SQL Server 2000 EE opens platform options
One of the more significant tasks you'll encounter when preparing to deploy SQL Server 2000 is deciding which edition to purchase.
With the previous version of SQL Server, the decision was clear. You purchased the Enterprise Edition (EE) if you wanted your SQL Server 7.0 installation to take advantage of EE's support for additional memory or clustering. Otherwise, you purchased the Standard Edition -- and that's what most buyers did, unless the amount of data they were managing was so small that the even more streamlined Small Business Server Edition would suffice.
Now that Microsoft has further differentiated SQL Server's Enterprise and Standard Editions, you'll need to reconsider the way you choose a SQL Server edition. Your choice will now depend less on memory support and more on factors such as the types and amount of data you'll maintain in your SQL Server 2000 databases -- as we'll see when we inspect the two editions' surprising differences more closely.
SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition
If you install SQL Server 2000 Beta 2, you will probably be surprised to learn that SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition no longer requires either Windows NT Enterprise Edition or Windows 2000 Advanced Server. In other words, you can install SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition both on Windows NT servers and Windows 2000 standard servers. This represents a significant departure from SQL Server 6.5 and 7.0 Enterprise Editions, both of which required the most advanced Windows operating system.
SQL Server 2000 EE includes the following features that are not available in the other SQL Server editions. Only one -- the failover clustering service, Microsoft Cluster Server -- requires an advanced Windows server version.
- Failover clustering
- Log shipping
- Parallel DBCC
- Parallel
CREATE INDEX - Enhanced read-ahead and scan
- Indexed views
- Federated servers
SQL Server 2000 EE's inclusion of advanced features that are supported on the basic OS will likely spur sales. Indeed, it will probably discourage most DBAs from using SQL Server 2000 Standard Edition except for the smallest and least critical databases.
Microsoft will also make available SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition for the developer. This is really the Enterprise Edition with a restricted license; while it includes all the features found in EE, it can be used on development and test servers, but not in production. Because the Developer Edition will likely be less expensive, its availability will take some of the sting out of having to purchase EE for production servers.
It should be noted, however, that Microsoft has not yet announced pricing for the Developer Edition or any of the other SQL Server 2000 editions.
Failover clustering, the sticky wicket
NT Enterprise Edition provided SQL Server with two key feature: failover clustering and expanded memory usage. Introduced in Windows NT EE, failover clustering is the method of using Microsoft Cluster Server (MSCS, also known as Wolfpack) to automate the failover of SQL Server from a primary to a secondary node (or server) in a cluster. A two-node version of MCSC is included in Windows 2000 Advanced Server, and four-node version will be part of Windows 2000 DataCenter Server.
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