So i grabbed the SC 2012 RC suite last night… tried to install using the unified installer, as megh – a quick and easy way of getting all the products on at once for a test enviornment – sounds good to me.

The local MS guys mentioned this to me a few weeks ago – “two or three clicks and everything will just install”…. very MS way of looking at things! 🙂

Anyhoo – the reality is

Grab all the products – http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/hh505660.aspx

Run the unified installer

Enter all the paths

Go back and extract all the products

Enter all the paths….  if one isnt right, there’s no real help – just “this path isnt right” –  (for example, for service manager, you have to chuck on AMD64 on the end, as it extracts to a subdir, which is fine… just not as friendly as it could be)

Accept a whole bunch of license agreements

Enter paths to a whole bunch of quite specific updates… eg. SQL 2008 R2 SP1 CU4 – a downloadable list is available from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh751268.aspx – which makes this task a little easier

Enter the server names – this is where i tossed it in. If you enter the same server name for all products.. the “next” button remains greyed out…. fair enough, some products require additional servers – but at least put some kind of indication as to which products can be co-located and which cant…. this is a test enviornment after all – we want the products up and going using as few servers as possible.

Anyhoo – from here, i installed SQL 2008 R2 SP1 CU4, then installed the system centre products i wanted…. far easier. Sure, im going to have to configure connectors etc – but thats a good thing! (if the unified installer does it all – you wont learn from that)

I get what they were trying to achieve with the unified installer – and good on the dev’s for thinking of it – but until it gives a bit more feedback – its not of any use – and it definately does not make things simpler.