SQL Server Recommended Installation Guide

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Installation media

The download location for SQL Server depends on the edition:

Other SQL Server components can be found here:


NOTES: To install SQL Server Developer Edition for older versions (which are not listed anymore on Microsoft pages) follow this step:

1. Go into the Visual Studio website: VisualStudio Subscriptions and Benefits. You must have account to sign in and subscribe to this Visual Studio website



2. Navigate to Downloads, and Search for "sql server developer", and there will be older versions of SQL Server Developer installer to be downloaded

3. Download the installer and wait until it's completed


SQL Server Installation Types (Windows)

There are two types of installation that you can do:

1. SQL Server Stand Alone Instance Installation
2. SQL Server Failover Cluster Instance Installation

For this time, the guide is made for installation of SQL Server Stand Alone Instance.


SQL Server Installation Steps:


1. Open the installer file which you had downloaded before and choose the New SQL Server stand alone installation


2. Choose the edition which you want to install, or if the .iso is packaged with license it should already have embedded product key, use the product key, press Next, there will be license agreement and some updates checking and also setup files checking, just press Next again


3. On the feature selection, there are multiple features that can be installed, where the very base feature for SQL Server is the Database Engine Services which will host the databases, tick on the box for the features that you need only (in this case if you don't need anything else just tick Database Engine Services)
It is best practice to install only what you need because it's more resource-efficient that way, you can always add new feature later when it is needed

At the bottom there will be a path to where the SQL Server root directory will be (it is not where the databases files will be), default path will be to System disk (C:) inside Program Files, don't change this if not needed


4. The next step is to configure what will be the name of the instance, the default server name will be MSSQLSERVER, but if you want to host more than one instance of SQL Server then give it another name.
Please consider this carefully as it will avoid you from more problems when changing instance name in the future (you cannot change instance name except doing a reinstall)


5. The next thing is to use service account that runs the SQL Server service and SQL Agent service. It is recommended to use a service account rather than using the default account because you can control the permission and other things related to service account, so use a service account and input the password for that account
You can change this service account later if you want to in the SQL Server Configuration Manager, but you need to restart the server after that


6. SQL Server Collation is the thing that you must select correctly when installing, because it cannot be changed again except if you reinstall the SQL Server, Press Next


7. Server Configuration must be set to authentication mode using SQL Server Authentication and Windows Authentication or only Windows Authentication. Usually it is set to mixed mode and give the 'sa' account the password and add a windows user for the authentication. Later you can adjust the logins in the SQL Server security settings


8. It is best practice to set the user database data files directory in different disk than the user database log files directory to avoid concurrent I/O disk load to data and log which can delay processes. For backup files directory you can put it on the same disk as data files directory or on another disk but it's not really that big different


9. Next is tempdb setup, so for the tempdb directory it is recommended to store tempdb on another different disk than the data and log files, so if data is on C: and log is on D: then tempdb is set on E: because this will make performance lot better than dumping all on one disk
Notes: tempdb number of files can be set according to Microsoft's general rule, if the server which host the SQL Server has less than 8 cores, then set the number of tempdb files according to the server's core, but if the number of cores is equal to or greater than 8 then set the number of files to 8.


10. Configure the MaxDOP which affected by the number of CPU core in the server (I suggest to start with 8 cores first if you have 8 cores or higher in your server's CPU, it can be adjusted again later) if your server's CPU is lower than 8 cores then configure it according to the number of CPU Cores, following the best practice will be from microsoft's documentation:



11. Set the max server memory to 75-80% of the server total memory, don't use the default value as it will consume all the available memory and there will be memory issue for system OS usage


12. After set all of the settings, next will be the installation configuration summary and you can proceed the by pressing Install, SQL Server then will continue to be installed on the server


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