Running SQL Server on a Desktop Machine

Hi,

The company I work at was going to install SQL Server 2005 on a server running Windows Server 2000. However this server is no longer available, and due to cost restraints we are unable to purchase another server.

I still wish to get SQL Server 2005 running, and have a spare desktop computer avaible. This computer is a P4 3.2GHz with 1GB of RAM and 40GB hard disk.
I was thinking of adding RAM and a larger hard disk, and installing Windows Server 2003 on it.

Is it advisable to run SQL Server 2005 (and Server 2003) on a desktop computer? Any comments or experiences of similar situations would be appreciated.

Thanks,
MattThere's lots of issues here;
1 What's it for?
2 Version
You have not mentioned which version of SQL Server 2005
3 Capacity
Your hardware spec. meets the minimum requirements, you can install SQL 2005, but what you will actually be doing with it will determine the hardware.
4 Availability
Again, what do you need to do on this server; server hardware is built to serve mission critical applications, the numbers might not look as good but you generally get a system that allows for RAID, hot swapping HDDs and memory, etc.
5 Maintenance & Support
E.g. If a HDD fails, will your hardware guys fix it, or will they say - what's this mickey-mouse setup?

And so on...|||Thanks for the reply, sorry I should have been more specific.

The version used would be the Standard Edition.

I am responsible for the reporting of our organisation. Currently data is taken from the enterprise system and reported on using Microsoft Access and Excel. So if I upgraded to SQL Server then it would be used to implement a data warehousing solution. Table updates would run in the morning, along with the emailing/printing of several reports. After that most usage would be via Excel queries. There would be around 20-30 users doing this, with no more than 10 accessing the SQL Server concurrently.

Eventually the SQL Server system would be moved to a server, but this cannot happen until 8 months or so. I am ready to start going live with a SQL Server solution, and want to use to desktop machine as a temporary solution. I want to know whether using this desktop will provide a workable solution. I know it is far from perfect, but considering we are currently running Access as a reporting database server, will the solution work temporarily?

Regarding maintennance and support, seeing it is not a mission critical solution, I had planned to backup the data files and any code created in BIDS on a seperate server. In the event of a disaster this would allow me to recreate the data warehouse on another hard drive. Again, it is an imperfect solution but I am hoping it would do the job until a server machine becomes available.

Purchasing a server is not really an option due to the price. The cost of SQL Server has already been approved, and if I go with this desktop machine only another $1200 or so will be needed for Server 2003 and hardware upgrades.

Any help or opinions with this would be great.|||You haven't said anything that makes me think it won't be able to handle the capacity, but I still would worry about a live service on a server-under-the-desk scenario.
Apart from the issues I've alreay mentioned, make sure you aren't breaking any corporate standards, laws or regulatory requirements for the data you are handling.