General system and server information is available on the General page of the Server Properties dialog box (see Figure 6-1). The information on the General page helps you determine the following:
SQL Server edition
Operating system version
SQL Server version
Platform and chip architecture
Default language
Amount of RAM installed on the system
Number of CPUs
Root directory location for the selected instance
Default server collation
You also can obtain similar information using the extended stored procedure xp_msver. Execute the following command:
exec xp_msver "ProductName", "ProductVersion", "Language", "Platform", "WindowsVersion", "PhysicalMemory", "ProcessorCount"
You can use Query view to execute the command shown. Basic techniques for using this utility are covered in the section titled "Configuring SQL Server with Stored Procedures" in Chapter 4.