[sccm 2012] SCCM and SQL - Same Server of Separate?

[Sam_Brown]

Always heard best practice was to keep them separate which is what I've done on the three installations of SCCM I've done in the past.

 

Looking to migrate to Server 2012 and SCCM 2012 r2 and wondering if it's really a necessity to keep them on separate servers or not.

[Quackers]

We don't on any of our sites, i would if we were managing 1000's of devices but for a few hundred clients just seems more hassle.

[Gatt]

From my experience, I would install SQL on a separate box.

 

A few reasons for this:

 

1) Load - SQL and SCCM are quite resource hungry - so I prefer to keep them on different boxes so as not to end up with a slow server.

2) Resilience - Or "Don't put all your eggs in one basket" - With SCCM 2012, you can restore a Site System from a SQL Database ONLY - (Not a nice way of doing it, but you can) - so again, keeping it on another box allows you to be able to [partially] recover SCCM in the event the Site Server were to fail. I would make sure you backup the site config (and DB) regularly anyway!

3) Scalability - IIRC, If you install SQL locally it tries to use SQL Express - this is limited in what it can do and how big it can get. Also, adding additional Sites is a no no if installed locally