SQL Server 2011 on a Windows 2008 R2 Core Server

I have to admit, I had a little trouble with the title here, everything I wanted to use as the title just seemed a little bit too long; and to be honest, I think that one I settled on may be a little vague. Such is the way of life.

Anyway, ever since I first saw Netware servers in operation with nothing but a command line interface, I loved the idea. Think about it, on Windows, you use a significant amount of resource to display things in a pretty way because it was designed to have a graphical user interface that anyone could use. That’s all fine, but I strongly believe that we should not be wasting resources nor adding complications to a server product. I want a server with a command line interface and that’s it. Microsoft’s own studies have shown many times that the majority of problems that have occurred in Windows have been caused by 3rd party drivers that were badly written. Think about it, do you really need windows explorer to see your files and directories on an SQL Server? Do you need a sound card driver?

With the arrival of Windows server 2008, we saw Microsoft introduce the “core” server product – a command line interface and no Windows Explorer. Fantastic!  (Although technically, this was something that you were able to implement yourself from Windows 2000 and later, because you were able to change which shell you wanted to use).

There was however, a slight snag with this. SQL Server was not supported on a Windows Server Core product.

Until now…

With SQL Server 2011 “Denali” it looks like that has all changed, it’s even stated that it will reduce the necessity of server reboots by 50%-60%. Why is that? because far fewer resources are needed to show you a command line on your server! Internet Explorer patches? There’s no internet explorer! So, not only are you reducing the amount of resources consumed (SQL Server Management Studio starts at about 126Mb and works its way upwards to around 700Mb – depending on what your doing of course), you are also reducing the surface of attack on your server. The processor is no longer being used to display a list of folders or files via Windows Explorer, nor is it used to display your query results in SSMS .

I’ll be honest though, these days, memory is a lot cheaper, processors are a lot more powerful; and disk space… well, masses of space. So, perhaps it will make things a little more difficult when you need to jump onto the server and fire up SSMS to fix an issue, but from my point of view, SSMS is a client application and should therefore, be installed on something other than your SQL Server. I have the same opinion about Visual Studio.

So, is SQL Server running on a Windows Core server a good thing?

Absolutely, because although it may make things a little more complicated for you, you are in fact: –

• Allowing your SQL Server the use of more server resources which would have been allocated to things like SSMS, Visual Studio or Windows Explorer.
• Reducing the surface of attack on your server.
• Increasing the stability of your server.
• Reducing the amount of downtime needed whilst patching your server.

For more information, have a look at the product page here,