Options Tab
The Options tab (see Figure 9)
allows the user to select a processor architecture as well as the
location of the installation media. This option is useful in a
consolidation scenario where you want to install an x86 32-bit install
on an x64 system. The x64 option is disabled because this screen shot
was taken on a 32-bit virtual machine.
Figure 9. Options tab in SQL Server Installation Center
Step 3: Installing an Instance of SQL Server
Begin your installation of SQL Server by
clicking the “New SQL Server stand-alone instance” link on the
Installation tab of the SQL Server Installation Center. This link will
launch a wizard that you can use to install a single instance of the SQL
Server database engine. When you launch the wizard, Setup will run the
System Configuration Checker tool, the same one that can be launched
from the Tools tab. This checker will make sure that the server is in a
state that can handle the installation of SQL Server. Some of the issues
that could prevent an install include situations where the server is
pending a reboot or the user is trying to install SQL Server on an
unsupported operating system. Next, SQL Server will check for Product
Updates and install SQL Server setup files.
After the check is performed, you will be asked
for the product key. In the case of the evaluation edition, you will be
asked either to enter the product key or to simply choose which free
edition you want to install. To enable all the features in the product,
make sure Enterprise Evaluation is selected in the “Specify a free
edition” drop-down list.
Upon continuing the wizard,
some additional SQL Server installation files will be installed; after
that, you will be presented with the actual installation wizard. The
first page of this wizard will be another system configuration check,
which will check some different properties than the first configuration
check. Once this completes, you are now ready to start telling the
wizard exactly what you want.
Setup Role Page
SQL Server and its components like Analysis
Services are not just their own products. They are sometimes integrated
within other products like SharePoint 2010. It is the Setup Role Page
shown in Figure 10,
from which setup is asking you if you want to install all the SQL
Server components, install the analysis services components within a
SharePoint farm, or install everything with default options.
Figure 10. Setup Role page
Feature Selection Page
The Features Selection page (see Figure 11) allows you to specify which components of the product you want to install.
Figure 11. Feature Selection page
By selecting an instance feature, you are asking
Setup to install a new instance of the database engine, Analysis
Services engine, or Reporting Services. These options will install a new
instance regardless of whether there is already one on the server.
There are some components, though, that don’t require more than one
instance on the server. These components are called shared components
and include things like SQL Server Management Studio (would you really
want two different copies of SQL Server Management Studio on the same
server or client machine?). If you took a good look at Figure 11,
you may have noticed that one of the items, Redistributable Features,
does not have any items under it. This is by design, and it includes
features like MSXML version 6.0 and Error and Usage Reporting.
For the purposes of our walkthrough, select
Database Engine Services from the Instance Features node as well as the
default selected shared features shown in the above figure.
Instance Configuration Page
The Instance Configuration page (see Figure 12)
allows users to select which type of instance to install—either a
default instance or a named one. Per server, there can be just one
default instance. However, you can install multiple named instances. In
fact, you can have up to 50 instances installed on a server. These
instances could all be SQL Server 2012 or a mix of SQL Server 2005 and
SQL Server 2008.
Figure 12. Instance Configuration page
There are some restrictions on the name of a
named instance, including a 16-character limit and the inability to use
SQL Server reserved words, such as default.
When SQL Server creates a new instance, it
creates various registry key entries and folders within the file system.
Since you can install more than one instance of the SQL Server database
engine on a server, SQL Server needs to uniquely name these registry
keys and directories. The instance ID is the text that will be used to
help create the unique name for these objects. By default, the instance
ID is the same as the instance name. The instance root directory is the
folder that will contain the binaries for the SQL Server database
engine.
If there were existing instances of SQL Server
installed on this server, the Installed Instances grid would be
populated with these. This grid is useful when it’s midnight and you
can’t remember whether or not you installed the new instance on your
server.
Disk Space Requirements Page
The Disk Space Requirements page simply
summarizes how much disk space will be required to install the selected
features. The space usage is broken up into space required on the system
drive, space required in the shared feature folder, and space required
by the instance directory itself. There are no options to select on this
page; it is informative only.
