Possible to Install Any Version of SharePoint Using SQL Server 2014 Express?

Question

The company I work for is thinking about moving our SharePoint services in-house.

Currently, we have a SharePoint 2010 Foundation site through a remote host and we are considering either moving to another host or bringing our SharePoint server in-house to get a newer version. To keep costs down for the in-house option on our proposal to management, I have been instructed to look into using SQL Server 2014 Express instead of a paid version of Microsoft's SQL software. However, the cryptic terms of both SharePoint and SQL Server's documentation have me confused.

As far as I know, we would be looking to upgrade to SharePoint 2013, although I am not sure which version. My company is very small at under 50 users and I think Foundation would suit our needs. Would SharePoint 2013 Foundation be able to run adequately on SQL Server 2014 Express, even with its limitations? This would all be on a single machine as we do not have the ability to create a server farm at this time.

Also, notably, I do not manage relations between our company and our current SharePoint hosting service. I know very little about how our current SharePoint is set up or what features are enabled as I work under the employee that manages these things. I can ask for information to help with answering my question, but it may take up to 24 hours to get a response through the chain.

Thank you in advance!

Answer 1

It's certainly supported to run SharePoint Foundation 2013 SP1 (or May 2014 CU) with SQL 2014 (any edition). That said, whether it will 'run well' is entirely dependent on usage. And of course you still have the 10GB MDF size limitation you may bump up against, which would force you to use Remote Blob Storage, another complexity that can, and likely will, reduce performance.