SQL Server Installation Center 2012

As a reminder for myself when I can't fire up the Installation Center, here are the screen shots. To make it slightly more interesting, I'm adding some notes about the differences from the 2008 R2 version. I'm also attaching a Word doc with the 2012 and 2008 R2 versions side by side for a friend who likes such things. (You can click on each image to get a full-size version.)

Planning Page:

First, 2012 adds “How to Get SQL Server Data Tools” which is a link to a web article. I think they should have called it “SQL Server Data Modeling Tools” since that’s what these Visual Studio tools are for. 

Next, they’ve removed a link to “Setup Documentation”, which puzzles me, since it would seem to be very appropriate. I hope they’ll put it back, but in the meantime, here’s the link to the 2012 version of this article: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb500469(v=sql.110).aspx.

The addition of three new articles make up the remaining differences: “How to Get started with Reporting Services SharePoint Integration on a Standalone Server”; “Install SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA)”; and “How to apply SQL Server updates”.

Installation Page:

Here we've removed the “Search for product updates”, but as you’ll see, they’ve simply moved it to the Maintenance page, which is a more appropriate place for it than here on the Installation page.

Maintenance Page:

Same as the previous version except this is the new home of the search-for-updates item.

Tools Page:

There are three changes here:

  1. The “Upgrade Integration Services packages” link has been dropped.
  2. A link to an article on “Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit for SQ Server” has been added. MAP is a separate download, but it will let you scan your network for instances of SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, and Sybase in addition to numerous other features.
  3. A link to “PowerPivot Configuration Tool” has been added, but is greyed out until PowerPivot has been installed first.

Resources Page:

No changes on this page.

Advanced Page:

No changes on this page.

Options Page:

The only difference to the items on this page is that we've dropped support for ia64 (Itanium processors). And yes, the dark black line is where I obfuscated the username in the install path.

SQL Server Installation Center 2012 vs 2008 R2.docx