Bare Metal Server Installation on x86-64 architectures

 

Installation details

When installing Bare Metal Server on Relays with x86-64 architecture, Microsoft SQL Express is also installed and an ODBC data source named 'AutoDeploy' is setup with a connection to the 'AutoDeploy' Microsoft SQL Express database.

When performing a complete Bare Metal Server uninstallation (by selecting 'Remove all local files and settings' option), the Microsoft SQL Express component is not removed from the system and the 'AutoDeploy' database is only cleaned up through a 'DROP-AND-CREATE' SQL operation executed within the fixlet.

Microsoft SQL Express uninstallation warning: If you completely removed the Microsoft SQL Express component by manually uninstalling the product, you may need some additional clean up operations if you plan to re-install a Bare Metal Server on the same machine; this is caused by some data left by Microsoft SQL Express uninstallation procedure that may prevent further Bare Metal Server deployments to work properly. In order to complete the removal (if the Microsoft SQL Express uninstallation has been already completed) and prepare the Relay for the next Bare Metal Server installation, execute the following steps to check 'AutoDeploy' database information are not anymore present on the system:

• clean 'AutoDeploy' related ODBC registry entries (there should be 2 entries at the path 'HKLM\SOFTWARE\ODBC\ODBC.INI')
• clean 'AutoDeploy' related files from 'Data' and  'Template Data' folders under the path '<Microsft SQL Server>\MSSQL.1\MSSQL'

To verify that the uninstallation of MS SQL Server and MS SQL Native Client has been correctly done, check that the following entries are not present in the registry and remove them if present:

• HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Native Client
• HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Native Client
• HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server
• HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server

Check also that the following folders are not present on the disk and delete them if present:

• C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server
• C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SQL Server

Additional troubleshooting information and useful commands

When Microsoft SQL Express is installed, to test its status use the following 'sqlcmd' command line sample:

  sqlcmd -S localhost\SQLEXPRESS -Q "sp_databases"

it will show available databases ('AutoDeploy' is the one used by Bare Metal Server).

In case of Bare Metal Server installation failures when Microsoft SQL Express was manually removed, it could be useful to use the following 'sqlcmd' command line samples:

 sqlcmd -S localhost\SQLEXPRESS -Q "CREATE DATABASE AutoDeploy"
 sqlcmd -S localhost\SQLEXPRESS -Q "DROP DATABASE AutoDeploy"

to check the ability to create and drop 'AutoDeploy' database and verify the databases are listed without errors.