Thanks for the advice.

64bit is the plan. It will be SBS Premium so I do not think it is priced per CPU.

I assume SQL will make full use of the cores/cpu but I am not sure if I would be better off putting the cash for a 2nd cpu into drive/raid upgrades vs. cpu upgrades.

The data will initially be slightly less than 32GB but will soon exceed it.

Reliability is critical, performance is nice.




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>First of all, use 64bit O/S and SQL Server (period). Performance gain is absolutely worth it.
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>Multiple core processors cost less than multiple socket processors if you are using CPU licenses.
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>Faster drives are always nice!
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>How big is/are your database(s)? More memory is better until you can fit everything in RAM!
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>RAID really depends on your reliability and performance requirements. Different types of RAID give different performance results. Normally a good external RAID controller will give better performance than an onboard controller using the same RAID level.
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>I have customers that use simple mirroring and are very satisfied. I have others that are using high end RAID or SANs. Really depends on the need and the $$ available.