Database data file size limitation - SSMS

I had to configure a data file in a very large database this one time and I used Management Studio for that. The file size I was aiming at was 3TB (a very large database indeed). I was quite surprised to see that SSMS has a limit to the size you can configure, which was 2,097,152 MB (i.e. roughly 2TB). I thought I was missing something here and quickly turned to SQL Server Maximum Capacity Specifications to see how big a data file can get, and to found out it is 16TB, not 2TB (the transaction log is restricted to 2TB, but I was trying to configure the data file). Modifying the data file using the ALTER DATABASE statement resulted in the expected behaviour and I was finally able to expand the file as I wished. However, the SSMS behaviour is unreasonable, and maybe it is because of the limitations once posed by the MBR partition tables which did not enable to you to configure drives larger than 2TB. However, this is something that can be resolved by using GPT instead and no longer is a limitation as such.

So, I’ve opened a bug in Microsoft Connect (ID 554026). Be sure to vote for it!

On  aside note, I’ve been away for some time now and the challenge I was giving to myself seems a bit farther now. It has been an incredibly busy month for me and I was simply unable to add more content to my blog, which is a shame. Still, I’m back and need to catch up. So in the next few weeks I’ll try my best to get back on track with the posts.

-Yaniv

(This is post number 17 for week number 22 of my SQL blog challenge)