SQL Server 2016 is the first version of SQL Server which allows you to configure multiple files during Setup. That’s good, but it had a very severe limitation: the data files could only be created with a size up to 1GB (1024 MB). For anyone sizing TempDB properly, clearly you’re going to have sizes that are greater than 1GB, so you still had to configure TempDB manually even in SQL Server 2016. I brought this up to Microsoft in early March because I have been working with a customer who was trying to configure TempDB to their standards using SQL Server 2016, but couldn’t via Setup due to this limitation. It was a great discussion with quite a few folks (including fellow MVPs), and being honest, I didn’t think anything would be done about it in the immediate future. I was wrong.

As of SQL Server 2017 CTP 2.0, this limitation no longer exists. Setup now allows the data files you create to be up to 256GB.

Creating a 256GB data file for TempDB

Microsoft listens, folks. This combined with the AG improvements I blogged about earlier in CTP 2.0 make it a welcome release.

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