System Requirements: VMM Database

System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2008 and VMM 2008 R2 use a Microsoft SQL Server database to store the information you view in the VMM Administrator Console, such as managed virtual machines, virtual machine hosts, virtual machine libraries, jobs, and other virtual machine–related data.

When you install the VMM server, you can do the following:

• Specify an existing local instance of a supported version of SQL Server.
  
  
• Specify an existing remote instance of a supported version of SQL Server.
  
  

  Important
  If you specify a remote instance of SQL Server for the VMM database, there are important additional steps you need to perform. For more information about configuring and using a remote instance of SQL Server for the VMM database, see Configuring a Remote Instance of SQL Server for VMM.

• Have the Setup Wizard install SQL Server 2005 Express Edition locally on the VMM server. You can have VMM 2008 Setup install SQL Server 2005 Express Edition SP2 and the VMM 2008 R2 Setup install SQL Server 2005 Express Edition SP3.
  
  

  Note

  The SQL Server 2005 Express Edition database size is limited to 4 GB and is not supported for integrating VMM with System Center Operations Manager 2007 for Reporting and Monitoring features in VMM. Therefore, it is recommended that you use a full version of SQL Server when you are managing more than 150 hosts or when you want to integrate VMM with Operations Manager. For more information about integrating VMM with Operations Manager, see Configuring Operations Manager Integration with VMM (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=125948).

If you install SQL Server Express Edition on the VMM server, you will need additional hard disk space for the VMM database.

The following are the system requirements for installing the VMM database on a computer that is separate from the VMM server, and these requirements are based on the number of hosts you manage. Actual requirements vary based on your system configuration and the number of hosts and virtual machines that you manage.

Note
If the computer that is running SQL Server is not in the same Active Directory domain as the VMM server, there must be a two-way trust relationship between the two domains.

Hardware Requirements

Software Requirements

The following table shows the supported versions of Microsoft SQL Server for the VMM database. If you use the Setup Wizard to install SQL Server, the VMM 2008 Setup Wizard installs SQL Server 2005 Express Edition SP2 and the VMM 2008 R2 Setup Wizard installs SQL Server 2005 Express Edition SP3.

Supported versions of SQL Server

Supported SQL Server versions	Supports Reporting in VMM
SQL Server 2008 R2 Express Edition [VMM 2008 R2 and VMM 2008 R2 SP1 only]	No
SQL Server 2008 R2 (32-bit and 64-bit) Standard Edition [VMM 2008 R2 and VMM 2008 R2 SP1 only]	Yes
SQL Server 2008 R2 (32-bit and 64-bit) Enterprise Edition [VMM 2008 R2 and VMM 2008 R2 SP1 only]	Yes
SQL Server 2008 Express Edition	No
SQL Server 2008 (32-bit and 64-bit) Standard Edition	Yes
SQL Server 2008 (32-bit and 64-bit) Standard Edition SP1 [VMM 2008 R2 and VMM 2008 R2 SP1 only]	Yes
SQL Server 2008 (32-bit and 64-bit) Standard Edition SP2 [VMM 2008 R2 and VMM 2008 R2 SP1 only]	Yes
SQL Server 2008 (32-bit and 64-bit) Enterprise Edition	Yes
SQL Server 2008 (32-bit and 64-bit) Enterprise Edition SP1 [VMM 2008 R2 and VMM 2008 R2 SP1 only]	Yes
SQL Server 2008 (32-bit and 64-bit) Enterprise Edition SP2 [VMM 2008 R2 and VMM 2008 R2 SP1 only]	Yes
SQL Server 2005 Express Edition SP2 or SP3	No
SQL Server 2005 (32-bit and 64-bit) Standard Edition SP2 or SP3	Yes
SQL Server 2005 (32-bit and 64-bit) Enterprise Edition SP2 or SP3	Yes

Important
To use SQL Server 2008 or SQL Server 2008 R2 for the VMM database, SQL Server Management Tools must be installed on the VMM server.

See Also