Hardware Requirements for the SQL Database Role Servers

The heaviest hitter of all the SharePoint roles is the SQL database server role. This server role houses the SharePoint databases, where nearly all content in a SharePoint environment is stored. The databases house document libraries, documents, lists, sites, site collections, and their contents. For obvious reasons, this server is highly critical for SharePoint and requires a significant amount of hardware resources. Following are several key hardware requirements for the SQL database role:

• Disk space— Because SharePoint content is stored in the databases, the SQL database role server requires a large amount of disk space. How much disk space depends on how much content is stored in SharePoint, but assume the worst—when document versioning is turned on, SharePoint can consume much more space than people realize.

• Processor— The SQL database role works best when multiple processor cores are allocated to the database role. SQL Server is built to be multithreaded and can use whatever you give it. Today’s multicore processors are the perfect fit for SharePoint.

• Memory— Server memory requirements are also high for the database role. The same general rule of thumb applies...the more memory allocated, the better a SQL server will perform. The total amount of memory recommended will vary depending on how heavily utilized the server is, but it is common to have SQL servers with 12GB, 16GB, 32GB, or more.