Patrick’s Bytes

I managed to setup SharePoint 2010 Beta 2 on a Windows Server 2008 SP2 VM with SQL Server 2008 R2 Nov 09 CTP. SP2010 requires 64bit version of Windows Server and SQL Server . For the host I have an Intel C2Q machine on 4GB RAM running Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V installed.

For the VM environment, I have:

1. AD Domain Controller on Windows Server 2008 SP2 Server Core
2. Another VM running Windows Server 2008 SP2 enrolled in the AD domain. I have PowerShell feature (for SQL Server), IIS Web Server role and Application Server role (both for SharePoint) setup after I enrolled the VM in AD.

For part 1 of this, I will show how I setup SQL Server 2008 R2. Even though it’s in CTP, setting the database server is no brainer.

Below are my screenshots of the whole process. For detailed explanations, you can follow Microsoft UK MCS’s blog here.

This is the system properties of the VM. Note that I allocated 2.5Gb RAM for this VM.

Put in the SQL Server 2008 R2 DVD and it asked me to setup prerequisites i.e. .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 and an update to Windows Installer.

Prerequisites installer starting up

Accept the EULA for .NET Framework 3.5 SP1

.NET Framework installer running

.NET Framework 3.5 SP1 setup successfully.

SQL Server 2008 R2 installer will starts automatically.

Click on the Installation tab on the left. Then choose ‘New installation or add feature to an existing installation.’

Installer to inspect system and determine all setup rules passed.Click OK here

The SQL Server 2008 R2 setup files starting up. Following experience will be very similar to setting up SQL Server 2008. Hope it doesn’t change in the final release

Select that I want the Enterprise Edition

Accept the EULA

Setup files copying themselves

Setup support rules are scanned again. I ignore the warning on opening up the SQL Server port at the firewall.

This is new for R2, being not 100% sure, I choose the first logical option

Then select the SQL Server features I want. I chose:

• Database engine with Full text search
• Reporting Services
• BI Development Studio (optional)
• Management Tools – Complete

Installation rules are scanned to make sure all requirements fulfilled

Determined my SQL instance (in case you have more than 1 already installed)

Determine I have enough hard disk space

Now is the choose the user account(s) to be used for the services. I create a sqlservices account in my domain and I want all services to use the same account. So I clicked on ‘use the same account for all SQL Server services’

Keying in the account credential

Next screen I have to decide on the authentication mode and add myself as a SQL Server administrator.

I am doing nothing for Reporting services so it’s option 3 (Install, but do not configure the reporting server) for me.

I don’t want to send error reports back to Microsoft.

Final check on configuration rules

Review your installation options

Installation started

Success!

Starting up the SQL Server Management Studio, similar to SQL Server 2008

Still using VS2008 for BI Development Studio. Hope they will upgrade to VS2010 later as SP2010 will also be using VS2010

Next port I will show the installation process of SharePoint Server 2010

 

 

 

According to the website, 

The new Microsoft Certified Master series offers advanced technical training and certifications on Microsoft technologies that go beyond any product training offered outside of Microsoft today. IT professionals who successfully complete the training program and certification testing validate their skills as product experts who successfully design and implement solutions that meet the most complex business requirements.

Mind you, this is not a certificate you can get by studying brain dump, candidates are required to attend a 3 weeks training at MIcrosoft’s Redmond campus, passes 3 written exams and one lab exam. Like Cisco Certified Master, I think the hardest test to pass is the lab exam where actual production issues are simulated and candidates are required to solve it in the given timeframe.

How much is the cost? Since it’s the master cert, and you got to go to Redmond to learn from the gurus, the whole cost training + exams will cost you USD18,500. The 3-weeks training is valuable regardless whether you pass the exams or not because it is taught by people (or master I should say) who really know their stuff.

Below are technologies offered in the MSM program

1. Exchange 2007
2. SQL Server 2008
3. Active Directory
4. SharePoint Server 2007
5. Office Communications Server 2007

So you think this is very ‘geng’? MCM can go for the new Microsoft Certified Architect (Technology focus) program here after they got the cert. Its different from existing MCA (Solutions/ Infra) programs which are technology agnostic.

Awhile ago I blogged about Microsoft releasing products protocol documentation which are essential design specifications. That was about 2 months ago and the documents are of beta version.

Today the official version 1 is out that it covers the following products.

1. Windows
2. WCF
3. Windows Server Protocol
4. .NET Framework
5. Office
6. Office Binary File Format
7. SharePoint
8. Exchange
9. SQL Server
10. VBA Language Spec
11. XAML

Few days ago  I blogged about SQL Server 2008 RC0 availability and SQL 2008 Trial Hosting by SQL Server Pro Association. Then yesterday I found out there is also a web site offering free online training from Microsoft here.

