Creating a SharePoint 2010 Business Intelligence VM Image (using SQL Server 2008 R2 CTP)

SharePoint is becoming more and more prominent as the delivery mechanism for BI solutions within the Microsoft stack. The SharePoint 2010 BETA along with SQL Server 2008 R2 further strengthen the overall business intelligence capabilities and functionality possible in an organization.

I have a VM image to ramp up on SharePoint 2010 itself but in order to expand into all of the new BI features I wanted to create a new one (from scratch) with the latest SQL Server 2008 R2 CTP. So I did! It was a very tedious process but I found a guide to assist me.

I used the wonderful instructions laid out here: http://www.sharepointdevwiki.com/display/spadmin2010/Installing+SharePoint+2010+Public+Beta

However, since I was using SQL Server 2008 R2 and wanted to configure it for full business intelligence usage, I needed to modify the steps slightly. This post will outline those steps and show any updated walkthroughs.

These instructions/steps are needed only when using SQL Server 2008 R2 CTP as there are several installation issues when integrating with SharePoint 2010. Hopefully in the release these will be corrected.

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