Chapter 2. Server assessment and configuration

It’s important to start off on the right foot, and that includes figuring out what you’re dealing with. In this chapter, I’ll cover some of the basics of SQL Server architecture, and look at your existing server (or servers) to see what you’ve got. We’ll also dive into the server-level configuration settings, and I’ll explain what the most important ones mean to you.

2.1. Identifying instances and versions

SQL Server was one of the first products to support what we’d now probably call virtualization. In SQL Server 2000, Microsoft designed the product to support multiple instances. In other words, you can install multiple copies of SQL Server on a single computer, and run them at the same time. ...

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