We have a new post that covers Windows Server "8" Beta and File Servers. It provides step-by-step instructions for deploying an evaluation version of SQL Server 2012 (just released last week) using a Windows Server “8” Beta Scale-Out File Server Cluster. The goal of this post is to help your testing or learning of the product, so it uses only VMs in a single computer with 8GB of RAM. It includes instructions on how to install things from scratch, including Hyper-V, DNS, AD, iSCSI, File Server, Cluster and SQL Server. It includes both PowerShell and GUI instructions for most steps, and also quite a few screenshots.
Here’s an outline of the post, which is many pages long:
1. Introduction
1.1. Overview
1.2. Hardware
1.3. Software
1.4. Notes and disclaimers
2. Install Windows Server “8” Beta
2.1. Preparations
2.2. Install the OS
2.3. Rename the computer
2.4. Enable Remote Desktop
3. Configure the Hyper-V host
3.1. Install the Hyper-V role to the server
3.2. Create the VM switches
3.3. Rename the network adapters
3.4. Assign static IP addresses for the Hyper-V host
4. Create the base VM
4.1. Preparations
4.2. Create a Base VM
4.3. Install Windows Server “8” Beta on the VM
4.4. Sysprep the VM
4.5. Remove the base VM
5. Configure the 5 VMs
5.1. Create 5 new differencing VHDs using the Base VHD
5.2. Create 5 similarly configured VMs
5.3. Start the 5 VMs
5.4. Complete the mini-setup for the 5 VMs
5.5. Change the computer name for each VM
5.6. For each VM, configure the networks
5.7. Review VM name and network configuration
6. Configure DNS and Active Directory
6.1. Install DNS and Active Directory Domain Services
6.2. Configure Active Directory
6.3. Join the other VMs to the domain
6.4. Create the SQL Service account
7. Configure iSCSI
7.1. Add the iSCSI Software Target
7.2. Create the LUNs and Target
7.3. Configure the iSCSI Initiators
7.4. Configure the disks
8. Configure the File Server
8.1 Install the required roles and features
8.2. Validate the Failover Cluster Configuration
8.3. Create a Failover Cluster
8.4. Configure the Cluster Networks
8.5. Add data disks to Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV)
8.6. Create the Scale-Out File Server
8.7. Create the folders and shares
9. Configure the SQL Server
9.1. Mount the SQL Serve ISO file
9.2. Run SQL Server Setup
9.3. Create a database using the clustered file share
10. Verify SMB features
10.1. Verify that SMB Multichannel is working
10.2. Query the SMB Sessions and Open Files
10.3. Transparently move SQL Client between file server nodes
10.4. Survive the loss of a client NIC
11. Shut down, startup and install final notes
12. Conclusion
You can read the entire post at
http://blogs.technet.com/b/josebda/archive/2012/03/15/windows-server-8-beta-scale-out-file-server-for-sql-server-2012-step-by-step-installation.aspx
Microsoft