SQL Server Scripted Configuration: Part 4
- Hands-Off Deployment of SQL Server
- Defining the Header Information for Our Script
- Checking for the Existence of Our Variables
- Cleaning Up the Code
- Summary
The deployment and configuration of software can be a real nightmare to standardize; each administrator has his or her own ideas of best practice, even with checklists (or cheat sheets). In this series of articles, Rob Hawthorne discusses the unattended installation of SQL Server and then drill down to writing your own scripts to install SQL Server, which ensures a standard and consistent deployment every time!
Hands-Off Deployment of SQL Server
In the articles so far in this series, we have looked at a number of key aspects (creating the setup.iss file, creating the installation scripts for SQL Server, and debugging the scripts) of silently installing SQL Server 2000. These articles provided you with the framework you need to go off an create your very own scripts!
In this article, we will write a script to install SQL Server 2000 Service Pack 2 (SP2), which is current at the time of writing. This script can be easily modified, however, to accommodate earlier (SP1) or later SPs, depending on your needs. We will also modify the main.bat batch file, so we can automatically call and install SP2, based on the success of the preceding script (InstallSQLServer.bat).