April 28, 2014 at 4:33 pm
We have a debate in my dev team on what edition of SQL should be installed on a VM template for new web site development. The template is supposed to have all required tools to develop MVC web sites, using Visual Studio 2013. The production environment where the sites will be deployed has a multiple server architecture, running Enterprise edition.
The prevailing argument says to use Express edition on the Dev template to reduce the "footprint" (mem use, disk size, etc.). I've argued that we don't have to install all of the components for Developer edition and that we can disable services and/or features that we won't be using immediately, but that hasn't swayed any opinions. So, my question is two part.
How much disk space is used by an Express edition installation? How would that compare to a minimal installation of Developer Edition?
(All developers have an MSDN Ultimate subscription)
Thanks!
April 29, 2014 at 2:48 am
There is very little difference in the footprint of Express and Developer editions, provided that you install the same set of components.
The main advantages of installing Developer Edition are:
a) You have access to the full feature set that will be used in your Production system. This could be particularly important if your developers attempt to do any performance tuning of their code, as Express Edition can giver different access plans to Enterprise and Developer Editions.
b) If When you have a problem in Production you have a good chance of reproducing the problem in your Dev environment. If you install only Express Edition then your ability to reproduce problems will be more limited, making troubleshooting more difficult.
c) You reduce risk in your development process. Using different SQL versions in Dev and Production will increase risk that a problem will not be detected until it hits Production. The cost of eliminating this risk is close to zero. If your developers have MSDN then the marginal cost of Develop Edition compared to Express is zero.
Original author: https://github.com/SQL-FineBuild/Common/wiki/ 1-click install and best practice configuration of SQL Server 2019, 2017 2016, 2014, 2012, 2008 R2, 2008 and 2005.
When I give food to the poor they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor they call me a communist - Archbishop Hélder Câmara
May 6, 2014 at 1:12 pm
Thank you EdVassie. I still have a question though.
Taking your advice, went ahead and installed SQL Developer Ed., using the installation wizard to select only the Database Engine. At a glance, it looks like that took up about 1 GB of disk space (yikes!), and laid down a number of "essential utilities" along with the engine.
For comparison, I did an install of SQL Express (2012 SP1) on a comparable VM and took some snapshots of disk usage. It looks to me like that was somewhere in the 200 MB range.
What gives? Am I misreading my disk numbers? Is there a better way to do the install that would make the space required more comparable?
Thank you.
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