Installing Fusion and creating Windows virtual machine
For this article series, VMware Fusion was used as the virtualization software for Mac. So, before any virtual machines (Windows, Ubuntu / Linux) were created, Fusion software was installed on the Mac. Please refer to the following article for notes on installing Fusion on the Mac:
Installing Fusion on Mac OS X
Then a Windows Vista Ultimate virtual machine was created on the Mac with Fusion software. For notes on creating a Vista virtual machine on Mac, please refer to the following article:
Installing Windows on a Mac with Fusion
Rest of this article goes through installing SQL Server 2008 on the above Windows virtual machine.
Starting the Installation
When the Vista virtual machine is open under VMware Fusion and the SQL Server installation disk is in the drive, it would automatically be recognized by Vista (and be ignored by Mac OS X).
SQL Server 2008 requires the latest version of .NET Framework 3.5 SP1. That would be installed as a prerequisite - if it is not already there.
Figure 1. Installing Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 as a prerequisite for installing SQL Server 2008.
SQL Server 2008 Developer Edition
In the rest of this article, SQL Server 2008 Developer Edition is installed. The installation screen (called the SQL Server Installation Center) is very elaborate.
Figure 2. The SQL Server 2008 Installation Center – very detailed installation program.
This installation is not for production environment -- but rather just for developing and testing. SQL Server 2008 seems to be officially supported in the virtual environment for production under Windows Server 2008. Here, the installation is being done on Vista Ultimate in a virtual machine setting (VMware Fusion is the virtualization software).
To make sure that at least the Installer thinks the above virtual machine settings are OK, the System Configuration Checker is run. As you can see, all the required tests have passed for this virtual machine setting.
Figure 3. The SQL Server 2008 installer thinks it is OK to install on Windows Vista Ultimate virtual machine created with VMware Fusion.
Stand-alone Installation
This is a stand-alone installation of SQL Server on a virtual machine.
Figure 4. Stand-alone installation of SQL Server 2008 on a Windows Vista virtual machine. From here an instance of SQL Server can be created, as well as the database tools installed.
Figure 5. Starting the Installation for SQL Server 2008. Enter the appropriate product key.
Then accept the license terms for installing SQL Server 2008. After that all the necessary support files for SQL Server 2008 will be installed.
Figure 6. Installing the features. Here all the features of SQL Server 2008 are chosen.
SQL Server 2008 comes with many features, including Full-Text Search, Reporting Services, Analysis Services, and so on.
Figure 7. Creating an instance of SQL Server as a part of the installation. There is already an SQLEXPRESS instance that was installed when Visual Studio 2008 was installed on this virtual machine. The version number for SQL Server 2005 is 9.x and the version number for SQL Server 2008 is 10.x
Figure 8. SQL Server 2008 default installation with all the features requires 2.5GB of disk space.
Then in the next several screens, the following tasks are performed:
- Server Configuration for SQL Server 2008.
- Database Engine Configuration for SQL Server 2008
- Analysis Services Configuration for SQL Server 2008.
- Reporting Services Configuration for SQL Server 2008
Figure 9. Ready to install SQL Server 2008. This Developer Edition installation includes database management tools as well.
Figure 10. All the SQL Server 2008 tools and services have been installed successfully on this Windows Vista virtual machine on an iMac.
Figure 11. SQL Server 2008 installation completed.
More Articles on Fusion and SQL Server
The following article has thoughts on using SQL Server 2008 on a Windows Vista virtual machine. Adventure Works database is installed on top of this in the virtual environment and tested by issuing queries and creating database diagrams inside SQL Server Management Studio.
Using SQL Server on Windows on VMware Fusion
This article series on Fusion goes through a couple of virtual machines created with Windows Vista and Ubuntu operating systems. These articles also go through using popular applications like Microsoft Office, SQL Server, and Visual Studio on these virtual machines created with Fusion. They also discuss the pros and cons of virtual machines, graphics, sound, video, and Internet connections in them.
Article Series: Fusion on a Mac
