Installing SQL Server – reboot required check fails

Not able to install SqlServer 2008 says Restart computer failed

SQL Server Installation Rules and "System Reboot Required" Error

I get the error message the prerequisites  "Restart the computer is required".

When installing SQL Server some times you may run to situation for "Reboot required check failed" failed issue in prerequisites validation screen.  To skip this failure without restarting machine. 

Goto run and type regedit.exe to open registry 

in registry 

Goto:  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\SessionManager , and instead of "EXPANDING" Session Manager, "SELECT" it and you will see the entry called, PENDING FILE RENAME OPERATION 

Take backup of registry value first.

Then, If PENDING FILE RENAME OPERATION has any values just remove it and clear the value

Reboot the System and again go to PENDING FILE RENAME OPERATION and see if there is any values still available.

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Thanks & Regards
Venkat Sangu

Lock Pages in Memory

Lock Pages in Memory

It is a standard configuration setting for SQL Server.  Some times Server forced to page out large quantities of memory because of memory pressure  from windows then immediately for some time SQL Server performance will decreased. By enabling Lock Pages in Memory  SQL Server ignores the request from windows to release memroy(RAM sucn as data cache). This problem occurs much less in SQL Server instances running under SQL Server 2008.

Every time SQL Server try to fetch data pages from memory instead of fetching for Disk to reduce the disk I/O.  With this behaviour SQL Server performance will increase.

The Lock Pages in Memory option is set to OFF by default in SQL Server. If you have system administrator permissions, you can enable the option manually by using the Windows Group Policy tool (gpedit.msc) and assign this permission to the account that SQL Server is running.

Below are the steps to enable Lock Pages in Memory.

è  Click on start button click on Run. In open box type   gpedit.msc and lick on OK button. It will open Local Group Policy Editor Console Window.

 è  On the Local Group Policy Editor console, expand Computer Configuration, then expand Windows Settings, then  expand Security Settings, then expand Local Policies. In Local Policies Select User Rights Assignments folder. In the right side pane it will display all policies information. In the right side pane you can find the Lock pages in memory option. Double click on it

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è  It displays below screen, click on Add User or Group and in = Select USERS, SERVICE ACCOUNTS or GROUPS  dialog box add account of SQL Server service Run as account which is administrator permission

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RAID

RAID : Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks.

It is used to provide fault tolerance to database servers.  There are six RAID levels from 0 - 5. RAIDs will allow you to treat multiple hard drives as a single volume on your computer.

For SQL Server RAID 1+0 is the best one. If it is expensive RIAD 1 or 1+0 for log files 5 for data files and 10 for tempdb.  RAID 5 is not suitable for log file drives because there are huse writes on the files. RAID 1+0 provides better write performance than any other RAID level providing . So always plays log files on RAID (1+0) disk which provides better performance from hardware failures and better write performance.

Performance may benefits if TEMPDB is place on RAID 1+0

RAID 0 (Disk Striping) :It improve the read and write performance by spreading the operations into multiple disks. It is similar to RAID 5 but it wont provides fault tolerance 

RAID 1 (Disk Mirroring) : Disk mirror provides a redundant, identical copy of a selected disk. All data written into the primary disk is written into the mirror disk. RAID 1 provides the fault tolerance and generally improves the read performance but degrades write performance

RAID 2  : It adds redundancy by using an error correction method that spreads across all disks. It is not as efficient as other RAID levels and not generally used.

RAID 3  (Byte Striping) : It uses the striping method as RAID2, but error correcting method requires only one disk, it uses one drive on the array to store parity data (Parity data is used by some RAID levels to achieve redundancy. If a drive in the array fails, remaining data on the other drives can be combined with the parity data (using the Boolean XOR function) to reconstruct the missing data)

RAID 4 :  This level uses striped data in much larger blocks or segments than RAID 2 or RAID 3. Like RAID 3, the error correction method requires only one disk for parity data. This feature keeps user data separate from error-correction data. RAID 4 is not as efficient as other RAID levels and is not generally used.

RAID 5 (Parity Striping) : It is also known as parity with striping, in this level strips the data into large blocks across the disk in array. It writes the parity across all the disks. Data redundancy is provided by parity information.  Read data transactions are very fast while write data transaction are somewhat slower.  In the event of a single drive failure, data can still be accessed. A minimum of three drives is required.  

