July 30, 2012 at 5:32 pm
Hi! I get requests for new installs every day (some on physical boxes, some VM, and 6 different domains..ugh!). We have installed DBLaunch which is supposed to let you set up pre-configured templates, then you're supposed to be able to deploy them to multiple machines. This is an awesome idea, but I can't get it to work. It's not a matter of setting it up it's just so buggy (I have spent easily 20 hrs trying to get it to work, emails back and forth and as soon as one issue gets fixed another one pops up :ermm:)! my question is, does anyone know of an alternative program or way to do this? I'm looking for something quicker than setting up the .config file and installing from that, as I have quite a few post-install tasks that also need to be done.
I *could* script it but if there's something out there already that works then I don't need to spend the time.
Thanks in advance!
August 1, 2012 at 2:22 am
I worked on a project where we do something similar.
The big problem you will have is if each server is a different configuration (different drives, letters etc), and each sql install is unique with different settings, you will have to write pretty fancy scripts with a lot of input variables.
We got around this by doing 2 things:
1. Standardising the Server build. 95% of servers are of a similar configuration ( win 2008R2, H Drive for data, I drive for Logs, T Drive for Tempdb).
2. Identify a small number of SQL Server base configurations.
- SQL Install
- SSRS Install
- SSAS Install
- All Components Install
So now instead of a huge number of variable installs we are down to 4.
Sure there will be a small amount of ad-hoc builds, but the number is so small, that we can do that quickly via the GUI.
We have a batch file for each type of SQL Install that has a lot of parameters pre-configured (as we already know the drives we will be installing to), so we only really need to input security info in the parameters. The bat file installs sql server via the cmd line.
Next step for us will be to have this bat file also copy over a script that sets things like max memory, Instant file initialization and a few other things, and run it immediately after the install.
August 1, 2012 at 9:23 am
Thanks for the reply, this sounds like what we do right now: standard server builds with the same drive letters etc. (unless it's a cluster but even that's standardized). I've got a PS script that changes the default port and sets up a few other config items but...esp for my Jr DBAs (and when we get 5 requests in one day) it'd be great to have the finishing scripts etc and the install all run remotely with no user interaction. Still have to go in and manually change the service acct and SA password but that's a lot easier than doing manual installs.
Again thanks for the reply, I'll continue trying to get DBLaunch to work. If I can get it going it will do what I need it to...it's just getting it to work!
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