SQL Server Community Technical Preview One (CTP1) was release from Microsoft in June 2013. If you are interested in learning firsthand what new features are available, then you should download and install the new SQL Server bits. In this article I will walk you through preparing, downloading and the steps to install the SQL Server 2014 CTP1 release.
Preparing for the Installation
One of the first things you should do when considering installing any software is to read the release notes. You can find the release notes for SQL Server 2014 CTP1 here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn169381(v=sql.15).aspxIn these release notes you will find these requirements:
- SQL Server 2014 CTP1 needs to be installed on a clean machine, meaning on a machine that doesn’t already have SQL Server running on it.
- It will need to be installed on a machine that supports the X64 architecture.
- It only supports being installed on the following Operating Systems: Window Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012 or Windows Server 2012 R2 Preview.
- CTP1 does not support upgrading an instance to SQL Server 2014.
Downloading the CTP1 Software
You can download SQL Server 2014 CTP1 by going to this page and clicking on the “Download Trial >” link: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlserver/sql-server-2014.aspxBy clicking on this link you will be taken to a page where you can download the CTP1 software. On the download page you have three different download options as shown below:
Download Options
Pick the download version that you feel is best for your situation, then click on the “Get Started Now” button. Upon doing this you will be taken to the login page for live.com. You will need to login to live.com in order to download the CTP1 software. If you don’t have an account you will need to sign up before you can download CTP1.
Once you sign on to live.com you will be taking to a “Profile Center” page where you can provide Microsoft with some information about yourself, or not, and then once you click continue, or cancel you will be taken to the “SQL Server 2014 CTP1 Resource Page”. On the right of this page there is a big green button that says “Download Files”. When you click on this button the download will start.
On the webpage listed at the top of this section, I would suggest that you also click on the hyperlinks under the “Learn More About SQL Server 2014”. By doing this you will be able download a series PDF’s, which will provide you with lots of information about SQL Server 2014.
Installing CTP1
After you have your fresh machine prepared you can start your installation. In my case I created a Windows 2008 R2 Enterprise machine for installing my version of SQL Server 2014 CTP1.The first step of my installation was to mount the ISO image to my newly prepared Window server. After the ISO image was mounted I then expanded it and used the setup.exe file to start the execution of SQL Server 2014 installation. When SQL Server 2014 started up this was the first screen displayed:
SQL Server Installation Center
As you can see from this first screen shot the SQL Server 2014 installation is similar to the installation process for other versions of SQL Server. To install SQL Server 2014 CTP1 I clicked on the “Installation” item in the left pane of the SQL Server Installation Center window. After doing that the following window was displayed:
Installation
On this windows I clicked on the “New SQL Server stand-alone installation or add features to an existing installation” link in the right pane of the above window to install my new instance of SQL Server 2014 CTP1.
The first step of the installation process was to run a check on my machine to make sure it was ready to install SQL Server 2014. While that check was running the following screen was displayed:
Setup Support Rules
Once this check was done this screen shows how many checks Passed, Failed, had Warnings or were Skipped. Since I had no errors I clicked on the “OK” button to move on to the next installation step. If you do happen to have any errors you will need to resolve those first. When I clicked on the “OK’ button the following screen was displayed:
Product Key
On this screen I selected to install the free “Evaluation” edition. Once I selected this edition I then clicked on the “Next>” button, which brought up the “Licensing Terms” window. On the licensing window I selected the “I accept licensing terms” checkbox and then clicked on the “Next>” button to proceed with the installation. Upon doing this the following screen was displayed:
Setup Role
Since I only want to install the SQL Server features, I made sure the “SQL Server Feature Installation” radio button was selected and then I clicked on the “Next>” button. After clicking on the “Next>” button the following screen was displayed:
Feature Selection
On this screen I decided to click on the “Select All” button, since I wanted to install all of the features. On this screen I could have also identified the directory where the features should be installed. I took the default location. Once all the boxes were checked, and I verified the shared feature directories I then clicked on the “Next>” button. Upon doing this the installation process proceeded with checking the prerequisites. After the checks were completed the “Installation Rules” windows was displayed. If you have any errors reported on this page you will need to resolve them before you can move on. My machine didn’t identify any problems, so I just clicked on the “Next>” button, which brought up the window below:
Instance Configuration
On this screen I needed to determine what kind of instance I wanted (default or named) and I needed to identify where I wanted to store the instance root directory. I took the defaults as shown above, then proceeded with the installation by clicking on the “Next>” button.
