Remote and Unattended Installation | Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2000

SQL Server can be installed on a remote computer, and it can be totally scripted, requiring no user intervention. With SQL Server 2000, the InstallShield-based installation, remote setup, and unattended setup are almost the same thing. The remote installation option can be useful when you are responsible for many SQL Server installations. In fact, the feature was added (in the days predating Microsoft Systems Management Server) at the behest of Microsoft's own MIS organization, which manages more than 200 machines running SQL Server (and thousands of databases). Installing and upgrading those 200 servers remotely from one computer greatly simplified MIS's work.

Other sites script their installations by using the unattended installation feature to deploy many servers instead of using the remote installation option, which is still an interactive process. Microsoft Systems Management Server uses this capability and can be used to install SQL Server at multiple sites. (In fact, unattended installation scripts and a PDF file, used by Systems Management Server, are provided on the root directory of the SQL Server CD.)

The unattended installation option is also useful if you're embedding SQL Server in a turnkey solution and want to provide a single, unified installation. As should be apparent by now, the SQL Server installation program makes multiple entries to the Registry, changes system paths and various system settings, creates program groups and user accounts, and performs basic initial configuration for its operation. The installation program is far from a glorified file-copy program. It would not be realistic for solution providers to create their own programs to install SQL Server as part of their services or products. But they can easily achieve the same results by simply creating a script that can drive the SQL Server installation program without any user intervention.

Remote Installation

Remote installation is similar to a normal, local installation. After you choose the remote installation option (by clicking Remote in the first dialog box of the installation program), you are prompted to answer a few questions in addition to those a local installation needs. Along with providing the machine name of the anticipated SQL Server, you must do the following:

Run the installation program from an account with administrator privileges on the remote (target) server
Be aware that drive paths should be relative to the remote server

After specifying that you want a remote installation, the information that you provide in the rest of the dialog boxes is collected into a file called setup.iss. Then a program is started on the remote computer, and the local installation program exits. The remote program (remsetup.exe) copies files to the \admin$ share directory and runs an unattended installation on the remote computer using the options specified in the setup.iss file.

Unattended Installation

Unattended installation creates a file using the options you selected in the SQL Server installation program. To invoke an unattended installation, you must first generate an InstallShield ISS file using one of the three methods described in the following list. All the methods require that you run the SQL Server installation program from a command prompt instead of using the autorun.exe program. The program is in the x86\Setup folder on the SQL Server installation CD.

Normal Installation The normal installation creates a file called setup.iss. This file is saved in the Install folder in the MSSQL7 directory (for the default instance) or in program directory for the named instance. The setup.iss file contains your answers to all the questions in the installation dialog boxes.
Advanced Installation During installation, you are presented with a dialog box that allows you to choose to create a named instance, upgrade an existing instance (if one exists), or choose advanced options. If you choose Advanced, you can choose the option to record an Unattended ISS file. You then go through the rest of the dialog boxes, providing answers to questions, and your answers are saved in a setup.iss file in the root directory of your operating system. SQL Server isn't actually installed.
Manual File Creation The installation CD contains a sample setup file called sqlins.iss. You can use a text editor to modify this file to correspond to the installation options you want. For details of the format of this file, see the online documentation.

After the setup ISS file is created, you can move or copy it to another location for use on other servers. For subsequent automated installations, start Setupsql and specify a previously generated setup ISS file as input by using the -f1 command-line option. The syntax for this command is:

 START Setupsql.exe -f1 <full path to iss file> -SMS -s

The -s switch causes setup to run in a silent mode with no user interface. If the -SMS switch is not specified, the setup program launches InstallShield to perform the installation and then exits. Control immediately returns to the user. If the -SMS switch is specified, the setup program waits until the installation is complete before terminating. This allows an automated process or a user-created batch file to launch the setup program, wait for setup to complete, and then perform additional actions. Without the -SMS switch, the additional actions might be initiated before the installation of SQL Server completes.

NOTE
For remote or unattended installation, you might choose to copy all the files from the CD to a network share. Normally, you should not notice any difference between network installation and installation from the CD.

Changing Installation Options

All the decisions you make during installation can be changed at a later time. As mentioned earlier, you can change your decisions about the account under which the SQL Server service runs and whether SQL Server should start automatically when the system starts. You do this either using the Services applet or by editing the properties of your SQL Server through SQL Enterprise Manager. You can also change the Security options for SQL Server by using SQL Enterprise Manager to specify whether SQL Server should use Windows Authentication only or also use standard SQL Server Authentication. You can change the network interface options by using the Server Network Utility. The collation cannot be changed on the system databases, but new databases can be built with any collation, and you can change an existing user database to a new collation.

SQL Server 2000 provides the following additional utilities to carry out these special operations:

Rebuilding the master database The Rebuild master utility rebuildm.exe in the Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\80\Tools\Binn directory rebuilds the master database completely. You might have to restore backups of the msdb and model system databases after you rebuild the master database.
Rebuilding the Registry entries You can use the setup program to restore the SQL Server Registry entries if they become corrupted. The same Advanced Options dialog box that allows you to build an unattended installation file gives you the option of rebuilding the Registry. You might have to rebuild the Registry if the Windows NT and Windows 2000 Registry was partially corrupted (for example, if it was inadvertently deleted using the Registry editing program) or if Windows NT and Windows 2000 was reinstalled (not upgraded) on a machine and the new Registry is not aware of the previous SQL Server installation.

Adding Additional Components

If you want to add components, you can rerun the SQL Server installation program from the original CD. The program detects and displays components that you already have installed and lets you select additional components. The main dialog box is very specific about the actions it will perform: "Selecting components already installed will not reinstall them and unselecting components already installed will not remove them." The components you might want to install after the initial installation include:

Server components You can install replication support, the performance counters, and full-text search capabilities.
Management tools You can install SQL Enterprise Manager, SQL Query Analyzer, SQL Server Profiler, and DTC Client Support.

Two other tools are available with SQL Server 2000 that are not part of the standard installation. The initial installation screen gives you the choice of installing SQL Server (Personal or one of the full server editions), SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services, or English Query. If you choose either of the latter two options, SQL Server itself is not installed and any existing SQL Server 2000 instances are not affected.