLE recovery model.

File paths

If you install Tealeaf databases on a remote instance of SQL Server, you must create the file paths before you install the databases.

UNC paths

The Database Manager supports using UNC paths.

Collation

These are the requirements and best practices for configuring the collation setting in Acoustic Tealeaf databases.

The collation setting affects the storage and conversion of all text data in SQL Server.

The collation setting must be the same for all Tealeaf databases. For the Tealeaf databases, it is a best practice to configure the collation setting to be consistent between SQL Server, each database, and each table of the database. If there are mismatches between these settings, you may need to reinstall the databases, SQL Server, or both.

Given the size of Tealeaf databases in most deployments, changing the collation setting after installation is a difficult and time-consuming process. It is recommended that you set the collation setting for all Tealeaf databases during installation to the value listed below.

Tealeaf supports the following collation settings for SQL Server.

Latin1_General_CI_AS :- Latin1-General, case-insensitive, accent-sensitive, 
kanatype-insensitive, width-insensitive

SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS:- Latin1-General, case-insensitive,
accent-sensitive, kanatype-insensitive, width-insensitive for Unicode Data, 
SQL Server Sort Order 52 on Code Page 1252 for non-Unicode Data

By default, Tealeaf uses the SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS collation setting.

For more information, consult your Microsoft SQL Server documentation.

Max degree of parallelism

Acoustic

This current value of this setting can be found by running the following query:

select * from sys.configurations where [name] = 'max degree of parallelism';

The value can be changed by running the following commands:

EXEC sp_configure 'show advanced option', '1'
RECONFIGURE
GO
sp_configure 'max degree of parallelism', n
RECONFIGURE
GO

Where n is the value to be set.

Separation of data, indexes, and logs across storage volumes

Particularly in high-volume environments, storage of Tealeaf data on the same disk volume as the log files governing that data can introduce latency issues. If the database server hosts several databases that generate more than 200 transactions per second, then each database log should be written to a dedicated disk.

Including the Tealeaf database indexes on the same volume as the data or logs can add even more latency to the write operations.

The critical factor is determined by the random write I/O performance of the storage disks in use.

SQL Server data files can be shared to use the full capabilities of the entire storage system.

Block size

For Tealeaf, use a block size of 64 KB in SQL Server implementations in which SQL Server is installed on a dedicated machine or is on the Report Server.

If the SQL Server machine also hosts a Tealeaf Processing server, then you must use a block size of 8 KB.

Disable database audit triggers

In some customer environments, database audit triggers were associated with Tealeaf databases. This prevents the TL_ADMIN database account from running a procedure to create tables, which are needed for creating events.

Do not enable database audit triggers on the Tealeaf databases.

After installation, if you are having trouble saving events, verify that DB audit triggers are disabled on the Tealeaf databases.

tempdb

Acoustic Tealeaf uses tempdb to create temporary tables for generating reports for the Tealeaf Report Builder.

Tealeaf does not use tempdb explicitly for ETL processing.

Acoustic recommends allocating 25% of the TL_REPORTS database size for the tempdb size.