SQL Server 2000 Administration in 15 Minutes a Week: Administration Fundamentals

This series will also help you prepare for the Microsoft 70-228 exam "Administering Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition." In this initial article we will look at an overview of

SQL Server 2000 Administration in 15 Minutes a Week: Administration Fundamentals

Part 1

by Michael Aubert

www.2000trainers.com

Welcome to the first article in my series SQL Server Administration in 15 Minutes a Week In this series we will cover the skills needed to successfully administer a Microsoft SQL Server

2000 machine This series will also help you prepare for the Microsoft 70-228 exam

"Administering Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition." In this initial article we will look

at an overview of the options and requirements when installing SQL Server 2000

- System Requirements

- Available Editions and Scalability

- Instances and Upgrade Paths

System Requirements

Remember that this article is only an overview We will cover specific system requirements; however, some topics presented are very complex and will be covered later in greater depth

In this series I am assuming that you are using the Enterprise Edition or an edition equivalent

to Enterprise Edition of SQL Server 2000 (We will talk about the different editions of SQL Server 2000 in the “Available Editions and Scalability” section later on.) If you are not using Enterprise Edition you will still be able to do just about everything with a few exceptions If you don’t have any edition of SQL Server 2000, you can download the Enterprise Evaluation Edition from Microsoft’s website at:

http://www.microsoft.com/sql/evaluation/trial/2000/download.asp

CPU Intel-compatible 166MHz or higher

Memory 64MB (128MB recommended for Enterprise edition)

Hard Disk 250MB for a typical SQL Server database installation

130MB for Analysis Components 80MB for English Query

Operating System Windows NT Server 4.0 (With SP5) or

Windows NT Server 4.0 Enterprise Edition (With SP5) or Any version of Windows 2000 Server

For a complete listing of the most up-to-date requirements and a listing for all editions of SQL Server, please visit Microsoft’s website:

http://www.microsoft.com/sql/evaluation/sysreqs/2000/default.asp

Available Editions and Scalability

In total there are seven different editions of SQL Server 2000 available:

Enterprise Edition - This edition is the complete edition of SQL Server It is designed for

large mission-critical applications including support for Distributed Partitioned Views, log shipping, fail-over clustering, and advanced analysis (OLAP) features Enterprise Edition can take advantage of up to 32 processors and 64GB of RAM (using Address Windowing

Extensions, AWE) The maximum database size is 1,048,516 TB

Standard Edition - This edition is designed for small to medium-sized businesses that do not

require the scalability, availability, or the more advanced features of Enterprise Edition SQL Server 2000 Standard Edition supports up to 4 processors and 2 GB of RAM The maximum database size is 1,048,516 TB

Professional Edition - This edition is based on Standard Edition but is optimized for personal

use Unlike Standard Edition, Professional Edition will run on Windows 2000 Professional, Windows NT Workstation 4.0, Windows ME, and Windows 98 Dual processors are

supported, but the server is limited to 5 concurrent connections and a maximum database size of 2 GB

Developer Edition - Same as Enterprise Edition but it has a licensing restriction that it cannot

be used in a production environment

Enterprise Evaluation Edition - Same as Enterprise Edition but only licensed for

“demonstration, testing, examination and evaluation” and has a 120-day time limit

Windows CE Edition - This edition is designed to run on devices that use Windows CE Desktop Engine (MSDE) – This edition (Microsoft calls it an “edition”) is only the database

engine of SQL Server 2000 There are no graphical tools provided and the database size and workload are limited However, this edition has the smallest footprint of all the editions of SQL server

Support for up to 32 processors, 64GB of RAM, and the ability to use multiple servers make SQL server 2000 a very scalable database system What determines the maximum number of processors and RAM is the edition of SQL Server and the Operating system you are running The three tables below show you the maximum number of CPUs and amount of Memory supported on a few different operating systems

SQL Server 2000 editions running on Windows 2000 Advanced Server:

SQL Server 2000 editions running on Windows 2000 Datacenter Server:

SQL Server 2000 editions running on Windows NT Server Enterprise

Edition:

