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I'm about ordering a Starter Plan for my website hosting.

my website is like a registration system for a small school, and it works only at the start of each term, so I'm wondering if 250 MB is enough or do I need more space?

I'm happy to answer any further question if I wasn't that clear : )

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  • If you're only storing a single byte in a single table in a single database, then it's plenty. If you're going to replicate Google's webcrawler database, you might want to get a little bit more space. Analyse your data needs, how many records, how many fields, how big the fields are, how much data, and that'll tell you how much space you'd need just for the data. Then add 20-30% for overhead/expansion and you've got your bare minimum.
    – Marc B
    Jun 29, 2011 at 15:59
  • thank u very much! do u mean by adding 20/30 is leave at least 20/30% free of the 250 MB?
    – Evanescence
    Jun 29, 2011 at 18:12

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The only real way to determine this is based upon having a really good idea of the data that will be stored in the database. I would recommend that you put all of your data into a local copy of MS SQL 2008 R2 to see how much space it takes up. Then make sure that you have about 50% overhead (at least), meaning your database shouldn't take up more than 125 MB.

The nice thing about hosted plans is that usually they allow you to grow your databases as you need to. Check with your hosting provider to see what happens when you hit that cap. Can you just pay more per month and get more database storage? If so, start small and see how it goes. If you have to plan to never exceed that amount, you are going to need to be very careful about keeping the database maintained well (archiving old data out, etc.) Any database that is used over a long period of time will grow in size unless the data is purged. Usually you don't want to purge student information or other relevant data so the database will probably grow every year. If you can figure out how much it grows per year, you could figure out when you will need to purchase more database storage.

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  • that's great idea, I'll try it.. and exactly, if I found it not enough I'll upgrade it.. thanks a lot!
    – Evanescence
    Jun 29, 2011 at 18:07
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It depends if you are going to use this for a long time and how many registrants will be using the system each term. If it is a small school, I don't foresee a problem with space. If it does become a problem, then you could archive old data and then start fresh each term. HTH

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My first question would be a less technical one, why are you attempting to constrict yourself to 250mb, with the cost of traditonal magnetic hard drives these days, even the smaller drives would leave you with plenty of space for very little cost.

You can download formula to work out the closest estimate if you really want to be that precise. Industry advice is to always add a 1/3. you should also be sizing your database & log so they do not expand quickly, use a sensible initial size so the database does not expand in the near future. Logs will also be used for reindexing which will give you spikes in the log capacity needed.

basically make yuor best guestimate, add a third, leave sensible increments for database expansion and leave autoexpansion on, DO NOT USE autoshrink. Monitor the increases in size with the built in SQL 2008 reports..

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