This one is stumping me. I've just built a new Windows Server 2008 system with Hyper-V and everytime I attempt to connect to the server be it from an XP or Vista box, I get the following error.

This is now also happening with I RDP into one of the guest running on the server. I am still looking for the setting to disable to allow me to connect remotely. If you know, I'd love to hear from you!

Could not get SQL Server instance names.

Prerequisite check failed: SQL Server SP1 is not installed.

Well, yesterday marked another day of new and interesting, undocumented features in software. This was a new error for me that in all of the installs I have done, I have not encountered. My install of Ops Mgr 2007 SP1 slipstream failed the prerequisite check stating that SQL 2005 SP1 wasn’t installed.

My install was pretty straight forward, one server OPSSQL as the database, data warehouse and Ops Reporting server with SQL 2005 SP1 and SQL RS SP1 installed and one server OPSRMS as the Management Server, Console (Web, Ops, & Command Shell).

So as installs go, I start the installation on OPSSQL and get the following error at the prerequisite checker...

So the next logical step was to confirm that SQL was installed and that I have applied SP1 which I new I had as I just finished the installation. This can be done by opening SQL Management Studio and running a couple of SQL queries such as USE MASTER SELECT @@VERSION, the output of which you can see below.

Alternatively, you can run select serverproperty('productversion'), serverproperty('productlevel'), serverproperty('edition') and get the following result...

As you can see, SQL 2005 SP1 was clearly installed. The next place to look for information on troubleshooting this was the log file MOMn.log where n is the number of install attempts you have made. You can see from this that I was at lucky number 7. This file can be found in C:\Documents and Settings\<logged on user>\Local Settings\Temp\. The string to search for in the log file is value=3 but this was to no avail.

So this is where it gets even more interesting but also where the solution lies. The beautiful thing about software is that there is always more than one way to arrive at a final destination!! So, the next step was to try to install the database without running SetupOM.exe by using the CreateDB.exe found in the SuppportTools folder on the OpsMgr2007 installation media and this worked like a charm! I had to run this once to install the OperationsManager DB and again to install the OperationsManagerDW but it ran like a champ on the OPSSQL server and then I was able to run SetupOM.exe on the OPSRMS server and complete the installation of the RMS and consoles.

For this and more great real world insight into Operations Manager, Configuration Manager, Powershell and Softgrid, check out www.infrontconsulting.com/events.htm.