SQL Server 2008 RTM Installation Experience

Great! Two of my development machines are now on SQL Server 2008 RTM.

Earlier, the absence of Visual Studio 2008 SP1 was somehow the show stopper for me. However, upon further experimentation on the machines that were available to me which were readied for SQL Server 2008 RTM, I was able to install SQL Server 2008 RTM prior to the release of Visual Studio 2008 SP1 on August 11 2008.

Here is how it went with the two machines I got. Do take note that my intention is to have the 2 environments where I still need to support both 2005 and 2008 instances of Visual Studio and SQL Server.

Machine 1 is a Lenovo X61 Laptop running Vista x64 SP1. This was initially the machine I used to attempt my first installation.The machine was configured with Vista x64 SP1, fitted in the following order of installation with SQL Server 2005 SP2 x64 Developer Edition, then Visual Studio 2005 SP2 + SQL Server 2005 Express Edition, and Visual Studio 2008 (non SP1). I have prepared this machine in anticipation of SQL Server 2008 RTM. As it turned out, the absence of Visual Studio 2008 SP1 halted my first attempt to install Katmai RTM. I was forced to wait for the release of Visual Studio 2008 SP1 as I dont want to uninstall Visual Studio 2008 and install Katmai. I thought, it is just a matter of few days of waiting.

However, I got another new desktop dev PC (Machine 2) waiting on the wing as a replacement to my 5 year old dev machine which started out some disturbing problems couple of weeks leading to Katmai RTM. It was just coincidence that I have a new machine to use. 🙂

Machine 2 is a Lenovo K200 Desktop PC. Starting out clean, I installed in the following order, Windows Server 2008 Enterprise x64, then SQL Server 2005 SP2, and Visual Studio 2005 SP2 (without SQL Server 2005 Express this time). This time I thought, production database servers should have no problems installing SQL Server 2008 RTM without Visual Studio 2008. No one needs a dev tool on a production database server anyway. So I thought this would also work on machine 2. I continued installing SQL Server 2008 RTM and it installed perfectly without a hitch.

Early this evening, I was able to download Visual Studio 2008 SP1, applied it on Machine 1. The installation went on smoothly and I continued on SQL Server 2008 RTM. It worked! 🙂 Yeah folks, now I have a mobile dev station with VS 2005/2008 and SQL Server 2005/2008 on it. Sweet. I still have to use this laptop extensively though to know if there are new surprises. So far it has come out clean. Wonderful Microsoft. Then I proceeded to Machine 2, and installed Visual Studio 2008 and the newly minted SP1. It went fine too! Couldn’t ask for more at this time.

Now I got 2 machines with my intended environment settings all up and running. Now this is an exciting new era for SQL Server users like me.

Hope you had your Katmai RTM installations done already too! 🙂

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SQL Server 2008 RTM Has To Wait Until Visual Studio 2008 SP1

It’s been 2 days since Katmai RTM’d. I have downloaded a 3GB+ ISO of SQL Server 2008 Developer Edition.

Days prior to the RTM release, upon sensing that Katmai code is about to go gold, I have already readied my laptop, reformatted it, to accomodate the brand new SQL Server 2008. And last night was my first taste of SQL Server 2008 after a day’s download.

My first taste? SQL Server 2008 RTM has to wait until August 11.

Too bad … SQL Server 2008 RTM, with all its glory, will not install without VIsual Studio 2008 SP1. Unfortunately, Visual Studio 2008 SP1 is still on BETA. In some sites, it is rumored to be released August 11.

Here are some of my initial experiences:

• According to this KB, http://support.microsoft.com/kb/956139, you can install SQL Server 2008 (I tried Developer Edition) by unselecting Analysis Services, BIDS and Integration Services. It still does not though.
• My first attempt to install seems to be fine until I got the VS2008 SP1 check. I went back to unselect the 3 features mentioned in the KB but still SQL Server wont budge. I tried cancelling the installation and attempted to run it again but this time I got the FILESTREAM validation error.

Very frustrating!

I am thinking of just installing the engine but I don’t want to for fear that there still might be problems and it will just ruin the current state of my laptop. I’ll see if I can do this in some virtual machines later.