SQL Server 2000 Administration in 15 Minutes a Week:
Administration Fundamentals
Part 1
by Michael Aubert
www.2000trainers.com
Welcome to the first article in my series SQL Server Administration in 15 Minutes a Week. In
this series we will cover the skills needed to successfully administer a Microsoft SQL Server
2000 machine. This series will also help you prepare for the Microsoft 70-228 exam
"Administering Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition." In this initial article we will look
at an overview of the options and requirements when installing SQL Server 2000.
- System Requirements
- Available Editions and Scalability
- Instances and Upgrade Paths
System Requirements
Remember that this article is only an overview. We will cover specific system requirements;
however, some topics presented are very complex and will be covered later in greater depth.
In this series I am assuming that you are using the Enterprise Edition or an edition equivalent to
Enterprise Edition of SQL Server 2000. (We will talk about the different editions of SQL Server
2000 in the “Available Editions and Scalability” section later on.) If you are not using Enterprise
Edition you will still be able to do just about everything with a few exceptions. If you don’t have
any edition of SQL Server 2000, you can download the Enterprise Evaluation Edition from
Microsoft’s website at:
CPU Intel-compatible 166MHz or higher
Memory 64MB (128MB recommended for Enterprise edition)
Hard Disk 250MB for a typical SQL Server database installation
130MB for Analysis Components
80MB for English Query
Operating System Windows NT Server 4.0 (With SP5) or
Windows NT Server 4.0 Enterprise Edition (With SP5) or
Any version of Windows 2000 Server
For a complete listing of the most up-to-date requirements and a listing for all editions of SQL

SQL Server 2000 editions running on Windows 2000 Advanced Server:
Edition Max Memory Max CPUs
Enterprise Editions 8GB 8
Standard Edition 2GB 4
Personal Edition 2GB 2
SQL Server 2000 editions running on Windows 2000 Datacenter Server:
Edition Max Memory Max CPUs
Enterprise Editions 64GB 32
Standard Edition 2GB 4
Personal Edition 2GB 2
SQL Server 2000 editions running on Windows NT Server Enterprise Edition:
Edition Max Memory Max CPUs
Enterprise Editions 3GB 8
Standard Edition 2GB 8
Personal Edition 2GB 2
As for hard disk storage, your needs and budget are going to run out a long time before the
maximum theoretical NTFS hard drive storage space is reached. Redundancy, acceptable
downtime, and speed are all factors in what type of storage solution you will need. The most
common storage solution implemented today is RAID, also known as Redundant Array of
Independent (or Inexpensive) Disks.
There are two types of RAID: Software and Hardware. Software RAID is normally slower but is
included with Windows NT 4.0 and 2000. Hardware RAID gives the best performance but is
more expensive. These two RAID types can then be divided into the different RAID levels. The
most common RAID levels are RAID 0 (striping), RAID 1 (mirroring), RAID 5 (striping with
parity), and RAID 10 (a combination of mirroring and striping). In a later article we will take a
deeper look into RAID and its benefits for your databases.
Clustering is the last topic we are going to discuss in the scalability section. Clustering allows
you to use multiple servers to provide redundancy and/or load balancing. Although the cluster
may be made up of several servers, the cluster appears as one “virtual server” to the network.
SQL Server 2000 is a fully "cluster aware" application that can operate in a clustered

6.5, 7.0, 2000 2000 only
Can multiple instances of
this particular type
operate at the same time?
No* Yes
How is this particular type
of instance identified?
servername servername\instancename
* You can still have multiple versions of SQL Server (6.5 along side either 7.0 or 2000) installed
on the computer, but only one of the versions can operate at a time.
For more information about instances have a look at the following link and its related articles:
/>Once you understand the concept of default instances and named instances, understanding the
available upgrade paths to SQL Server 2000 is not difficult.
- An installation of SQL Server 6.0 can’t be upgraded directly to SQL Server 2000 -- you must
first upgrade to SQL Server 6.5 or 7.0. Once the databases have been upgraded you can then
upgrade to SQL Server 2000 or install SQL Server 2000 along side 6.5 or 7.0
- SQL Server 6.5 and 7.0 can be upgraded directly to SQL Server 2000
- SQL Server 2000 can be installed as the default instance along side SQL Server 6.5 but only
a single version can be active at a time. You can use “version switching” to switch between the
different versions of SQL Server.
- SQL Server 2000 can be installed as a named instance in addition to the default instance of
SQL Server 6.5, 7.0, or 2000 installed on the computer. One default instance and a number of
named instances can operate at the same time.
That wraps up the first article. Next week we will take a look at the different installation types
and an overview of the installation process. Please send any questions, comments, and
feedback to my email. Also check out the 2000trainers.com website where you can find tutorials
and practice exams on Windows, SQL Server, and Exchange. I hope you found this article
helpful and I look forward to your feedback.
Mike


Query components in a later article.