Plan for your SQL Server Installation

It is important to plan for the installation of SQL Server 2012. The actual installation is easy: The program prompts you for file locations and installation options, as any good program will do. However, you need to think of installation in a larger sense. Although this course cannot teach you how to handle every possible situation, you do need to consider these types of issues and questions:

1. Number of users: How many users will access the server? Will your hardware support the number of users that are going to be accessing the system? For example, if you have 100 users, you will need a hard drive with more than 2 gigabytes of available space and more than 32 megabytes of memory (RAM).
2. Distributed vs. centralized processing: Does it make sense to distribute processing across computers? If so, will the computers be connected via LAN, WAN, or other means? If you do distributed processing, connecting computers via slow means may be worse than having all the processing on a single computer.
3. Hardware capacity: Will your hardware support the types of computing that you expect SQL Server to handle? Even if you have only a few users, the server may need to support very intensive processing, such as complicated financial computations. This situation would require significant disk space, memory, and processor speed
4. Data access: How will your users access the data on the server? Will they use a custom program? Will they use an Internet browser? You must take these questions into account. They may not affect installation, but they could affect how you construct your queries.

Fortunately, if you analyze these questions and determine that your situation requires more robust hardware, you can upgrade relatively inexpensively.
Memory and disk drives have dropped in price dramatically. It's best to estimate the amount of disk space you think you will eed and then apply a huge factor on top of that. For example, if you determine that you need one 5-gigabyte disk drive, you should opt for a 10-gigabyte drive instead.
Invest in a 1 terabyte drive and the bottom line is it's better to play it safe.
In the next lesson, you will learn about the Enterprise Manager and what it can do for you.