RDP and SQL version/sizing for C3000 enclosure, BL460 workstations

[Melissa K. McDowell]

We have (currently) two racks of BL460 workstations to admin via RDP, which has some SQL under the hood. We've been advised if we want to do much more than manage the first 128 we should/must upgrade our SQL and I've been looking into that. Initial cost aside, the licensing on SQL is confusing.

I would *think* that the only device/client/user of the SQL service would be the instance of RDP that is running on our "Blademan" machine - is that correct? If so, it would make licensing a non-issue.

However, at what point in term of number of nodes DO we really need to upgrade SQL (from SQL 2005 or whatever came with the RDP software) to a full version and are there really many choices of "SQL software" to run. I've used MySQL and SQL Server 7.

We have found that deploying images takes a very long time, also, so would there be any benefit to running multiple blade managers rather than one? We are hoping to get up to eight fully populated racks in service, as a highly configurable cluster system running air traffic simulations, so there would be a certain regular clobber/reinstall activity cycle.