14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft is making it easy for customers running SAP to also test its latest iterations of Windows Server and SQL Server.
The Redmond company released Windows Server 2008 R2 and SQL Server 2008 R2 for SAP, a new download offered free of charge, designed to streamline the evaluation process of all the technologies mentioned in conjunction.
The bits have been packed inside a virtual hard disk image, and all that customers need to do is set up a virtual machine capable of running the image.
The VHD comes pre-configured, according to the software giant. Users will be getting both Windows Server 2008 R2 and SQL Server 2008 R2, but not SAP. For SAP Gateway, they’ll need to make their way to the SAP website.
“This virtual machine will provision an instance of Server 2008 R2 and SQL 2008 R2 on Hyper-V or Windows Azure VM role. The instance is pre-configured to support the evaluation of SAP's Gateway product, which you can download from SAP. It can also be used on its own, but be aware that the SQL default collation is set to CP850_BIN2,” Microsoft said.
Customers need to already be running either Windows Server 2008 R2 RTM or Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, to test the VHD, as they’ll need Hyper-V.
When they’ll set up the test virtual machine they need to configure it to take advantage of 4GB RAM, 2 CPUs and at least 25GB of disk space.
"pass@word1" is the password that administrators will need to use when testing the release.
“By default, this VM comes configured without a virtual NIC assigned. If you do not have a virtual NIC already defined in Hyper-V Manager, you will need to configure one. This is required in order to activate your 180 day trial period. You will have 10 days to activate,” the software giant added.
The Windows Server 2008 R2 and SQL Server 2008 R2 for SAP is available for download here.