Short version – Installed SQL Server 2012 RC0 onto a Server 2008 SP2 VM using an RDP connection from my iPhone with Wyse’s PocketCloud app…  Just to say I did it.

Long version – Hardware used: white box PC with an AMD 3800 processor (dual core, 2 Ghz).  Virtualization software was VMWare Server 2.0. Virtual server was assigned 1 CPU, 2 GB of RAM, 2 x 50 GB disks. VM was left in a workgroup.  Software was Server 2008 Standard Edition SP2 with all updates installed.  Interface device was an iPhone 3GS running IOS 5.  Remote connection software was PocketCloud RDP from Wyse (the free version).

The Prologue

I did all of the virtual server setup from the console.  It was a tedious process because the VMs I created at first did not want to behave.  I know I can run a virtual Server 2008 R2 using VMWare Server 2.0 even though that software has been retired by VMWare because I have another one on the same box with SQL 2008 R2 on it.  But for whatever reason, I had the darndest time getting this one to work.  The ServerManager kept error’ing out with messages related to mscorsvw.exe.  The SQL installation would also crash when I tried it but I chalked it up to the flakiness of the virtual machine.  After several reinstalls and different tricks I got it settled down so I could proceed with the SQL Server installation.  I installed SQL Server from a VM console through an RDP session to the host machine from my iPhone.  The Wyse PocketCloud app was running on the host machine (64bit Win7) and I interfaced with the VM through that.  Earlier attempts to install the PocketCloud app on the flaky Server 2008 R2 instance failed but who knows whether it was incompatibility between the app and OS or my flaky VM.  I moved on…

The Install

I installed SQL 2012 with mostly all defaults selected.  Non-defaults were that I changed all installation directories from C: to E: and chose not to install the Distributed Replay features. The first time through the installation crashed with the “failure to validate setting CTLRUSERS…” error.  I thought this odd since I had chosen not to install the Distributed Replay features and am pretty sure I never saw the screen for specifying which users have permissions for the Distributed Replay Controller server.  This error and situation is well documented by Aaron Bertrand here. But maybe you can get that error for other reasons.  I didn’t have much choice but to start over and as far as I could tell I made all the same selections.  The second time through I received no errors and the installation was successful. It’s possible I missed something the first time through as I was doing this on an iPhone. 

Rapping Up

I plan to use this installation to work through and learn some of the new features of SQL 2012, just not with the iPhone.  I’m planning to title the series of blog entries “Learning SQL Server 2012 one beer at a time”.  Unfortunately (depending on how you look at it) the amount of time taken to get this first step done was way more than what one beer could cover, because of all the virtual machine setup issues.  But it did end well on a New Belgium Snow Day.