[MichaelGG]

I mean, if you consider knowing that databases require disk space to be "specialized knowledge" then, I mean, I guess so. Otherwise the installer is rather straightforward in telling you what the paths are for. And creating a new DB also shows you which files will be used. There may be 20 pages, but most of that is ... pretty straightforward, easy stuff.

I've run SQL Server in life-critical production systems (911 call routing) and found it to be very straightforward. Just make sure the alarms are turned on and enabled for replication.

I've run it in HA clusters, both with a shared DAS and with the new shared-nothing system. A walk in the park. The only difficult thing I've personally run into with SQL Server was figuring out the Broker Service stuff and dealing with replication outside of a domain. And that was probably mostly networking configuration issues - the config wizards are pretty amazing.

I'm not implying that there is no specialized knowledge, and many SQL Server installs are probably suboptimal. But it's far from necessary to know much to go very far with SQL Server.

Compare to Postgres, where doing anything correctly requires mucking around with the config file, and, last time I used it, logging into the shell with a special user. And HA, well, good luck.

[BuckRogers]

Sounds like you both came to the conclusion that to do things it's best if you pay attention and care.

I may be the only one around though that doesn't find config files to be 'mucking' or a form of mysticism that all should kneel before the user who can wade through them. That also, is not 'specialized knowledge'.