Windows Server 8 and SQL Server 2008 R2

Together with the very public release of Windows 8, Microsoft released Windows Server 8.
Earlier this year I attended TechEd North America, and asked the Microsoft people about a "Windows Server Next", but nobody could say anything. Actually most of the answers were like "I don't know anything about a new Windows Server version.". On the other hand there were a lot about SQL Server "Denali" and Visual Studio Next. The three products usually are released in a new major version rather close together.
But now the preview for Windows Server 8 is here. I got mine from my MSDN subscription. It is not general available like the Windows 8 desktop edition.

Installing Windows Server 8 on vmware was quite simple and without challenges. The installation was done on vmware workstation 8 as Windows 8 the other day.
I installed the full version. Windows Core I will take a look at another time. Especially when I have figured out how to install SQL Server "Denali" on Windows Server 8.

After the initial installation when the system started for the first time, I took a quick look at the used storage.

The storage amount used for the Windows installation is ok. This is nice when you consider consolidation by server virtualization.

Installing SQL Server 2008 R2 (Enterprise Edition x64) requires some .NET and Windows Installer.

This is handled by the installation. Just click OK. The screen shows nothing for a minute or two, but some activity can be spotted in the Task Manager.

In this case I installed Database Services with Fulltext Services, Reporting Services, Integration Services,  Business Intelligence Development Studio and all Management Tools.
After the installation, a little more store is used.

More precisely 5.9 GB are used by the SQL Server installation.


The new Start design I am working on getting used to.

In general the SQL Server 2008 behaves normally.

BTW - When I activated Windows Update, there were 13 critical updates for Windows Server Preview.