Wednesday, May 10, 2017

SQL Server on Linux step 1: Installing Oracle Virtual Box on Microsoft Windows

As Microsoft announces next version of SQL server that is ready to install on other plate forms then Windows. SQL Server 2017 CTP 2.0 is supported on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, and Ubuntu. It is also available as a Docker image which can run on Docker Engine on Linux or Docker for Windows/Mac. Question is how to install Linux and SQL Server on it. I am going to show you step by step guide to install both Linux and SQL Server vNext. I tried to cover all aspects as much as possible in both command line and graphically.

SQL Server Latest Releases on Linux:

The next version of SQL Server on Linux will include all the standard SQL Server management features that come with the Windows version. These include advanced features like always-encrypted, row-level security and columnstore indexes etc. You can get a full list of features which are supported in this Microsoft link: SQL Server on Linux Release Notes.

Download Ubuntu:

The first step is to decide which platform is required to install SQL Server vNext. I decided to download Ubuntu as I already have little bit of experience with it. You can download latest version of Ubuntu form https://www.ubuntu.com/ . You will find a list of Ubuntu files to download. I downloaded Ubuntu-17.04 server 64bit (Zesty Zapus) as shown in pic (InstallUbunut-01)


Oracle VirtualBox

There are different ways to install Ubuntu on your machine. For this exercise I decided to use Oracle Virtual Box. VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2. You can download Virtual Box – Windows host from following link https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

Before starting Virtual box installation it is benificial to download some other required tools during ubuntu installation. You can work directly in ubuntu plateform but there is another way to work by connecting through PuTTY. You can work with PuTTY untill you have openssh on your ubuntu server. You can install openssh directly from ubuntu or by downloading it and install form given path. Following is the image that is showing ubuntu and other downloaded files.




There are different ways to install linux. If you have Windows installed on your machine and want to install linux seperately, you can go for dual boot installation. Dual-booting is a technique which allows a single physical computer to run two or more operating systems. This is useful for experimenting with new OS without touching your existing setup. I have found a very good step by step installation guide on following link http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Dual-boot-Linux-and-Windows-on-a-PC-with-W/

I choose virtual box to install ubuntu from my existing Windows. Next is step by step example for installing oracle virtual box.
1-      Double click on the VirtualBox setup to start installation.

2-      This setup needs to check free space on your hard drive.
3-      You will get reset warning that you can read and press Yes.

4-      Setup will start installing Virtual box and it will take few minutes only depending on your machine performance.

5-      You need to install Oracle Corporation Universal Serial Bus, press install

6-      Setup may ask for some other network tools for installation
7-      You will get successful installation message, press Finish to start Oracle Virtual box

8-      After finishing setup Oracle VM Virtual Box Manager will open.

Create New VM using Oracle Virtual Box
1-      To start creating new VM setup, Press New icon from left top corner
2-      It will open new VM setup screen where you have to set name for your VM as we are installing Ubuntu for SQL Server so it will be “Ubuntu1710”

3-      Next is Type of your operating system installation, for us it will be Linux

4-      We need to select 64-bit because we have downloaded same version

5-      You need to set required RAM for the VM that will be part from total available system RAM. In this case I have mentioned 4GB out of 6GB. You need at least 3.5 GB in order to install SQL Server on Linux. If you do not have enough RAM, You can change it even after creating VM.

6-      Continue by pressing Next, You need to set Hard disk value. You can add it later or go for virtual hard disk now, which I have selected.

7-      Next pop will be used to select hard disk file type, I have selected Virtual Box disk image

8-      You have to select which type of storage you will prefer, I used dynamically allocated so that I can increase it when required.

9-      In this setup you have to select storage file location and initial size of your VM. I have set 32 GB and will increase on demand.

10-   Press “create” and your new VM will be created. You can see detail on VM main page

11-   Given file location name will be created windows folder.

You have successfully completed virtual box and now need to start installing Ubuntu setup on it.

From this point on words Ubuntu installation will start. I will publish step by step detail in my next post... keep reading :)

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