I then came across VMware player and was surprised to see how easy it was to install it and it did allow me to do all the testing without ever requiring another machine. In a nutshell, it installs another virtual computer within an existing computer.

These are the steps I followed:

1. Download VMware Player (free) from here:

http://www.vmware.com/products/player/

2. Download an Operating System:

I downloaded a trial version of Windows Server 2008 R2 which last 180 days, more than enough for my purpose.

3. Install VMware player

The installation is very much straight forward. While installing, it will ask for an Operating System installation file.

Job done. There is now another machine available in my desktop computer and I can test anything I like. I installed SQL Server Denali CTP3 and enjoyed playing with it without having to worry about breaking my existing setup.

One thing to bear in mind is that the machine on which VMware Player is installed needs to have enough resources to share. When installing VMware, it automatically allocated 40gb of disk space, 1Gb of RAM and 1 CPU. Those setting are entirely customisable.

In SQL Server, we need to setup the following two features:

1. Firstly, Database Mail; it should be enabled and configured. This has been covered in detail here.
2. Secondly, an Operator that will be used by SQL Agent jobs to notify the relevant person or group.

Let’s create a new Operator:

Right click on Operators and click New Operator...

In the next step, all we need is specify the email address of the person or group to receive notifications

Specify an email address

Now that the Operator is ready,  any sql agent job can use it

Job property - notification tab

Last but not least, let’s make sure that SQL Server Agent is able to use the Database Mail profile

SQL Server Agent properties

Alert System - choose the mail profile to use for sending notifications

Restart SQL Server Agent

That’s it.

In SQL Server 2005/2008, the Database Mail feature need to be setup. The Database Mail feature allows SQL Server to send emails to end users. The only pre-requisite is to have an SMTP server available.

Right click on Database Mail and check Configure Database Mail...

Create a new profile called testProfile

Create testAccount SMTP account that will be associated with the testProfile

testAccount created

Public Profiles

Configure System Parameters

Summary

Confirmation

Database Mail is now configured and ready for use. Let’s send a test mail to confirm that it is configured properly.

Send test email

Send test email

Check your inbox...

Now that we have Database Mail working, we can use the following syntax to send email:

EXEC [msdb]..[sp_send_dbmail]
@profile_name = 'testProfile',
@recipients = 'To@email.com',
@subject = 'Error Message',
@body = 'Include error message',
@body_format = 'HTML'

So I had to change the version of each database manually using the following script:

ALTER DATABASE database_name
SET COMPATIBILITY_LEVEL = { 80 | 90 | 100 }

80 = SQL Server 2000
90 = SQL Server 2005
100 = SQL Server 2008

To update all databases at once within the SQL instance, the following script might be useful.

select 'ALTER DATABASE ' + name + ' SET COMPATIBILITY_LEVEL = 100'
from sys.databases
where name not in ('master','tempdb','model','msdb')

That’s it.

Cheers.

All one needs to do is run the scripts available at the following link:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/918992

The script will generate the script for creating all logins under the sql instance. For example:

– Login: Test
CREATE LOGIN [Test_Login] WITH PASSWORD = 0x01006B867DAEEEBC1207A2232FA7B155A7F7670543341FFF012F HASHED, SID = 0x0393B11B9324C04F930A7F951F05EFFF, DEFAULT_DATABASE = [master], CHECK_POLICY = OFF, CHECK_EXPIRATION = OFF

As you can see in the above example, the password is included albeit encrypted.

The good thing is that you are not required to know the password. The bad thing is that you will end up with a new login having a different sid, therefore not matching with the user of the same name in the database. In that case, all you need to do is to run the following script (courtesy of sqlservercentral.com) to find and remap them:

/**************************ORPHANED USERS****************/
/*** To be run against each db ***/

DECLARE @UserName nvarchar(255)

DECLARE Cursor_OrphanedUser cursor for

SELECT NAME FROM sysusers
WHERE issqluser = 1 and (sid is not null and sid <> 0×01)
and suser_sname(sid) is NOT null ORDER BY name

OPEN Cursor_OrphanedUser

FETCH NEXT FROM Cursor_OrphanedUser INTO @UserName

WHILE (@@fetch_status = 0)

BEGIN

PRINT @UserName + ‘ Synchronization of Logins in Progress’

EXEC sp_change_users_login ‘Update_one’, @UserName, @UserName

FETCH NEXT FROM Cursor_OrphanedUser INTO @UserName

END

CLOSE Cursor_OrphanedUser

DEALLOCATE Cursor_OrphanedUser

/************************END ORPHANED USERS********************/

Hope you will find this useful.

It is only when I was trying to access that server remotely that I got into problems! It just couldn’t connect to the sql server and was getting the folowing error:

SQL Server 2008 Remote Access error

I tried accessing via IP address as well but that wasn’t successfull either. A look into the firewall was then in order. By default in Windows 2008 Server every ports, except a very few ones, are disabled. If you are using the default port for your sql engine, the port number 1433 needs to be enabled. I have also enabled port number 1434 for SQL Browser service. The following screen shots shows the step needed to allow remote access to sql server 2008 on a windows 2008 server.

First of all, you need to ensure that Remote Connections are allowed within SQL Server configuration:

Right click on the registered server and choose Properties

Check Allow remote connections box

Once this is done, you can start looking into the Firewall setting.

This is how to access Windows Firewall setting on Windows Server 2008

Firewall main screen

Click on Inbound Rules

Righ click on Inbound Rules and choose Add...

Choose Port

Choose TCP and type the Port number

Choose Allow the connection

Uncheck if further restrictions apply in your environment

Name it accordingly

That's it!

Now, if you also want to set the SQL Browser service port, you just need to choose UDP instead of TCP.

SQL Browser service - UDP Port 1434

Good luck!