SQL Server 2005 memory support vs max memory setting
I've read the information provided by this link https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms143685(v=sql.90).aspx. According to this it supports 32TB of memory but, some comments below suggest this is a typo and it supports 32GB or 512GB of memory.
If the later is true and it only supports 32GB (for the sake of my question) of memory and the SQL instance (2005 std x64/SP4) is installed on a Windows Server (2008 R2/SP1) that has 128GB of RAM installed and I set the max memory to 114GB my assumption here is that SQL Server can only use up to the 32GB of RAM. If the latter is true and it's 32TB of RAM then SQL Server will use memory up the max memory setting.
Is my thinking correct here?
(Though, that all said, I highly recommend against using SQL Server 2005 at this point, particularly for a new deployment, since it is no longer in support.)
They introduced more prohibitive memory limitations (IMHO) as an additional measure to get customers using Enterprise. With SQL Server 2014 they relaxed this from 64 GB (the limit in 2008 R2 & 2012) to 128 GB, which is a little better for most Standard Edition customers, but there are still many who believe memory shouldn't be limited in Standard Edition either).
In 2005 and 2008 the effective cap was essentially the OS maximum. See BOL for 2008, for example. Why they stated an actual limit of 32TB back when they wrote the 2005 docs, I have no idea. It's not like anyone on earth had machines with 32TB of RAM 10 years ago.