SQL Server 2012 (RC0) Business Intelligence Configuration

Overview

With every new version of SQL that is released there are always a few changes and challenges related to the installation and configuration of all the tools within the BI stack. Admittedly, even with the ever changing toolset within the BI stack, this has gotten easier over time. Furthermore, the deep integration with SharePoint now makes it impossible to setup a VM and use the BI stack without it.
If you have never installed SQL server or any tools on the BI stack don’t worry! The intent of this blog series is to walk through the configuration of each of the tools within the BI stack, including the SQL Server Database Engine and SharePoint 2010. With that said, my entire configuration is done on a single VM. Even though you will not run into many client environments with such a simple setup, a lot of the techniques and principles I cover can be translated to more complex situations. I completely understand that every environment is slightly different so it is possible that this step by step guide won’t work for everyone. For this reason, feel free to use this blog a starting point for a new VM or installation of SQL, as well as an area to discuss any other installation issues that occur.

Let’s get started!

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Let’s Get Started

To begin, I started with a clean installation of Windows Server 2008 R2. I also installed Office 2010 and made sure that all of the necessary Windows Updates and patches had been applied. For me, the best place to begin is to setup the VM as a Domain Controller. I do this for two reasons:

1. A PowerPivot installation integrated with SharePoint requires the SSAS PowerPivot service account to be a domain user that can manage the installation through Central Administration.
2. I have always found that it is significantly easier to setup all of the BI services if there is a separate domain account for each core group of services. This makes it easy to manage the accounts and ensure that the services remain isolated from each other.

Note: If you have not setup a Domain Controller before please check out this video series. It is put on by Dave Wickert, a fantastic Principal Program Manager at Microsoft. Dave is a great presenter that always makes complex topics and concepts easy to understand. If you get a chance to see him present in person make sure to check him out.
Below is a screenshot of the users I created on the machine in order to complete the rest of the server configuration. Along with using the Administrator, I also created a SharePoint, SQL, SSAS, and SSRS domain user. You may need to modify the security and rights of each user depending on how you use them in the future. My use of each of these domain users is explained later within this blog series.

What’s next?

We are now ready to start some of the important SQL 2012 installations. Below is a list of each installation process that is included in this blog series, along with a link to the related content.
Installation Order:

1. SQL Server 2012 (RC0) Business Intelligence Configuration
2. SQL Server 2012 (RC0) Installation and Configuration
3. SharePoint 2010 Installation for SQL Server 2012 (RC0)
4. Additional SSAS Instance Installations in SQL Server 2012 (RC0)
5. SQL Server 2012 (RC0) PowerPivot for SharePoint 2010 Configuration
6. SQL Server 2012 (RC0) SSRS Configuration in SharePoint Integrated Mode (including Power View) (Coming Soon)
7. SSRS Alerting (Coming Soon)
8. MDS (Coming Soon)