I often get asked following question?

“How much data SQL Server can handle?”

Every single time when I get this question – I ask back following question -

“How much data your storage system can handle?”

The reason I ask this question back is because in reality for enterprise systems the limitation of storage is no more an issue. The Matter of the fact most of the database is now a days limited by the size of the storage system. SQL Server is enterprise system and it is very mature product.

Even though if you still want to know what is the actual limit here is the answer.

SQL Server 2008R2, 2012 and 2014 have maximum capacity of 524 PB (Petabyte) in the Enterprise, BI and Standard edition. SQL Server Express has a limitation of 10 GB due to its nature. I guess, now when you look at my question it will make sense that it is all depending on the size of your storage system.

I personally believe at this point of time 524 PB is quite a huge data, but we never know after 10 years when we read this blog post, we all may think what was I thinking actually.

Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)