Scripting installations of SQL Server 2008 is much easier than it is with SQL Server 2005 because of the ConfigurationFile.ini. Even if you don't script your installations, you should review the contents of this file to verify that the installation transpired as intended. Although it is possible to script a SQL Server 2005 installation, you can't capture an interactive installation and replay it. When SQL Server 2008 is installed, a ConfigurationFile.ini file is created in C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Setup Bootstrap\Log\yyyymmdd_hhmmss. To use ConfigurationFile.ini with the installation wizard, select Advanced and Install based on configuration file. If you need to make changes to the file before performing another installation, it is a best practice to make a copy and work with the copy. From an auditing and compliance perspective, each installation's ConfigurationFile.ini file should be preserved in its original state as verification of the initial state of the SQL Server installation.

Now that Hyper-V is RTM, why should you care? Because it performs very well! If you do demos using virtual machines on a laptop, do yourself a favor and upgrade to Hyper-V. If you have a production data center with lots of virtual machines, you might want to wait until System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) is available. Management of virtual assets is critical in a production environment. SCVMM 2007 does not manage Hyper-V machines.

If you are currently running virtual machines using Virtual PC or Virtual Server, you'll want to preserve your existing virtual hard drive (vhd) assets. You can do this manually be following these steps:

1. Make a copy of your vhd.
2. Run the vhd in Virtual PC or Virtual Server.
3. If Hyper-V requires a higher service pack, apply it now.
4. Remove the Virtual Machine Additions.
5. Save and permanently commit the changes.
6. Make the updated vhd available to Hyper-V (e.g., copy the vhd to the Hyper-V physical machine, put it on your SAN, etc.)
7. Create a new Hyper-V virtual machine using the updated vhd.
8. Install the Integration Services into the virtual machine.

Must you apply a service pack while you are still in the Virtual PC or Virtual Server environment? It depends. There have been times I've seen the mouse unavailable in Hyper-V until Integration Services was installed. But Integration Services can't be installed until the machine is at the correct service pack level. Since Integration Services makes the mouse available but requires the service pack, you can be stuck installing a service pack without a mouse. It's a Catch-22. Avoid the trouble, install the service pack before moving to Hyper-V.

With RTM, more operating systems and service packs are supported. XP service pack 2 is now supported. If you want to run XP using two virtual processors instead of one, you'll still need to upgrade to service pack 3. Windows 2000 with service pack 4 is now supported, which is great for those legacy machines running older versions of SQL Server.

I'm running the RTM version of Hyper-V on my dual core laptop. Performance is excellent. My laptop is set to single boot into Windows 2008 Enterprise x64. It has the desktop experience, Aero, and audio enabled. The only feature it doesn't have that I miss is Windows Media Center.

See John Howard's blog for version number information. http://blogs.technet.com/jhoward/archive/2008/06/26/hyper-v-rtm-announcement-available-today-from-the-microsoft-download-centre.aspx

With SQL Server 2008 RC0 available for download now, people are asking about Hyper-V versus Virtual PC and Virtual Server. For best performance, I recommend that you build a Hyper-V virtual machine. This raises a question about convenience. What if you have existing Virtual PC or Virtual Server virtual machines and want to migrate them to Hyper-V? It's easy if you understand what is required.

You must remove the Virtual Machine Additions before you use your Virtual PC or Virtual Server vhd as the basis of a Hyper-V virtual machine. You also must have the virtual machine at the correct service pack level to take advantage of the performance optimizations Hyper-V Integration Services provide. (People have already posted about confusing SSIS and Hyper-V when only the words "Integration Services" are used.)

Currently in Hyper-V RC1, these are the only Windows operating systems and patch levels that can take advantage of Integration Services (subject to change at RTM):

1. XP Service Pack 3
2. 2003 Service Pack 2
3. Vista Service Pack 1
4. Windows 2008

To avoid a Catch-22, you should install any required service pack in Virtual PC or Virtual Server before uninstalling the Virtual Machine Additions. If you uninstall the Additions before installing the service pack, installation of the service pack will take longer. If you install the service pack after switching to Hyper-V, you won't have mouse control until you've installed Integration Services, which requires that the service pack already be applied.