The next screen displayed was the “Disk Space Requirement “screen. This screen shows how much space will be required for the shared install and the instance directory. Once I reviewed the space requirements I clicked on the “Next>” button which then brought up the window below:
Server Configuration: Service Accounts
On this window I had to identify the type of accounts and the names of those accounts that will be running my different SQL Server services, as well as the startup type for each service. By default all but one of the accounts are NT Service accounts. Since I’m only installing SQL Server 2014 for testing purposes I took the default. If I didn’t want to take the defaults then I would have been required to establish a different windows account for each service.
On this window if I clicked on the “Collation” tab the following window is displayed:
Server Configuration: Collation
Notice that the default collation for both the database engine and Analysis Services is Latin1-General. If you wanted to have a different collation then you need to click on the “Customize…” button. I wanted to take the defaults so I click on the “Next>” button to move on to the next step in the installation process.
Database Engine Configuration: Server Configuration
On this screen I normally select the “Mixed Mode” option and enter a password for the system administrator account. I do this because I always have one or two applications that still do not support Windows Authentication. I also had to enter a valid Windows Accounts account to be a system administrator. Since I normally am the administrator for the boxes in which I install SQL Server, I clicked on the “Add Current User” button to add myself as an admin for this instance of SQL Server. If you want to add others you can do this be using the “Add…” button multiple times to provide additional accounts that you’d like to give administrator rights. Once I completed filling out the “Server Configuration” tab I then clicked on the “Data Directories” tab which brought up the following screen:
Database Engine Configuration: Data Directories
On the data directory tab I can determine where I want to place all my database components. Since my test machine only has a C drive I will take the default setting. If your machine has multiple drives then you might want to spread the data directories out across your different drives. Since I also want to enable filestream I clicked on the “FILESTREAM” tab. Upon doing this the following window was displayed:
Database Engine Configuration: FILESTREAM
On this screen I checked the “Enable FILESTREAM for Transact-SQL access” button to enable filestream. Once done, I clicked on the “Next>” button to move on to the next installation window, which is displayed below:
Analysis Services Configuration: Server Configuration
On this window I can identify which “Server Mode” I want Analysis Services to run under. In my case I used the “Multidimensional and Data Mining Mode”. Additionally on this screen I needed to identify at least one user that will be the administrator of Analysis Services before I can successfully move off of this window. In my case I clicked on the “Add Current User” to make myself the admin. Next I clicked on the “Data Directories” tab, which brought up this window:
Analysis Services Configuration
On this window I could distribute the Analysis Services folders across different drives. In my case since I only have a C drive on my test machine I took the defaults, and then click on the “Next>” button to move on to the next step in the setup. Upon doing this the following window was displayed:
Reporting Services Configuration
On this screen there is only one option I needed to determine. That is, do I want to have the installation process configure Reporting Services, or do I want to configure it after the installation. I decided to take the default setting for “Reporting Services Native Mode” and allow the installation process to install and configure Reporting Services. After clicking on the “Next>” button the following window was displayed:
Distributed Replay Controller
On this screen I needed to determine who will have access to the Distributed Replay Controller. Like the other screens I clicked on the “Add Current User” button to give myself access to the Distributed Replay Controller and then clicked on the “Next>” button. Upon doing this the next window was displayed:
Distributed Replay Client
On the distributed Replay Client screen I needed to specify a controller name and then identify where I want the working and result directory to store information. Once I specified a name and location I clicked on the “Next>” button which brought up the Error Reporting screen.
Error Reporting
By default the installation process will send Windows and SQL Server errors to Microsoft. I normally send errors because this feedback process helps Microsoft refine the installation process. To move on to the next step of the installation process I clicked on the “Next>” button, which brings up the Installation Rules configuration window. On this window the installation process reports any situations that would block the installation process.
Installation Configuration Rules
Since I have no errors I just clicked on the “Next>” button to continue with the installation process. Upon doing that the “Ready to Install” screen was displayed.
Ready to Install
On this window I reviewed what was going to be installed and then when done reviewing I clicked on the “Install” button. This started the installation process and also displayed the “Install Progress” window. The window keeps changing as different installation components are installed. Once the installation was completely finished the following window was displayed:
Complete
Like prior releases, Books Online is not installed by default when you install SQL Server. If you want to review the books online on the web you can use the link found in the above screenshot. At the time when this article was written there was no downloadable version of Books Online documentation for SQL Server 2014.
Additional Links for SQL Server 2014
Here are three different links you can use to find out more information about SQL Server 2014:Hardware and Software For Installing SQL Server 2014
What’s New in SQL Server 2014
Online Installation Help
