System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2008 R2 uses a Microsoft SQL Server database to store the information you view in the VMM Administrator Console, such as managed virtual machines, virtual machine hosts, virtual machine libraries, jobs, and other virtual machine–related data. During the installation of the VMM server, you specify a SQL Server database and instance to use as the VMM database.

The following are the system requirements for installing the VMM database on a dedicated computer. Actual requirements vary based on your system configuration and the number of hosts and virtual machines that the VMM server manages.

Hardware Requirements

The following are the minimum and recommended hardware requirements for the VMM database based on the number of hosts you manage.

Managing up to 150 hosts

Hardware component	Minimum	Recommended
Processor	Pentium 4, 2.8 GHz	Dual-Core 64-bit, 2 GHz
RAM	2 GB	4 GB
Hard disk space (with the default local SQL Server 2005 Express Edition SP2 database installed)	14 GB	14 GB Note For the default local SQL Server 2005 Express Edition SP2, the database size is limited to 4 GB.
Hard disk space	80 GB	150 GB

Managing more than 150 hosts

Hardware component	Minimum	Recommended
Processor	Dual-Core 64-bit, 2 GHz	Dual-Core 64-bit, 2.8 GHz
RAM	4 GB	8 GB
Hard disk space	150 GB	200 GB

Note
The SQL Server Express Edition database size is limited to 4 GB, and so it is recommended that you use a full version of SQL Server when the VMM server is managing more than 150 hosts.

Software Requirements

The VMM database requires a supported version of Microsoft SQL Server. You can either specify a local or remote instance of an existing Microsoft SQL Server database or have the Setup Wizard install SQL Server 2005 Express Edition SP2 on the local computer. The Setup Wizard also installs SQL Server 2005 Tools and creates a SQL Server instance named MICROSOFT$VMM$ on the local computer.

Supported SQL Server versions	Supports Reporting in VMM
SQL Server 2008 Express Edition	No
SQL Server 2008 (32-bit and 64-bit) Standard Edition	Yes
SQL Server 2008 (32-bit and 64-bit) Enterprise Edition	Yes
SQL Server 2005 Express Edition SP2	No
SQL Server 2005 (32-bit and 64-bit) Standard Edition SP2	Yes
SQL Server 2005 (32-bit and 64-bit) Enterprise Edition SP2	Yes

Important
SQL Server Express Edition does not support reporting in VMM.

Important
To use SQL Server 2008 for the VMM database, SQL Server Management Tools must be installed on the VMM server.

See Also