Which windows server 2008 edition for a DB server

Question

We are uprading our servers and we're going to have 3 servers - 1 db server and 2 frontend web servers. For the web servers we'll use 2008 Web edition but we can't decide which edition to use for the db.

At first we were thinking of using Standard edition but with our host it works out 10 times more expensive per month than the Web edition. Our third option is to use Data center edition which is only cost 5 times more than the Web edition.

Can we and should we run a SQL 2008 on Windows Server Web edition? If not which edition should we choose?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Minimum requirements for all versions of SQL 2008 are here.

Server 2008 Web is listed as a supported OS, so you should be fine.

EDIT: I should clarify that it's possible to run SQL 2008 on Web Edition of windows server, but I'm not sure of what the limitations of doing so are. Server Web has more limitations than Server Standard, but I'm not sure what they are - be it hardware related or whatnot.

Answer 2

Just a few questions before answering:

1. How many users do you expect to support?
2. What is your budget?