Pre-Installation Considerations

Unfortunately, in most production environments, you do not have enough time to preplan the installation of SQL Server. In addition to ensuring your current production environment performs as expected, you provide server specifications for new systems. This requires a lot of research to determine things such as how much RAM the server will need; what type and how powerful the CPUs should be; and the layout, size, and RAID (redundant array of independent disks) levels of your storage system, along with many other considerations. In addition to providing server specs, you also have to manage the implementation of processes and procedures after the installation is complete. If there is a lack of preparation and research time, you sometimes make the wrong assumptions or decisions when providing your recommendations. Although bypassing some research up front will save time initially, there may be an extreme cost to you and the company by not taking the time to preplan properly. For the next two chapters, we are going to talk about some of the things that you definitely want to consider before installing SQL Server 2012.