The Operating System

The SQL Server engine runs best on Windows NT and Windows 2000 Server, and your production applications are meant to run on SQL Server on Windows NT 4 Server, Enterprise Edition, Windows NT and Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Advanced Server, or Windows 2000 Datacenter Server. Although you can install the Personal Edition of SQL Server on Windows NT 4 Workstation, Windows 2000 Professional, or Windows 98, many SQL Server capabilities are not supported on the Personal Edition. (I discussed these limitations earlier in the chapter.) Memory management and the process scheduling behavior on Windows NT and Windows 2000 Server are optimized for running services such as SQL Server. Windows NT and Windows 2000 Workstation and Windows 98, on the other hand, are more suited to running desktop applications. The simple fact is that SQL Server runs better with medium to large workloads on Windows NT and Windows 2000 Server than on any other platform.

Although you might get SQL Server to work on a platform other than its supported ones, you should stick with the supported platforms for the following reasons:

• Only supported platforms get significant test coverage. An unsupported platform might seem to work, but a subtle problem might occur later.
• Authorized SQL Server support providers and Microsoft SQL Server Product Support Services (PSS) focus on the supported platforms. If your problem is specific to an unsupported platform, you might not be able to get enough help.
• Typically, a new release of SQL Server is targeted at the most recent (or an impending) release of Microsoft's Server operating system and also supports the prior major release. As of this writing, Windows 2000 has been released, so SQL Server 2000 runs on Windows NT 4 (with Service Pack 5) and Windows 2000. It is not supported on Windows NT Server 3.51 or earlier. If you try to run Setup on a Windows NT version earlier than version 4 with Service Pack 5, you'll get an error and will be prevented from continuing.

You can install SQL Server on any Windows NT and Windows 2000 Server in your domain, but for the best performance, do not install it on any of your domain controllers. Although SQL Server will run fine on a domain controller, the controller's tasks of maintaining and replicating the Windows NT and Windows 2000 accounts database take up processing cycles and memory. In less resource-intensive environments, this usually doesn't make much difference, but if your system is part of a large domain, it's better to separate SQL Server processing from those activities.