Microsoft released the 1st release candidate (RC0) for SQL Server 2008 few days ago. This could means the rumoured date of a Q3 2008 released is possible.

Go here to download the bits. Note they even got a new logo for their server products (pic above)

On the mean time, I also realize that Professional Associaition For SQL Server (SQLPass.org) is offering trial SQL 2008 accounts here on top of some learning resources.

DinnerNow is a cool sample application that is complex and huge enough to showcase all the latest Microsoft Windows Application Platform technologies. It is also a good example on how to put Software plus Service vision to work here. You can download the latest v2.5 version from Codeplex website.

Not I want to do selling here but the technologies includes

1. .Net Framework 3.5
• Windows Presentation Foundation
• Windows Workflow Foundation
• Windows Communication Foundation
• Cardspace
2. Windows Mobile 6
3. MMC 3.0 shell addin developed using .NET
4. Poweshell
5. IIS 7.0
6. Integration with Windows Live services such as Virtual Earth

Because of IIS 7.0, you will need to install DinnerNow on top of Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008. However since trying this for the past few months, I got no luck of getting it running. There has been quite a few posts on the Codeplex forum with people complaining the same time.

Then checking back all the event logs in the OS, I realize there are a lot of authentication error in the IIS log. This leads me to a creation the self signed SSL cert causes this problem. This is because when you setup the WCF service website of DinnerNow it will installs its own SSL cert as well. So for a change I created a clean Win Server 2008 VPC and during the IIS installation process, I refused to create or install any SSL cert. Just select Choose a certificate for SSL encryption later in the Choose a certificate for SSL encryption screen (as pic below)

Well, do check out whether this work for you or not which I believe there are other environment issues which might pops up for larger application like DinnerNow.

P/S: So to get DinnerNow working on my VPC, I installed the following software

• Windows Server 2008
• IIS 7.0
• Visual Studio 2008 Pro with SQL Server 2005 Express
• Powershell enabled
• Desktop Experience enabled for WMDC
• Windows Mobile Device Center (WMDC)
• Windows Mobile 6 SDK

Check out the slides about ADO.NET Tips and Tricks

http://cid-732d1d42507315a3.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/MsdnRoadShowPG00801/TechNet%20MSDN%20-%20ADO.NET.pdf

Managed to get Reporting Services integrated with MOSS yesterday. Phew… took me a morning to do that and this is my 2nd try on a VPC environment.  The first thing I do it on a Windows 2003 VPC with Domain Controller, SQL Server, MOSS together. Apearantly later when I setup everything and go back to grant database access in Central Administration web site it returns me some funny message. After spending sometime on the web, I realize there is some problem when you have DC on the same machine.

So in my 2nd try I setup 2 VPCs, the 1st one hosting the DC and Cert server while the 2nd one have SQL Server and MOSS installed. Then I got it right this time. There is a word of cautious though, if you use a domain account to start the SQL Server services (such as domain\sqlservice) then you will have problem starting up the reporting Services Web Service at http://domain.com/reportserver. This is because the web service in IIS 6.0 uses Network Service account in the application pool, so all you need is go into IIS and change the App Pool identity (in the case will be the ReportServer app pool) to your SQL Server service account.

Below are some links which help me get started in all this.

Configure the Report Server Integration Feature in SharePoint Central Administration
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb326213.aspx

Report Server How-to Topics
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb283321.aspx

Time Chapman, a SQL Server DBA written about the features he likes in SQL Server 2008, the 4th one in his list is my favorite too for a developer viewpoint. Change Data Capture makes it easier to create audit log components if you use of stored procedure for data tier coding.

September’s TechEd Southeast Asia 2007 features a few topics too about Katmai both for DBAs and developers.

Enterprise Data Management Track

1. BI enhancement in SQL Server 2008
2. Next release of SQL Server: Data Warehouse Enhancement
3. SQL Server 2008: Overview
4. SQL Server 2008 Manageability Overview

Custom SharePoint lists are like tables in a traditional database; in some ways they’re even better. But as organizations adopt this new data store, they introduce additional complexities in integrating new list-based solutions with existing database applications. This article shows you how to solve the data mismatch problem by using the Extract Transform and Load (ETL) capabilities of Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) and Microsoft’s new Collaborative Application Markup Language (CAML).

http://www.devx.com/dotnet/Article/35070?trk=DXRSS_DOTNET