SMS Site Database Server Considerations

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Using the guidelines here, create and document a plan for deploying your site systems.

While you are designing your SMS hierarchy, you decide whether to implement your SMS site database on your SMS site server, or on another computer. Either way, SQL Server must be installed before you run SMS Setup. If you are using an older version of SQL Server and plan to upgrade to SMS 2003, see Chapter 14, "Upgrading to SMS 2003."

Typically, performance is better if the SMS site server and the SMS site database are installed on the same computer. For more information, see Chapter 8, "Designing Your SMS Sites and Hierarchy."

If your organization requires you to install SQL Server on a remote computer, analyze the intervening network connection to ensure that a high-availability, high-bandwidth network connection is in place. In this scenario, you might consider installing a second network adapter in both the site server and the computer running SQL Server and then dedicating this second card for communications between the site server and the computer running SQL Server. For more information, see Chapter 9, "Capacity Planning for SMS Component Servers."

Important:

  • When you create the SMS site database, ensure that you use the default SQL Server 2000 Sort Order option with the Collation Designator. SMS supports case-sensitive sort orders only. For more information about specifying SQL Server 2000 collations when you create a database, see your SQL Server documentation.

Preparing the SQL Server Computer

Although multiple SMS sites can share a SQL Server database for storing data, it is recommended that you do not share SQL Server databases among SMS sites. For more information, see Chapter 8, "Designing Your SMS Sites and Hierarchy."

One consideration for your SMS 2003 implementation is which version of SQL Server to use for your SMS site database. Check the requirements in the "Getting Started" chapter in this book before you make this decision. As with all other site systems, ensure that the computer running SQL Server has sufficient memory, CPU capacity, and disk I/O capacity to manage the SMS and SQL Server processes.

Planning for SQL Server Database Replication

If your plans include implementing SQL Server database replication to improve performance on the SMS site database server, ensure that you plan to deploy a server that is running SQL Server to host the replicated tables. Plan to install SQL Server on this server. Configure your server locator point or management points or both to connect to the replicated SQL Server computer instead of the SMS site database server. SQL Server provides a tool for configuring replication. See the "Getting Started" chapter to find out which version of SQL Server is required for replication support in SMS. See your SQL Server documentation for SQL Server version considerations when you replicate SQL Server databases.

For information about configuring SQL Server database replication, see Chapter 15, "Deploying and Configuring SMS Sites," and your SQL Server documentation.

For More Information

Did you find this information useful? Please send your suggestions and comments about the documentation to smsdocs@microsoft.com.