I'm running a SQL EXPRESS 2005 server currently hosting ~50 databases. The databases serve clients' CMS/eCommerce websites. The connections are to a single instance, no user attached instances are being used. Median DB size is 5MB, the largest 20MB. The website are mostly low traffic, the CPU utilization is < 10%, and the SQL process uses at most 350MB RAM.
For now I'm well within the SQL server express limits of 1CPU/1GB RAM. In the upcoming expansion the number of databases may double. If I assume linear growth in requirements, the 1GB limit still wont be reached. But I'm concerned the number (> 100) of databases may become an issue. I'm not sure if this usage scenario is what Microsoft had in mind for express.
Is there any information or preferably real-world experience regarding SQL server express capability to handle lots of small databases? Can I expect it to run 150 databases, or should I start working on migrating to other database servers/file-based databases?
Sql-server – How many databases can SQL server express handle
scalabilitysql serversql-server-express
Best Answer
According to the SQL Server 2005 Express edition overview:
So, the limit is how much performance you can utilise of the server. Consider that as the express edition will only use one CPU core, if you have a quad core processor it can not use more than 25%.
If you later on find that you need to utilise more of the server's performance, you can quite easily upgrade to a different version of SQL Server.