SQL Server on Server Core

Window Server 2008 R2 Server Core, that is. When this product went public beta yesterday, I scanned the feature list to see if were any new and cool features for the DBA. Nothing specific as far as I could see. It is x64 only and does support live migration which is equivalent to vmotion on VMWare. Cool but neither are necessarily SQL related.

In case you have not heard about Server Core. It is a stripped down version of Windows Server with no GUI. You basically log into a cmd prompt or administer remotely.

I just read that the .Net Framework is installed on Windows 2008 Server R2 Server Core Edition at Andrew Fryer’s Blog. This means SQL Server can be installed.

To quote Andrew, here are the benefits of SQL Server on Server Core :

• more grunt for SQL Server in terms of memory and CPU
• more security as there’s less attack surface
• less downtime to patch the OS as there’s less to patch.

There is just one problem. Is it still Windows if there are no… umm… Windows?

More details on Windows Server 2008 r2 can be found in the reviewers guide.

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COMMENTS:

Good news.
The thing that appreciates me is "less downtime" witch is rare on Windows platforms.

posted @ Friday, January 09, 2009 9:13 AM by Mohammad Mahdi Ramezanpour

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Awesome! Thanks for the news. That was the bigest gaff I have seen MS make in a while. "Core Server? Cool, can I use it for SQL? No? What about IIS? Only old school asp?" *sigh* Very glad to see that they have addressed the problem.

posted @ Friday, January 09, 2009 2:24 PM by Larry Smithmier

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Here's a guide + video for installing SQL Server on Windows Server 2008 R2 Core: http://www.nullsession.com/2009/06/02/sql-server-2008-on-server-core-2008-r2/

posted @ Wednesday, June 03, 2009 1:20 AM by Joachim Nässlander

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