As for hard disk storage, your needs and budget are going to run out a long time before the maximum theoretical NTFS hard drive storage space is reached Redundancy, acceptable downtime, and speed are all factors in what type of storage solution you will need The most common storage solution implemented today is RAID, also known as Redundant Array of Independent (or Inexpensive) Disks

There are two types of RAID: Software and Hardware Software RAID is normally slower but

is included with Windows NT 4.0 and 2000 Hardware RAID gives the best performance but is more expensive These two RAID types can then be divided into the different RAID levels The most common RAID levels are RAID 0 (striping), RAID 1 (mirroring), RAID 5 (striping with parity), and RAID 10 (a combination of mirroring and striping) In a later article we will take a deeper look into RAID and its benefits for your databases

Clustering is the last topic we are going to discuss in the scalability section Clustering allows you to use multiple servers to provide redundancy and/or load balancing Although the cluster may be made up of several servers, the cluster appears as one “virtual server” to the network SQL Server 2000 is a fully "cluster aware" application that can operate in a clustered

environment provided by the operating system

NT Server 4.0 introduced clustering with the ability to have a complete duplicate of the server This provided protection if any portion of the server failed, but there were no load-balancing capabilities Windows 2000 Advanced Server and Datacenter Server add a “load-balancing” capability to clustering We will be going into how to design and setup clusters in a later article

Instances and Upgrade Paths

Before we can talk about upgrade paths we need to discuss default and named instances When you install more than one instance of SQL Server 2000 you end up with multiple instances that operate independently (for the most part) You can have a maximum of 16 instances, each operating with its own memory space and settings

The default instance is identified by the computer’s network name SQL Server 6.5, 7.0, and

2000 can all act as the default instance, but only one default instance can operate at a time (this is called “version switching”) if multiple versions are installed An application that uses client software from versions earlier than SQL Server 2000 can access only a default

instance

Named instances are identified by the computer’s network name followed by the instance name ( servername\instancename ) Only SQL Server 2000 can act as a named instance, but you can have many named instances operating at the same time You can also Run SQL Server 6.5 or 7.0 as the default instance with one or many SQL Server 2000 named instances running at the same time There are a few restrictions on named instance names:

You can’t use “Default” or “MSSQLServer”

Named instances are limited to 16 characters

The first character must be a letter (A-Z, a-z), an ampersand (&), or an underscore (_) You can’t use punctuation marks, dashes, asterisks, or spaces

The name is NOT case sensitive

Instances Summary Table:

What version(s) of SQL

server can run as this

particular type of

instance?

Can multiple instances of

this particular type

operate at the same

time?

How is this particular type

of instance identified? servername servername\instancename

* You can still have multiple versions of SQL Server (6.5 along side either 7.0 or 2000) installed on the computer, but only one of the versions can operate at a time

For more information about instances have a look at the following link and its related articles:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/instsql/in_runsetup_2xmb.asp

Once you understand the concept of default instances and named instances, understanding the available upgrade paths to SQL Server 2000 is not difficult

- An installation of SQL Server 6.0 can’t be upgraded directly to SQL Server 2000 you must first upgrade to SQL Server 6.5 or 7.0 Once the databases have been upgraded you can then upgrade to SQL Server 2000 or install SQL Server 2000 along side 6.5 or 7.0

- SQL Server 6.5 and 7.0 can be upgraded directly to SQL Server 2000

- SQL Server 2000 can be installed as the default instance along side SQL Server 6.5 but only a single version can be active at a time You can use “version switching” to switch between the different versions of SQL Server

- SQL Server 2000 can be installed as a named instance in addition to the default instance of SQL Server 6.5, 7.0, or 2000 installed on the computer One default instance and a number of named instances can operate at the same time

That wraps up the first article Next week we will take a look at the different installation types and an overview of the installation process Please send any questions, comments, and feedback to my email Also check out the 2000trainers.com website where you can find tutorials and practice exams on Windows, SQL Server, and Exchange I hope you found this article helpful and I look forward to your feedback

Mike

maubert@swynk.com

www.2000trainers.com

Learn SQL Server 2000 in 15 Minutes a Week: Basic Installation

Part 2

by Michael Aubert

www.2000trainers.com

Welcome to the second article in my series SQL Server Administration in 15 Minutes a Week

