How to perform SQL Server 2019 Developer Edition Unattended Silent Installation

In this guide, I will help you perform an unattended Silent Install for SQL Server 2019 Developer Edition on Windows Server 2016/2019 or even Windows 10 Pro. The reason why I picked Developer Edition because it is free to use for development purposes. I have created a pristine Windows Server 2016 VM on my laptop. In this blog, I will be showing you how easy it would be to do a silent install vs manually going to all the steps of the GUI install and then finally be able to install.

If you don’t want to go with the information specified in my Configuration File, you can go ahead and create your own as well. Run setup.exe normally and Click on the installation Tab and then select New SQL Server stand-alone installation or add features to an existing installation

Configure all the parameters you want to and on the Ready to Install tab, copy the configuration file path and save it to your desired location. Let’s call it MyConfigurationFile.ini

Cancel the installation and close the setup. Open and edit MyConfgirationFile.ini this file and make the following changes:

IACCEPTPYTHONLICENSETERMS="True"
IACCEPTROPENLICENSETERMS="True"
SUPPRESSPRIVACYSTATEMENTNOTICE="True"
QUIET="True"
;We cannot have a normal UI with Quiet mode
;UIMODE="Normal"
SUPPRESSPAIDEDITIONNOTICE="True"
; Indicate Progress is optional
INDICATEPROGRESS="True"
;Setting SysAdmins to BUILTIN\AdministratorS allows all ;Administrator privilige users to have SysAdmin privilige.
SQLSYSADMINACCOUNTS="BUILTIN\ADMINISTRATORS"
;Set Max DOP (Degree of Parallelism to 1 = false for BY/JDA WMS
SQLMAXDOP="1"
; Specify 0 to disable or 1 to enable the TCP/IP protocol.
TCPENABLED="1"
; Specify 0 to disable or 1 to enable the Named Pipes protocol.
NPENABLED="1"
; SysAdmin Password
SAPWD="SysAdminPasswordGoesHere"
IACCEPTSQLSERVERLICENSETERMS="True"

Place the MyConfigurationFile.ini in the same folder as setup.exe for SQL Server Installer as shown below:

INSTALLATION:

To start the installation open CMD as Administrator and switch directory to where your setup file is located and execute the following command:

setup.exe /ConfigurationFile=ConfigurationFile.INI

The installation will start and continue doing so unless it either errors our or is successful:

Validate your installation:

The easiest way would be to just connect via SQL Server Management Studio. If that works, your SQL Server instance is online.

You can also validate your SQL Server Instance by opening SQL Server Configuration Manager to verify if everything looks good.

If you want to set a static TCP port, you can do so from the Configuration Manager > SQL Server Network Configuration > Protocols for MSSQLServer. Open TCP/IP Protocol and configure the TCP port under IP Addresses > IPAll

Testing with Port changes:

Before:

After:

Below is the URL to my sample file if you want it.

ConfigurationFile.ini

Conclusion

If you’re planning on setting up multiple database instances for your organization, a SQL Server Configuration file will ensure the same setup for all instances across multiple VMs. The installation process will be faster, and consistent. You can have batch scripts or Powershell scripts written to load databases from backups and even further automate the process of setting up new instances with databases of your choice. You can just download the backup files via script on the new database server and from your fileserver/backup location via the ROBOCOPY utility.

In my next blog, I will be showing you how to write a batch script to download the database backup files and loading it on your database instance.