Alpesh Nakar – SharePoint Consultant's Blog

This is sixth in the series – MOSS Scripted Installation.

Up until this post we have covered

• Pre-requisites
• A brief overview on config.xml.
• How to install MOSS 2007 silently with SQL Server 2005 Express Edition.
• How to configure SQL Server 2005 Express edition to allow remote connections and also enable SQL Browser Services.

The last one was a manual step. In this post, let’s see how we can script this.

Configuring SQL Area Configuration to allow remote connections

In my situation I configured SAC and exported the configuration, because I am going to be deploying nearly 1300 sites and it’s gotta be scripted.

I would like to make an assumption here that if you have a SQL Server 2005 Express Edition, you will be able to use the xml that I am going to share with you.

How to export SQL Area Configuration?

Browse to C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Shared

From command prompt, run this command

“C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Shared\SAC.exe out sac.xml”

This will export surface area settings for all database engine and SQL Browse service instances. Since I have not specified the location of sac file, it will export to C:\

Out command is for export and

In command is for import

For more options, you can use the standard ? for help with SAC.

So that’s sorted.

Enabling SQL Browser Service

By defauly, SQL Browser service is disabled when you install SQL Server 2005 Express Edition.

To enable, you could do this from the services mmc, but lets run a script that will enable SQL Browser Service to auto and also start immediately.

sc config sqlbrowser start= auto

net start sqlbrowser

That’s it!

Next up in the series, variation of config.xml to setup MOSS 2007 and not run the configuration wizard!