You can choose from many options to specify such features as how much memory to use as cache, how many CPUs to use (on multi-processor computers running a network database server), and which network protocols to use (network server only). Options are one of the major ways of tuning SQL Anywhere behavior and performance. See The SQL Anywhere database server.

You can run the server as a Windows service. When you run the server as a service, the server continues running even when you log off the computer. See Running the database server outside the current session.

You can start the personal server from an application and shut it down when the application has finished with it. This configuration is typical when using the database server as an embedded database. See Connecting to an embedded database.