SQL Server requirements

SQL Server is available in different versions and editions. Versions are described by their release date, such as 2017 or 2019. There are also different editions of SQL Server, such as Express or Enterprise. Each edition offers varying features and capabilities.

Selecting a SQL Server edition for your PI AF SQL database should be based on your needs. In general, especially for enterprise deployment, we recommend SQL Server Enterprise edition to avoid the SQL Server Express limitations, as described later. We also recommend using the most recent version of SQL Server.

Supported SQL Server editions and versions are listed in the System requirements for PI AF Server 2018 SP3 Patch 6.

SQL Server Express limitations

While an Express edition of SQL Server may be supported by PI AF and does not require as many system resources as the Enterprise edition, you should understand the limitations associated with the Express edition before you decide to use it with PI AF server.

• SQL Server Express has a 1GB memory limitation and 10GB database size limitation. It can therefore only be used in the case of a small PI AF SQL database with few users and low usage.

• PI AF High Availability deployment options are not supported on SQL Server Express editions.

• SQL Server Express does not include a SQL agent, so backup and maintenance tasks must be run using the task scheduler.

If you expect to use PI AF lightly and an existing SQL Server is not available, consider using SQL Server Express. However, the best approach is to always use the full edition of SQL Server.

Refer to this Microsoft article for a detailed listing of features available in the different SQL Server editions: Editions and supported features of SQL Server 2019 (15.x).

Disk space

When you estimate the SQL Server disk space required for the PI AF SQL database, consider the type and quantity of your PI AF objects. As a rough estimate, a PI AF SQL database with 50,000 elements each with 20 attributes of double data type would consume approximately 3GB of disk space. If you use PI AF objects such as event frames, or other data types, your disk space requirements will increase. In the case of custom PI AF data references, we recommend that you use a test environment to test size implications.

Deployment and resources considerations

We recommend deploying PI AF servers and Microsoft SQL Servers on separate, redundant computers to achieve the best level of performance and scalability.

If you are deploying PI Data Archive along with PI AF server, we recommend that you deploy PI Data Archive on a separate host computer from the SQL Server to avoid the situation where it competes for system resources with the SQL Server.