Install SQL Server on Surface Laptop 7 ARM Device

Hi @siddharth mehta ,

SQL Server cannot be installed natively on Surface Laptop 7 (ARM), so there is no edition that will work locally.

The practical and fully working approach is to install SSMS 22 (ARM64) and connect to a SQL Server running on a supported environment (Azure SQL, another x64 machine, or a VM).

This setup gives you the same full functionality as a local SQL Server installation and is the standard workaround used in real projects.

If a local lightweight option is needed, Azure SQL Edge via Docker can be used, but it is not a full replacement for SQL Server.

Thanks,
Akhil.

As Marcin says, SQL Server is not supported on ARM. Some people have been able to install LocalDB on their ARM laptops though. LocalDB has most of the features in SQL Server, so it is not entirely unusable. But, true, it is not particulary capable. And difference to other editions in runs in user space and not as a service.

To run SSMS on ARM, you need SSMS 22. I believe the ARM support is still in some sort of preview status, and some bits are missing, but you can run queries.

Refer to https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/5564100/run-sql-server-on-a-surface-arm-nb

SQLServer is not supported on windows arm (Mac arm supports SQLServer x64 docker containers via Rosetta). The tools have been migrated. You can also use LocalDB, but this is not really a replacement.

while no longer supported, you can use the azure sql edge arm64 docker image. its somewhere between SQLServer 2019 & 2022.

https://hub.docker.com/r/microsoft/azure-sql-edge

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hth

Marcin