Keep in mind that Hyper-V RC0 Integration Services worked only with Windows 2003 and 2008. RC1 added XP and Vista. RTM might support more operating systems and service pack levels.

It's early in the morning here at the TechEd conference for developers in Orlando, Florida. I've already helped two people with Hyper-V problems caused by incompatible version numbers. Since blog posts live on long past the date of publication, I'm going to speak about the root cause of the problem and not get into the specific KB articles and patches.

Here is what you need to know. Windows 2008 Server comes with the Hyper-V beta bits, which are quite outdated now. If you enable the Hyper-V role from original Windows 2008 Server media, you'll need to update Hyper-V from beta to what is current. Windows Update will provide the necessary update or you can find the current patch and manually apply the update. Once you update pre-RTM Hyper-V, any Hyper-V virtual machines need to be updated to the Integration Services components in your updated Hyper-V.

As of today, Hyper-V is at RC1. It is incompatible with the current beta of SCVMM 2008. The SCVMM 2008 beta version available now is compatible with the RC0 version of Hyper-V.

Overclocking is a line most people won't cross. Many perceive the risk or inconvenience as too high, but the performance gains can be significant. It's not necessary to resort to water cooling or other extreme measures. The Q6600 quad core cpu from Intel can be overclocked if you don't mind removing it from its socket. Since my machines were built by me, I didn't mind doing this. By covering one of the pins on the Q6600 with electrical tape before reinserting it, the front side bus (FSB) goes from 1066 MHz to 1333 MHz. See http://forums.nvidia.com/lofiversion/index.php?t58361.html for more details. Why not overclock by changing settings in the BIOS instead? Not all motherboards have BIOS options for overclocking. Under heavy load, my Q6600 now hits 3 GHz instead of its official maximum of 2.4 GHz. I haven't observed higher processor temperatures.

It's great being able to get my work done faster. If only someone would figure out some pin mods for laptops that have removable processors!

Microsoft is slowly shifting to virtual hard disk (vhd) files as a means of distributing CTP and beta software. This is great and quite convenient, but it does introduce new problems to deal with. Here are workarounds to common problems people are seeing when running preconfigured vhd files on Virtual PC.

First, there is the problem with the disappearing mouse cursor. This problem is an old problem people have been reporting for years. It isn't unique to Virtual PC. VMware users have reported the same problem. Historically, there have been several workarounds reported. There are two general categories of workarounds. You can change either video settings or mouse and cursor settings. I can't predict what workaround is best for you, so you'll have to experiment and see what works best for you.

The video workaround is quite simple. It does assume that the Virtual Machine Additions are already installed in the virtual machine. Microsoft supplies preconfigured virtual machines with the VM Additions already installed.

1. Go to Display Properties or Display Settings property page and click the Advanced or Advanced Settings button.
2. Select the Troubleshoot tab. If there is a Change settings button, click it.
3. Change the Hardware acceleration to one tick mark less than Full. Some users report that mouse movement isn't as smooth after this workaround is implemented.

People have reported the disappearing mouse problem doesn't happen if the Virtual Machine Additions are not installed. Uninstalling the VM Additions is not an appropriate workaround. To understand why this VM Additions would make a difference in video behavior, it's because the VM Additions change the video driver. The VM Additions install an emulated S3 Trio video driver.

Many people prefer changing mouse behavior instead of reducing video hardware acceleration. There are several options people are using singly or in combination.

1. Go to Control Panel and select Mouse.
2. Select the Pointers tab. On the Scheme dropdown list, select one of the Windows Black schemes.
3. Select the Pointer Options tab.
   a. Check Display pointer trails.
   b. Uncheck Hide pointer while typing.
4. If you have an XP or 2003 Server guest, copy all of the cursor files in C:\Windows\Cursors from a Vista machine into your virtual machine. Because I cannot replicate the problem, I can't confirm that this workaround actually works.

Users who are running preconfigured vhd files on either Vista or 2008 Server are seeing error messages stating that the virtual machines are already in use or marked read-only [sic]. This is true even when logged on as Administrator. It is a permissions problem and is easily resolved by granting full control of the folders and files to the Users group. Keep in mind that in the Vista security model, running as Administrator doesn't mean that everything you do is done with full Administrator privileges, which is why you have to change permissions. Taking ownership of the files is another option, but it is not suitable if there are multiple users needing permissions to run the virtual machines.

