Trend Micro recommends the following:

1. Use Microsoft SQL Server Standard or Enterprise Edition. SQL Express editions should only be used for testing, not for production environments, because SQL Server Express only supports and utilizes a single CPU and 1 GB of RAM, even if the machine has very high specs. Using SQL Server Express may result to performance issues, and Trend Micro will not support any performance or scalability issues if TMCM is running with SQL Express.

   You can check the Microsoft Support Lifecycle for SQL servers for the list of versions supported by TMCM.

2. If you are installing Control Manager and the SQL server on the same machine for production environments, take note of the following:
   • TMCM 6.0 minimum memory requirement is 2 GB, recommended is 4 GB.
   • It is NOT recommended to put both the SQL server and Control Manager on a 4 GB machine.
   • It is possible to put both the SQL server and Control Manager on a machine with more than 4 GB of memory. You need to configure SQL’s maximum memory so that it should leave at least 4 GB of extra memory. Follow the steps in configuring SQL server memory usage in this Microsoft article: How to: Set a Fixed Amount of Memory.
   • For Control Manager servers with more than 1,000 products (including OfficeScan clients and ServerProtect Normal servers), we recommend using a dedicated SQL server.
3. Configure the space for your TMCM database transaction log. Do the following:
   1. Open your SQL Management Studio and right-click Database.
   2. Click Properties.
   3. Select Simple from the Recovery model dropdown list.
   4. Under Automatic, Set Auto-Shrink to "False". Starting with Control Manager 6.0 Service Pack 1, it is not required anymore to have Auto-shrink to "True".

      

4. If you prefer to set your recovery model to "Full", make sure that you perform a regular backup of your transaction log.
   Transaction logs in full recovery model are not truncated unless a backup is performed. This prevents the log from growing too big. For more information, you can check this Microsoft article: Transaction Log Truncation.
5. Your SQL database should be compatible with SQL Server 2005 and above.

If TMCM and the SQL server are installed in different computers, set the same time zone on both computers.

ODBC Drivers

TMCM uses an ODBC driver to communicate with the SQL server. For most instances, ODBC version 3.7 is sufficient.

The TMCM setup program can verify the ODBC driver version if the SQL server is installed in the TMCM computer. For remote SQL servers, verify the driver manually to ensure that TMCM can access the database.

Authentication

TMCM uses mixed-mode authentication when accessing the SQL database rather than Windows authentication.