If you need to upgrade multiple SQL Server 2008
instances, you’ll likely want to do so without having to run the
Installation Center utility each time and manually select the same
options over and over. Fortunately, you can run an upgrade via the
Installation Center using a configuration file. Using a configuration
file, you have a couple options for how you run the upgrade: using the
Upgrade Wizard with options prefilled by the configuration file or as a
fully automated and unattended installation from the command line. If
you run using the GUI with the options prefilled by the configuration
file, you have the opportunity to review and change options along the
way as necessary.
Following are a few of the parameters relevant to running an upgrade using a configuration file:
/ACTION=UPGRADE— Specifies that you are running an upgrade.
/INSTANCENAME— Specifies the SQL Server instance to be upgraded. For the default instance, you use the special value MSSQLSERVER.
/CONFIGURATIONFILE— Specifies the configuration file to use for the upgrade.
/INSTANCEDIR— Specifies a nondefault installation directory for shared components to be upgraded.
/UIMODE—
Specifies whether to present only the minimum number of dialog boxes
during setup. Normal presents all setup dialogs; AutoAdvance skips
nonessential dialog boxes.
/FTUPGRADEOPTION— Specifies the full-text catalog upgrade option. Valid values are REBUILD, RESET, and IMPORT.
To create an upgrade
configuration file, run the Upgrade Wizard as described previously and
follow it all the way through to the Ready to Install page where the
location of the generated Configuration.ini
file is specified. At this point, you can click the Cancel button if
you don’t want to actually perform the upgrade. Then copy the Configuration.ini file to another location so you can make any necessary edits to it.
To run an upgrade using a configuration file, you need to run the setup.exe
program, which can be found at the root level of the installation
media. If you want to override any of the values in the configuration
file or provide values not specified in the configuration file, you can
provide additional command-line parameters. For example, to avoid having
to enter the service account passwords during the installation, you can
enter them on the command line using the password parameters to config.exe.
Following is a sample execution to upgrade the default instance and
specify the account and password for Reporting Services and the service
account for Integration Services:
Setup.exe /q /ACTION=upgrade /INSTANCENAME=MSSQLSERVER
/RSUPGRADEDATABASEACCOUNT="myRSaccount" /RSUPGRADEPASSWORD="myRSpassword"
/ISSVCAccount="NT Authority\Network Service" /IACCEPTSQLSERVERLICENSETERMS
Note also that the preceding example specifies the /q
parameter, which runs the upgrade in Full Quiet mode, which is intended
for running unattended installations. With this switch provided, Setup
runs without any user interface. Another option is to run with the /QS switch, which shows progress via the GUI but does not accept any input and displays no error messages if encountered.
