I ran into this question online and felt I knew the answer, so I thought I'd post it online and share it with the world:
Hi, I'm pretty new to SPS and had a few theoretical questions for you
pro's out there. I am installing SPS into a home building company. We have
about 300 employees across a pretty wide geographical footprint. I am
installing SPS on a single system with it's own instance of SQL. It has 120GB
for storage, 2.8 GHz CPU and 2 GB RAM.
1. When installing SPS 2003, I did not select "Server Farm Mode". I
am not using a server farm but heard from someone that I should have
selected this option anyway. Is that true?
When you install SharePoint (WSS anyway) you generally want to pick the Server Farm choice because that allows you to specify the name of the SQL Server machine. If you pick the typical install, you end up getting MSDE installed as a named instance. Picking the Server Farm (and using SQL Server) allows you to use the tools SQL Server comes with - Enterprise Manager and Query Analyzer and the like.
Now that you've installed Sharepoint with MSDE, you'll want to go about changing the SQL Server you're connecting to. Check out this article in the Windows SharePoint Services Administrator's Guide: http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/wss/2/all/adminguide/en-us/stsf17.mspx
--Matt Ranlett