The current database being used is small, 50mb. We plan to move to a heavy usage over the coming months. I am not concerned about the performance at this point but if the server does start to get stressed it would be easy here to move the data to a new server and change the connection over.

The only thing I have done that would have stessed the the server from the SQL activity is minimal testing with a 15GB database, CRM app. I did not notice any performance issues but it was not enough testing to know.

I have not worked with MS SQL that much but you could also consider configuring MS SQL to limit its resource usage (limit to 1 cpu and/or cap the memory) to some level that would ensure other services are not waiting on SQL.

If cost is not that much of an issue the seperate box is the safer choice.


>Thanks for the feedback. I think my biggest concern is the ERP system my clients are considering. Both of the candidates are fairly "heavy" SQL Server database apps. I suspect having everything on one box would be fine for normal data input operations. However, I wonder about the impact of heavier queries such as month-end reporting, or backup operations - would they hit the box so hard that everything else would slow to a crawl?
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>If you don't mind me asking:
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>- roughly how large is your SQL database?
>- do you run any SQL queries that take a lot of time? How are the other processes on the box affected?
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>I agree that the ERP/SQL DB could be moved to another box later. However, I suspect the ERP VAR would charge significantly to reconfigure in that fashion. I doubt it would be as simple as backup/detach on the old and restore/attach to the new ;-)
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