Set Up the SmarterTrack Database on a Dedicated Server

SmarterTools customers using an installed version of the software can run SmarterTrack with any of the following databases:

• Microsoft SQL Server Express – SmarterTrack will run just fine on SQL Server Express 2008 or later, which is a free version of Microsoft SQL Server. It is the recommended database on most systems, except for those that have access to the non-Express version of Microsoft SQL Server. While SQL Express is nice, it's important to realize that it only supports databases of up to 4 GB in size. For larger installations, the full version of SQL Server is strongly recommended.
• Microsoft SQL Server 2016+ – SQL Server is an enterprise-grade database server available from Microsoft. While most of the functionality is identical to the Express edition, it does not have some of the usage restrictions that the Express edition has (such as the 4 GB database size limit). The primary difference is that you usually will not need to specify an instance name (like \SQLEXPRESS) in the database server field when attaching to the database.
• MySQL (5.7 or higher) – MySQL is a free database package that competes against Microsoft SQL Server. It also works well with SmarterTrack, but our tests have shown slightly higher performance with Microsoft SQL Server. SmarterTrack can also use MySQL variants such as MariaDB.

Details on setting up SmarterTrack with each database are below:

Microsoft SQL Server Express (Version 2016 or higher)
To create a new database in Microsoft SQL Server Express, follow these steps:

1. Install SQL Server Express. SmarterTools also recommends downloading and installing Management Studio Express.
2. Log in to Microsoft SQL Server Express using Management Studio Express.
3. Create an empty database for SmarterTrack. NOTE: SmarterTools recommends the use of SQL Authentication. To verify that SQL Server is configured for Mixed-Mode Authentication, go to the properties of the SQL Server in Management Studio Express and click on Security. The Server authentication should be SQL Server and Windows Authentication mode. If it is not configured for this, change the setting, and click OK. This will require a restart of the SQL Instance.
4. Create a user that has Database Owner (DBO) privileges over the new database.

Microsoft SQL Server (Version 2016 or higher)
To create a new database in Microsoft SQL Server, follow these steps:

1. Log in to Microsoft SQL Server using SQL Management Studio.
2. Create an empty database for SmarterTrack. NOTE: SmarterTools recommends the use of SQL Authentication. To verify that SQL Server is configured for Mixed-Mode Authentication, go to the properties of the SQL Server in Management Studio Express and click Security. The server authentication should be SQL Server and Windows Authentication mode. If it is not configured for this, change the setting, and click OK. This will require a restart of the SQL instance.
3. Create a user that has Database Owner (DBO) privileges over the new database.

MySQL (Version 5.1 to 5.5.13)
SmarterTools recommends downloading and installing the MySQL GUI tools prior to setting up the database. To create a database in MySQL using the MySQL Administrator GUI, follow these steps:

1. Log in to MySQL using the MySQL GUI Administrator.
2. Create an empty schema (database) for SmarterTrack. NOTE: SmarterTrack requires the use of the InnoDB database engine. To check what your default storage is, click on Startup Variables, and on the General Parameters tab check to see what your default storage is set to. 
3. Create a user that has DBO permissions over the new database.

Connecting the Database to SmarterTrack
The database is connected during the Setup Wizard process. For more information, refer to Running the Setup Wizard in the KB article Install SmarterTrack on a Dedicated Server.

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