How to install SQL Server Developer on a Snapdragon Laptop - I did ask on this which is completely related, bur was told to start a new thread!

Hi @Karl Jones ,

Thank you for reaching out to the Microsoft Q&A forum. 

If your goal is to work with SQL Server on a Snapdragon (ARM-based) laptop, there are a few alternatives besides Azure SQL Database:

• Use a remote SQL Server instance hosted on another Windows x64 machine, Azure VM, or on-premises server, and connect to it using SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS).
• Run SQL Server inside a cloud-hosted virtual machine in Azure. This provides a full SQL Server Developer or Express environment without requiring local installation.
• Use a Windows x64 virtual machine if your virtualization solution supports it and performance meets your requirements.
• Use a containerized SQL Server environment hosted on a supported x64 system and connect remotely from your Snapdragon laptop.

At this time, SQL Server Developer Edition and SQL Server Express are not officially supported as native installations on Windows ARM/Snapdragon devices, so the recommended approach is typically Azure SQL Database or a remotely hosted SQL Server environment.

If your requirement is specifically for a local database engine running directly on the Snapdragon laptop, please let us know your Snapdragon model and Windows version, and the community can advise on any newer compatibility options that may be available.

I am caching things, so I want to run them locally really, what I dont understand is why Microsoft would make a product (laptop) where its own products dont run on it? From any of the options above can I run something locally on the machine, it seems its all remote solutions

Hi @Karl Jones ,

While Snapdragon laptops are Microsoft-supported Windows devices, some products have not yet been fully ported to the ARM64 architecture. The SQL Server Database Engine (including Developer and Express editions) is one of those products and currently does not have native ARM64 support.

If your goal is to run SQL Server locally on the laptop, there is unfortunately no Microsoft-supported native installation option available today. Your closest option would be running SQL Server in an x64 virtualized or emulated environment, but compatibility and performance may vary.

If you're primarily using SQL Server for local caching or development, it would be helpful to understand whether SQL Server itself is a strict requirement, or whether another local database engine would meet your needs.

We understand the expectation that Microsoft applications should run natively on Microsoft-supported hardware, and your feedback is valid. As ARM-based Windows devices continue to gain adoption, support for additional products may evolve in the future.

what I dont understand is why Microsoft would make a product (laptop) where its own products dont run on it?

The question is not entirely unreasonable, and one answer could be that one hand does not know what the other hand does.

A more realistic answer is that if the hardware division feels that the right thing to do is develop an ARM-based product, and they would then have to wait until every other product group had developed support for their new hardware, it would take a very long time until that ARM-based product could be released.

One thing to keep in mind here is that laptops are mainly geared at the consumer market, and SQL Server is primarily a server product. Yes, many developers run SQL Server on their laptops, but of all people buying laptops, developers are a minority. And in terms of direct revenue, the revenue from those developers is very small, since almost all are running Express of Developer Edition. Thus, the direct financial incentive for making SQL Server available on ARM is small, as long as there are no production servers out there running ARM.

But there is also an indirect incentive, if you and other people in your situation decide to ditch SQL Server and use Postgres (or whatever) instead, this will be detrimental for SQL Server in the long run. I don't know what considerations that Microsoft are making in this area, but I would expect them to be aware of the risks.