External drives can present a permissions problem. You can follow the steps described here http://msinfluentials.com/blogs/jesper/archive/2007/01/16/help-vista-won-t-let-me-write-to-my-external-hard-drive.aspx or take ownership of the entire drive or just the directory subtree of interest.

Today is the day authors traditionally write things that aren't oh so serious, so I'm wondering why Steve Ballmer keeps talking about the evolution of software at Microsoft but never intelligent design. Every time I go to a Microsoft or SQL Server conference, I hear people talking about evolutionary changes. Doesn't evolution have something to do with random changes? If I wanted random changes, I'd be using open source. Haven't you used a new feature that was so good, so suited to the tasks you do that you thought, wow, the people who designed this are really good?

I visit the Microsoft campus every now and then, ostensibly to work or attend meetings. But I have a secret agenda in these trips. I'm looking for the intelligent designer. Or designers. When I walk around the Microsoft campus, I carefully examine each building wondering if an intelligent designer works there. I'm not swayed by all of that talk about evolution at Microsoft. I think the intelligent designers should get credit for great design work instead of having their work described as the result of natural selection (although when something doesn't work well, blaming it on a deleterious mutation might be convenient). Does Visual Studio have a class evolver in it? No! It has a class designer.

Now all of us have had at least one coworker in the past whose work was clearly random. Maybe you've worked on a project with no intelligent design at all. In those cases, perhaps random evolutionary change is the only hope for anything good to happen. I'm looking for less evolution and more intelligent design on my next project or in my next purchase.

Hyper-V provides really great performance, more than enough to remove the frustration from running beta versions of SQL Server in a virtual environment. Like so many other server products, we often use it through Remote Desktop Connection. That's a problem when installing an operating system in a Hyper-V virtual machine (which is called a child partition, by the way) because you don't have any control of the mouse in a Virtual Machine Connection window when you are connected to the server via Remote Desktop Connection. Once Integration Services are installed, everything is fine, but first you have to get them installed without using a mouse.

There is a simple trick to doing a mouseless installation of Integration Services. Create an iso file containing both the Integration Services installer and an autorun.inf file. Attach the iso file to the running virtual machine and use the keyboard to kick off the installation.

Creating an iso file can be done using many commercial CD/DVD burning applications. There are also two free applications that quickly and easily create iso files. IsoRecorder can be downloaded from http://isorecorder.alexfeinman.com/isorecorder.htm and Folder2Iso can be downloaded from http://www.trustfm.net/divx/SoftwareFolder2Iso.php?b2=1. It isn't an either or choice, you need them both. IsoRecorder is a very convenient tool because it allows you to right-click on a folder and create an iso file. But it does require an installation, something that you might not want to do or even been allowed to do on a server. Folder2Iso is an executable you just run without ever installing anything. It is ideal for servers you want to keep clean.

Both IsoRecorder and Folder2Iso require that you create a folder and put all of the files you want in the iso file in that folder. You'll need to add one additional file, the autorun.inf file, to that folder before creating the iso file.

Here are the steps for installing Integration Services via Remote Desktop Connection. Although this example is for a 64-bit child partition, the steps for a 32-bit system are the same, except for the Integration Services file to use.

1. Create a folder with a descriptive name such as Hyper-Vx64RC0
2. Add the Integration Services installer file Windows6.0-KB949219-x64.msu (or whatever is the most current version) to the Hyper-Vx64RC0 folder.
3. Add the following two line autorun.inf file to the Hyper-Vx64RC0 folder.
   
   [autorun]
   shellexecute=Windows6.0-KB949219-x64.msu
   
   
4. Create an iso file from the Hyper-Vx64 folder. IsoRecorder is used in this example.
   
   
5. Attach the iso file to the running virtual machine. Use the enter key to run the installer file.
   
   
6. Reboot.

The installer for the Integration Services requires a reboot, which I could not accomplish until I sent a CTRL+ALT+DEL to the vm and used keyboard commands to force a reboot. After the vm rebooted, full mouse control was enabled.