With the recent release of the RC for Microsoft’s SQL Server 2008, we decided it was time to give it a whirl on an internal development box.
We had a previous CTP (10.0.1300.13) on our target box, and were hoping that we could upgrade that, so there was no hassle. Unfortunately, when we went through the process it initially said that it could, but when it came to selecting data directories it complained of existing data in the data directories. Well duh? I wanted to upgrade!
Since it was a development box, and really there was only one database on there that mattered, a quick backup was in order. Uninstalling our old deployment gave us an insight into some of the changes in this release for customizations. The drill down options on features in the new install is much nicer, allowing for further customization of what gets installed getting rid of all those unwanted extra services that are not needed.
Something to note here, during its ‘checks’ where it looks for possible problems. It gave us a ‘Passed’ for previous CTP installation, prior to the removal of our previous version which failed on upgrade. Interesting little hickup there, that hopefully will get fixed by release.
The actual installation process took less then 5 minutes on the server, however it can be assumed that this is relative to your own hardware specs. I got a few errors related to Visual Studio during the install, probably because it’s not installed on that server (and why would it be?). The errors didn’t seem to effect the install at all, and we we’re back up and running within 5 minutes after the installation (had to reattach the database).
Performance wise, we are seeing a major improvement compared to the old install. Not sure why, but we’ll look into it.