vCenter 5.5 on Windows Server 2012 R2 with SQL Server 2014 – Part 1
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It has been a while since I was dealing with vCenter on SQL Server simply because I used vCenter Server appliance. In series of post, I would like to guide you through the installation of Microsoft SQL Server 2014, vCenter database creation and preparation and vCenter 5.5 Update 2 installation.
In my guide I will use following software:
- Operating System - Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter Edition
- Database - Microsoft SQL Server 2014 Enterprise Edition
- VMware - VMware vSphere 5.5 Update 2b
Microsoft SQL Server 2014 preparation
Following Microsoft SQL Server best practices I will install SQL Server 2014 with following disk layout:
- Disk 1 : OS/SQL Binaries
- Disk 2: System databases (aside from tempdb)
- Disk 3: tempdb
- Disk 4: User databases
- Disk 5: User DB transaction logs
- Disk 6 : VMware vCenter Server binaries
- Before installation, I recommend running System Configuration Checker. It is a tool which checks if all necessary components required by SQL Server 2014 are installed.
- Another thing that we have to do before installation is enabling of.Net Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1. We can do it simply from PowerShell by executing following command.
Install-WindowsFeature Net-Framework-Core -Source D:\sources\sxs
- We will create application users: **ap-mssql **and ap-vcenter and we will use it to run SQL Server services and vCenter services. I described how to do it in this post: https://www.wojcieh.net/how-to-create-application-user-in-active-directory/
Microsoft SQL Server 2014 installation
- We switch to Installation section and select New SQL Server stand-alone installation or add features to existing installation.
- Provide SQL Server 2014 product key or select evaluation.
- Accept the license terms and if you want you can join **Customer Experience Improvement Program **also called CEIP.
- Choose if you want to receive Microsoft Updates to patch SQL Server 2014.
- Click next and Setup will initiate another check to make sure that there will be no problems.
- Click next and select SQL Server Feature Installation
- Choose following features:
- Database Engine Services
- Client Tools Connectivity
- Integration Services
- Management Tools – Basic
- Management Tools – Complete
- And select following directories:
- In Instance Configuration, I selected Default instance and I clicked Next.
- To run all SQL services we will use user called ap-mssql.
- I added my user as SQL Server administrator. I selected Windows authentication mode.
- As I wrote at the beginning I will distribute directories across different disks.
Summary
This concludes the installation of Microsoft SQL Server 2014 on Windows Server 2012 R2. In the next post, I will proceed with SQL Server configuration.