Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Installing SQL 2008 (CTP6) on Windows Server 2008

To all of you who are used to building your own VM images for SharePoint and want to try “the latest and the greatest” such as building an image for SharePoint on Windows 2008 with SQL 2008.

Inspired by “Best of Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008 for SharePoint Deployments “ session at SPC2008 presented by Joel Oleson  and Bob Fox (by the way, IT WAS GREAT!)       

Well, I’ve decided to built test image for SharePoint.

Installation of Windows Server 2008 went smoothly. As I always did before, I configured it as Domain Controller and finished the rest of the steps.

The SQL 2008 installation was aborted though with the following message “Database Engine failed to install”.

Very puzzling at first… It seems that if run DCPromo to make your image a Domain Controller (creating a new Domain) prior to the Installation of SQL, installation of SQL will fail.

What I have found is that if you install SQL 2008 without having DC role for the server, the installation went very well. Then I assigned the DC role to the server running dcpromo.

Installation of SharePoint ran normally and now I have a new image!

The moral is change your install sequence!

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Ah beat me to it.... was just drafting up a similar. Thanks for the mention Natalya!

Great post.

& took the road less travelled said...

How do you configure the VM machine to access the internet to activate Windows Server. The moment i install the DC and give static IP boom now it does not access. I am using VMware Server. Anything to set me on to the path will be nice.

Thanks.
Sunjay

Unknown said...

Bridged Networking. You need to set your NIC settings to use Bridged Networking and that will allow your virtual environment share the internet connection with your host.

Bob Fox
SharePoint MVP

mihknotyu said...

Good info, but, I just run sql for custom application builds and testing. I don't need it to be a DC. Is that still the server role that you are recommending, or would one of the other roles be better if a DC is not needed?