MOSS and TempDB

Had lots of questions recently asking how MOSS uses Tempdb in SQL Server 2005 because we need to work that info into our farm designs and plan for performance and capacity. Right now, the answer is 'I dunno'- not for sure anyway. There is nothing MOSS specific published regarding tempdb.

I've been told that you should just think of MOSS as just another sql server application, the usual db sizing rules apply. So, I'd follow these articles: Optimizing SQL Tempdb Performance and capacity planning for tempdb for planning.

There is another great article called working with tempdb which goes into deep detail around what tempdb does and how. It makes recommendations on how to and what perfomance and growth to monitor. Growth seems to be the important factor in planning for tempdb in MOSS. I've heard that crawling uses tempdb heavily and a crawl will stop if tempdb runs out of space. So, 2 recommendations are to set tempdb auto grow to on and use instant file initialization.