I’m not just talking about needing a larger office (although, that couldn’t hurt). I’m talking about hard drive space!
With the release of SQL Server 2008; I’ve officially moved over my trusty development machine to the latest and greatest MS technology, Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition and SQL Server 2008 Developer Edition.
Before you do the same, make sure you have plenty of Hard Drive space[1]. If you already have Visual Studio 2008 installed and then you try to install SQL 2008 you’ll get a friendly little message that states you MUST have VS 2008 Service Pack 1 installed. I’m not quite sure why you MUST have VS 2008 SP 1 installed to run SQL Server 2008 and VS 2008 on the same machine; but, if I do find a reason (other than the guesses of to enable some sort of feature or the ability for the two applications to see each other) I’ll post an update. So, now you know the approximate hard drive space it will take to install these applications.
Here is a simple break down of the hard drive space requirement for each product I installed:
| Product Name | Hard Drive Space Required | URL with Hard Drive Requirement Specifications |
| Visual Studio 2008 (Professional Edition) | 2.2 GB | http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vs2008/products/bb894726.aspx |
| Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1 | 3.8 GB (plus 600 MB on installed Hard Drive for VS 2008) | http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/2/8/A2807F78-C861-4B66-9B31-9205C3F22252/VS2008SP1Readme.htm |
| SQL Server 2008 (Developer Edition) | 2.0 GB (required even if installing components to other hard drives) | http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms143506.aspx |
As you can see, VS 2008 SP 1 is no small update. Also note that these hard drive space requirements are based on installing all features/options of each application and the final installation space used will typically be smaller than the requirements specifications. Requirements typically include space required for temporary files during installation of the product.
This comes to a total of around 8 GB of space during installation, and around 6.5 GB upon completion of installation. This, of course, does not include any project files, database files or add-ons.
What if hard drive space is a premium and you just want to test out these new applications? How do you use less space? The simplest way is to use the Express editions of each product and only install the languages/features you absolutely need or want to use/learn. A language such as C++ being installed for a developer who only knows and uses VB would seem pointless, unless that developer is intending to learn and develop with C++.
Is there a way to bypass the requirement to install VS 2008 SP 1? Well, I haven’t tried it myself; but, conceptually, if you install SQL 2008 first, then install VS 2008 you won’t get any messages or requirements during either product installation to have SP 1 installed. Now, that doesn’t mean that VS and SQL will play nice with each other. It also doesn’t mean that you won’t get some sort of message or error at a later time stating that you need to install SP 1. As mentioned earlier, I don’t know why SQL 2008 installation requires VS 2008 SP 1 to be installed with a machine that has VS 2008; I’d imagine there is a good reason though. Try at your own risk.
Until next time, Happy Coding!
[1] The installation hard drive size requirement is based on my personal experience and may vary per installation.
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