I don't believe the optimal hardware requirements have really been released. I can state for certain however that NS 7 at its initial release will not be supported on a x64 environment. That ability will be added with a service pack later in 2009.



Also remember that SQL does play a major performance role with NS. Having beefier hardware & ram on the SQL side is always beneficial. IMO.



HTH

Thanks.



So if NS doesn't run and/or isn't supported on 64 bit Windows, I would have to rebuild the server to upgrade to 64 later? Hmmm...



I'm not really familiar with SQL setups so I'll throw in a quick noob question:

Licensing for SQL works on a core basis or processor basis? I think I read it's processor based.



I guess this is how I'll go with it for now unless someone says this is a stupid idea:



NS Box

Dual Core 3Ghz

4GB RAM

SAN storage



SQL Box

Quad Core 3Ghz

8GB

SAN storage

That is a fine start, depending on how many clients you have. Do note that I haven't seen explicit details that SQL 2008 will be supported, only SQL2005. Deployment Server will however currently support SQL 2008.



SQL is licensed per processor and per CAL.

Just wanted to note that our environment will be around 1500 nodes including Macs.

I think that these specs should work out. If anyone else has anything to say, it would much appreciated!

question is, will NS7 run with SQL2000? or is it essential to have SQL2005?

considering budgets, we may be in a pickle if we MUST upgrade to SQL2005 at this point...

SQL 2000 is not supported, and the SIM (Symantec Installation Manager) will not proceed with an install with SQL2000 (at least as I understand it). What is your client base? Could you use SQL2005 express even if it isn't ideal?

we're currently on under 2,000 managed devices, does SQL2005 express cater for this?

if it does then that most certainly is a possibility... please advise!

SQL 2005 express only supports one CPU, with a max database size of 4GB. So, your performance will be less than optimal.

Wow that is some serious hardware for under 2000 managed machines.  What all solutions are you planning to use, TMS (which isn't available for NS7 yet, btw)?  We're currently managing ~17,000 (including Windows desktops and servers and a few hundred UNIX boxes) with a 4 proc/single core with 8GB RAM, with the SQL 2000 DB hosted locally on SAN storage running most of CMS-1, along with RS and Local Security.

That being said, we recently ordered  a few beefed up SQL servers for our NA and Reporting/Asset NSes with 4x quad-core and 48GB RAM with intention to run Win2003 x64 and SQL 2005 x64, so I'm hoping for a "modest" performance improvement ;)

Hi, the eXpress edition of 2008 is for free and ideal for Altiris, because of better performance 2005... And it works well with my Altiris 7 RC2. But absolutly not with final CMS/SIM 7 !!! Currently SQL 2008 x86, x64, complete or eXpress are not supported & SIM checkup refuse to proceed if SQL 2008 installed instead of 2005. :-(

https://kb.altiris.com/display/1/index.asp?c=&cpc=...