This post will teach you how to install Azure DevOps Server 2022 and SQL Server Express 2019 on the same Windows Server step by step. You may follow the installation guide from Microsoft official documentation. However, you may find some common problems during installation when installing for your organization. So, Let’s get started!
Prerequisites
follow the recommendation in official documentation:
- A single computer satisfies the system requirements.
- SQL Server (on Azure or on-premises) [supported version]. Don’t know how to install it? You can take my post for reference😎.
- The account you use to configure the installation must be a member of the sysadmin server role in SQL Server
- [Optional] Install JRE 8 if you need the Search extension.
- [Optional] Prepare a SSL certificate if you need your website (application-tier) to be HTTPS.
In this post, the specifications are listed below, and I will install it with single-server deployment (Azure DevOps Server and SQL Server are installed on the same server):
- Windows Server 2019 on Azure VM (2vcpu, 8GB memory)
- Azure DevOps Server 2022. *Choose .exe if your environment is Internet-connected or download .iso version for isolated-environment.
- SQL Server Express 2019 with sysadmin permission
- Java SE 8 (jre only would be fine) [JAVA_HOME must be set in your environmental variables]
- SSL certificate (you may create a self-signed certificate automatically during installation)
[Notice] In official documentation here, the Note of the third point lists required permissions and memberships during installation, like serveradmin role, CONTROL permission on master database, etc. However, even if you get the permissions, you might still fail with GRANT permission error when trying to create the Collection. Therefore, you need to get the sysadmin role (DBAs might be going crazy when hearing that😂) to create Collections successfully.
Step1: Download Azure DevOps Server 2022 from MSDN
There are two versions of Azure DevOps Server 2022, and different ways to download it. Here is the recommendation when choosing which one you should use.
- EXE download: Only the installation wizard in the file. Your environment should access to the Internet because the installation wizard will download all packages from the Internet during the installation process.
- ISO download: Download whole pack of files that installation wizard will use, including the packages, the installation wizard, etc. Therefore, if your environment is isolated, you have to install it from internet-connected computer in advanced and copy all files into your isolated environment.
Step2: Open Installation Wizard and Follow the steps
you will see the file named “azuredevopsserver2022.exe ,” click it and follow the guidance.
Choose deployment type on your server. If you’ve already had a configured-database, you may choose the second choice. However, you just installed my SQL Server and total new to Azure DevOps Server, so it would be good to choose the first choice.
In Azure blade, there are 3 selections for your deployment. We choose Advanced here for managing installation much more granularly.
I suggest you can select English for the language. The reason for choosing it is it is much easier to debug when something go wrong. Also, the translated word might have totally different from the word it should be.
SQL Server Instance: when you installs SQL Server, you would create Instance. Take my SQL Server Installation post for example, the name of Instance is “MSSQLSERVER” in Step3, so you can enter “localhost” or “<Instance Name>” directly here if you install SQL server and Azure DevOps server on the same server.
In IIS, it will deploy a Azure DevOps Server Web Site on IIS. In this page, you can set your website whether it goes through HTTPS or not. If you’ve prepared SSL certificate beforehand, choosing Setting Group to “HTTPS and HTTP (with redirect)“ and choosing your certificate or generating a new self-signed certificate
[Optional Step] If you would like to install with Search functionality, you need to install Jre in advanced, and configure “JAVA_HOME” in your environment variables.
Last but not least, you need to create a first project collection in Azure DevOps Server 2022 and enter your collection name as you like. If you don’t like to create it right now, you can create collection in Azure DevOps Admin Console after all configuration setting up.
Review all configuration and install Azure DevOps Server 2022.
Step3: Congrat! You’ve completed the installation
If you try to open Azure DevOps Server 2022 Admin Console, clicking Windows and finding it in Azure DevOps Server 2022 folder.
Access to Appplication Tier (Website) of Azure DevOps Server 2022.
