Installing SQL Server 2000 x86 Enterprise on Windows 2003 x64 I have inherited (lucky me) a very old accounting system which will be retired over the next 18 months.
In the meantime, for various reasons, I need to upgrade the DB server.

It's currently running SQL Server 2000 Sp4 Enterprise on Windows 2000 Advanced Server.

The only supported OS I can get to without upgrading the whole application (too costly) is Windows 2003 x64.

I plan to put it on a VMware server, Windows 2003 x64 Enterprise Edition, with SQL Server 2000 SP4 Enterprise Edition x86. The virtual server will have 8GB Ram allocated to it and 4 vCPUs.

Is Sql Server 2000 x86 on Win 2k3 x64able to access the full 8GB of the OS (using PAE or similar?)
Yes, SQL Server 2000 x86 can use AWE to buffer data pages above the 4GB limit. See How to configure SQL Server to use more than 2 GB of physical memory:


  sp_configure 'show advanced options', 1
  RECONFIGURE
  GO
  sp_configure 'awe enabled', 1
  RECONFIGURE
  GO
  sp_configure 'max server memory', ...
  RECONFIGURE
  GO


The article also explains how to enable /PAE in boot.ini, but if your OS is amd64 already you don't need it since the OS can already see the entire memory. So all you need is to enable AWE on the x86 SQL Server 2000 instance.