Navigation:  Setting up SQL 2008 R2 Express >

imageInstallation

We are now ready to get started. After launching the setup file, choose "New installation or add features to an existing installation."

Accept the license terms and click "Next >" to continue installation.

Here you can select the features to install. At a minimum, you will need the "Database Engine Services". It is recommended to also install "Management Tools - Basic" which gives you the SQL Server Management Studio Express utility which is helpful for maintenance.

In this case, we are going to just install everything.

It is recommended that in this step you create a new named instance for EventSentry. That way, if there is already a SQL instance on the machine, we won't be stepping on its settings. In this case, we named the instance "EVENTSENTRY".

The next step asks you what account to run the different SQL services from. We will just accept the defaults. Click on the "Collation" tab, and make sure that the Database Engine collation is set to "SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI-AS". It should be by default, but there can be issues if the wrong collation is selected. Click "Next >" to continue.

This next part is very important. EventSentry requires "Mixed Mode" authentication, so that SQL user accounts can be used to log into SQL Server in addition to Windows users accounts. There are two accounts that EventSentry uses that have very limited permissions: eventsentry_svc and eventsentry_web. They are SQL-only accounts only and have no Windows rights.

In "Mixed Mode", you will need to set a password for the "sa" user account. This is the master user of the database (like an Administrator in Windows or root in Unix). This password will be important later on when setting up EventSentry.

You then get the "Error Reporting" settings. Use whatever you like here, it makes no difference in the functionality of the database.

Click "Next >" to being the actual installation. Once this is done - and assuming that the installation went through OK - you will have a fully functional database server.

We aren't finished yet though, there are still a few things we need to configure in SQL Server before we can use it with EventSentry.