Recommended traffic for SQL Express - Please Help!

SQL Express Limitations

[DanielR]

Hi,

Our eCommerce sites are growing and growing (We have three now running on a SQL 2005 Express database). Everything still seems to be running well, but I'm wondering what the recommended traffic should be for the Express version?

I've read all the limitations & such, and compared the specs between Express and Standard, but it does not really seem like apples to apples to me.

So here's my question: How do you know when you need to fork out the cash to upgrade from Express to Standard? What's a good estimate of traffic that would require an upgrade?

$2800 bucks for SQL standard is alot of cash and I just want to make sure we need it before purchasing.

Thanks!

[edited by: DanielR at 4:05 pm (utc) on June 20, 2008]

[LifeinAsia]

$2800 bucks for SQL standard is alot of cash

Yup- and that doesn't even include the cost of proper licensing!

I don't have much experience with 2005 yet, but I get the feeling most of the limitations between the versions don't relate to the core ability to handle processes. In other words, all versions are going to handle 1000 simultaneous connections the same way. I think the only real limiting factors are the memory and DB size restrictions for each version.

[DanielR]

Yep, after doing more checking into the price I found that I need the processor version, which is $5700! WOW!

As the orders keep coming in though I feel that we are going to be fast approaching that 4 gb limit :( Might have to go with a hosted solution instead of doing it inhouse.

[lorax]

Possible to switch the infrastructure to something else?

[haggul]

Express can pretty much handle most of what the main product can - unless you are getting hundreds of thousands of visitors and the clustering type functionality is required, or being able to address more RAM etc.

The biggest issue will be hitting the filesize buffers. Surely there is no need to be reaching that though unless it's your inventory tables that are large and growing rapidly. If it's transactional data that's makign it grow at an alrming rate, get it archived outta there into separate db's.

Of course if it's transactional data that's going off the scale then you are raking it in and can afford to buy the full blown anyway! :)

The main advantages I get out of the full product are the new integration services - there's some really trick stuff you can do with the backend in terms of automation etc now.

[Red_Eye]

I have an Ecommerce site running on SQL Express. I get 10,000 unique vistors a month around 40 - 50,000 page views, and I don't have a problem I also know that the same database server runs about 20 other databases of varying size.

My site remains responsive and I am happy with it. What I would say is that run it on sql express until you find you are having performance problems. Then bite the bullet.

Your express database will run on the full version no problems.

I think that the only limitations are the files size so if your database is massive it might exceed the 2GB limit. But mine is no where near that yet

[AffiliateDreamer]

I do over 10K page views a day w/o a problem.