RAID 1+0 (Mirror of Strips) :  It is also known as mirror with striping. It uses the stripped array of disks that are then mirrored to another identical set of stripped disks. For example, a striped array can be created by using five disks. The striped array of disks is then mirrored using another set of five striped disks. RAID 10 provides the performance benefits of disk striping with the disk redundancy of mirroring. RAID 10 provides the highest read-and-write performance of any one of the other RAID levels, but at the expense of using two times as many disks

SQL Server and Build Numbers

Build chart lists all of the known Service Packs (SP)

	RTM	SP1	SP2	SP3	SP4
SQL Server 2014	12.0.2000.8 12.00.2000.8
SQL Server 2012	11.0.2100.60 11.00.2100.60	11.0.3000.0 or 11.1.3000.0	11.0.5058.0 or 11.2.5058.0
SQL Server 2008 R2	10.50.1600.1	10.50.2500.0/ 10.51.2500.0	10.50.4000.0/ 10.52.4000.0	10.50.6000.34/ 10.53.6000.34
SQL Server 2008	10.0.1600.22 10.00.1600.22	10.0.2531.0 10.00.2531.0 or 10.1.2531.0	10.0.4000.0 10.00.4000.0/ 10.2.4000.0	10.0.5500.0 10.00.5500.0/ 10.3.5500.0	10.0.6000.29 10.00.6000.29/ 10.4.6000.29
SQL Server 2005	9.0.1399.06 9.00.1399.06	9.0.2047/9.00.2047	9.0.3042/ 9.00.3042	9.0.4035/ 9.00.4035	9.0.5000/ 9.00.5000
SQL Server 2000	8.0.194 8.00.194	8.0.384 8.00.384	8.0.532 8.00.532	8.0.760/ 8.00.760	8.0.2039 8.00.2039
SQL Server 7.0	7.0.623 7.00.623	7.0.699 7.00.699	7.0.842 7.00.842	7.0.961 7.00.961	7.0.1063

Operating System Requirements to install SQL Server 2012

SQL Server 2012 edition	Operating system
SQL Server 2012 x64 Enterprise, Business Intelligence, and Web	Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Datacenter, Enterprise, Standard, and Web or above Windows Server 2008 SP2 Datacenter, Enterprise, Standard, and Web or above
SQL Server 2012 x86 Enterprise, Business Intelligence, and Web	Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Datacenter, Enterprise, Standard, and Web or above Windows Server 2008 (x64 and x86) SP2 Datacenter, Enterprise,Standard, and Web or above
SQL Server 2012 x64 Standard	Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Datacenter, Enterprise, Standard,Foundation, and Web or above Windows Server 2008 SP2 Datacenter, Enterprise, Standard, and Web or above Windows 7 SP1 x64 Ultimate, Enterprise, and Professional Windows Vista SP2 x64 Ultimate, Enterprise, and Business
SQL Server 2012 x86 Standard	Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Datacenter, Enterprise, Standard,Foundation, and Web or above Windows Server 2008 (x64 and x86) SP2 Datacenter, Enterprise,Standard, and Web or above Windows 7 SP1 (x64 and x86) Ultimate, Enterprise, and Professional Windows Vista SP2 (x64 and x86) Ultimate, Enterprise, and Business
SQL Server 2012 x64 Developer, Express, Express with Tools, and Express with Advanced Services	Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Datacenter, Enterprise, Standard,Foundation, and Web or above Windows Server 2008 (x64) SP2 Datacenter, Enterprise, Standard,and Web or above Windows 7 SP1 (x64) Ultimate, Enterprise, Professional, Home Premium, and Home Basic Windows Vista SP2 (x64)
SQL Server 2012 x86 Developer, Express, Express with Tools, and Express with Advanced Services	Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Datacenter, Enterprise, Standard,Foundation, and Web or above Windows Server 2008 (x64 and x86) SP2 Datacenter, Enterprise,Standard, and Web or above Windows 7 SP1 (x64 and x86) Ultimate, Enterprise, Professional, Home Premium, and Home Basic Windows Vista SP2 (x64 and x86) Ultimate, Enterprise, Business, Home Premium, and Home Basic