Exploring Hardware Requirements

Having the proper hardware for OpsMgr to operate is a critical component of OpsMgr functionality, reliability, and overall performance. Nothing is worse than overloading a brand-new server only a few short months after its implementation.

The industry standard generally holds that any production servers deployed should remain relevant for three to four years following deployment. Stretching beyond this timeframe might be possible, but the ugly truth is that hardware investments are typically short term and need to be replaced often to ensure relevance. Buying a less-expensive server might save money in the short term, but could potentially increase costs associated with downtime, troubleshooting, and administration.

That said, the following are the Microsoft-recommended minimums for any server running an OpsMgr 2007 server component:

• 2.8 GHz processor or faster

• 20 GB of free disk space

• 2 GB of random access memory (RAM)

These recommendations apply only to the smallest OpsMgr deployments and should be seen as minimum levels for OpsMgr hardware. More realistic deployments have the following minimum levels:

• 2–4 2.8 GHz Cores

• 64-bit Windows operating system

• 64-bit SQL Server

• 60 GB free disk space on RAID 1+0 for performance

• 4–8 GB RAM