Minimum Hardware Requirements

Table 4.3 outlines hardware requirements for SQL Server 2005 installations.

The following is the terminology used in relation to the 64-bit platform:

• IA64 refers to Itanium-compatible hardware architecture. This architecture can run IA64 software and 32-bit software using the Windows-On-Windows (WOW64) software emulator. The Itanium CPU cannot natively run 32-bit x86-compatible instructions and uses instruction emulation as a part of WOW64 processing.

• x64 refers to Extended Memory Technology support compatible architecture and includes systems, based on Opteron, Athlon 64, Intel Xeon EM64T, and Intel Pentium EM64T. x64 architecture can run classic 32-bit x86 compatible instructions natively on the CPU. One of the advantages of this architecture is an ability to support both 32- and 64-bit code. To ease an adoption of the 64-bit platform and optimize a hardware purchase, some companies might first deploy a 32-bit operating system and software on x64 hardware and then upgrade to 64-bit software on the same hardware.

Table 4.3. Minimum Hardware Requirements

Hardware	Minimum Requirements 32-Bit	Minimum Requirements 64-Bit
CPU	Intel or compatible Pentium III or higher Minimum: 600MHz Recommended: 1GHz or higher	IA64 recommended: 1GHz X64 minimum: 1GHz
Memory (RAM)	512MB minimum, 1GB or more recommended, 4GB maximum per a Report Server instance Report Server will utilize a maximum of 3GB (with /3GB switch in boot.ini).	512MB minimum, 1GB or more recommended
Hard disk space	A combination of hard drive requirements for the installed component: Report Server, Report Manager, and so on. A set of SSRS- related components is shown in Table 4.1. Full SQL Server Install is approximately 1.5 GB.	Approximately 2-3 times of the size of 32-bit components
Monitor (Visual tools will function at a lower resolution, such as 640x480)	VGA or higher resolution 1024x768 or higher resolution recommended for SQL Server graphical tools.	VGA or higher resolution 1024x768 or higher resolution recommended for SQL Server graphical tools
Pointing device	Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing device.	Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing device
CD-ROM drive	Required for CD installation.	Required for CD installation

Note

System Configuration Check blocks setup from running if the CPU type (Pentium III or higher) requirement is not met. Setup issues a warning, but allows you to proceed, if the CPU speed or minimum memory requirement is not met .