In last week’s article, we took a look at an overview of the options and requirements when installing SQL Server 2000 This week we will look at how to perform a basic installation of SQL Server 2000 The topics for this article include:

- Before the Installation

- Installation Overview

Before the Installation

Use the following as a checklist before you install SQL Server 2000:

- Have your SQL Server 2000 CD, Installation Key, and operating system CD handy

- You should be logged on using an account that has Administrative rights

- Disable any Antivirus software that is running as it can sometimes effect the installation

- Shut down any services or applications that depend on SQL Server, Data Source Names (DSN), or Open Database Connectivity (ODBC)

- Close any unnecessary applications that access the registry

- Close the Event Viewer (Microsoft says so!)

Installation Overview

1 When you place the SQL Server 2000 CD-ROM in your drive, you are greeted with the screen shown below If you don’t see the SQL Server menu, you most likely have autorun disabled To start the SQL Server menu manually use the Windows Explorer and run

autorun.exe from your CD-ROM drive You can also use “Run…” from the start menu and enter d:\autorun.exe where d: is the letter of your CD-ROM drive

Click on "SQL Server 2000 Components” to view the available components you can install.

2 Now we are presented with three options on the components screen Lets continue our installation by installing the Database Server We will look at the Analysis Service and English Query components in a later article

Click on “Install Database Server” to begin the SQL Server 2000 Installation.

3 The installation of the Database Server now begins

Click Next to continue the installation

4 We are now prompted to select which computer we would like to install SQL Server on There are three options:

Local Computer – Installs SQL Server onto the local computer

Remote Computer – Installs SQL Server onto a remote computer on the network

Virtual Server – Used for installing SQL Server onto a Server Cluster

In this article we will look at an installation of SQL Server 2000 on a local computer only In the next article of this series I will discuss Remote and Clustered installations

Select “Local Computer” and click Next

5 Now that we have selected where we would like to install SQL Server we have to choose what we would like to do in this installation

Create a new instance – Allows you to install a new instance of SQL Server or the Client Tools

Upgrade, remove, or add components – Allows you to work with an existing instance that is already installed

Advanced options – Allows you to create custom installation files, rebuild registry keys, and maintain Virtual Servers for Failover Clustering

For now we will look at how to create a new instance In my next article I will cover how to upgrade an existing instance, perform unattended installations, and configure a clustered server

Select “Create a new instance of SQL Server, or install Client Tools” and click Next

Learn SQL Server 2000 Administration in 15 Minutes a Week: Basic Installation (Page 2

of 4)

6 The next few screens are common and fairly simple so I will cover them quickly

Enter your name and company information and click Next

7 To continue the installation we are asked to read the licensing agreement

Read the agreement and click “Yes” if you agree or click “No” if you do not agree with the licensing terms Note if you click “No” the installation will be terminated

8 Next we need to choose what type of Installation we would like to perform

Client Tools Only – Installs the Client Tools that allow you to manage a remote SQL Server Server and Client Tools – Installs an instance of SQL server and the Client Tools

Connectivity Only – Installs the Data Access Components (DAC) and Network Libraries so applications can access a SQL Server instance

Select “Server and Client Tools” and click Next.

9 The Instance Name is the next option we are presented with If you are installing SQL Server as a Default Instance you leave the “Default” checkbox checked If you need to install

a Named Instance you must uncheck “Default” and you will then be required to enter a valid name for the instance in the “Instance Name” textbox For information on what is and is not a valid Named Instance name, have a look at my first article in this series: SQL Server 2000 Administration Fundamentals

Leave the “Default” checkbox checked and click Next

10 We must now select the setup type

Typical – Installs required files and the most commonly used optional files

Minimum – Installs only required files

Custom – Installs required files and then you will be prompted to select which optional files you would like installed Custom setup also allows you to set the collation and network libraries that are used

*By adding and removing components the Custom installation size will change.

On this screen we are also prompted to select the destination folders for the Program Files and Data Files.

Program Files – The files that make up the SQL Server engine and tools

Data Files – The SQL Server databases

The default drive selected to install SQL Server 2000 is the System Drive (the same