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We have a server that is installed and running and now we would like to make copies of it. The server is Windows 2012 with Sql Server 2014 Standard.

I havn't found any information regarding this, so is it possible at all? What are the steps to do it? When creating a new machine based on the template, what needs to be done to the new machine?

As a side note the machine is running in Azure at the moment and we hope to be able to add it to our own Azure VM templates.

Mathias Rönnlund
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While it is definitely supported to sysprep the newer versions of SQL Server.
And it is also use-able with the procedure for sys-prepping an azure machine

However!

Microsoft does not support sysprepping active production systems!

Production environment

Microsoft does not support the use of Sysprep for the following scenarios:

  • To take a computer that has been running in production for extended period of time and run sysprep then create a new image or clone from the computer. Sysprep is designed to prepare new installations of Windows for imaging.

  • To run sysprep after imaging or cloning production computer for the purpose of changing the SID and computername to join the domain and make the computer unique. For example if you cloned or performed a Physical to Virtual(P2V) of a computer but want to leave the source computer running instead of decommissioning it.

When you use Sysprep to prepare an image of such a system, many problems may surface immediately or may be exposed at a later time that make it difficult to troubleshoot the system without a full understanding of the complete history of the changes. Therefore, in this scenario, you may have to rebuild the image if that installation has issues.

Your best bet is to install a clean template on a new azure VM, install everything you require and them sysprep it and add that to your VM Templates.

Personal remarks:
We personally have SQL Server installations pretty much every week as upgrades is a continuous process. And we've tried using sysprep, however we decided to leave out SQL Server from our images, as it added complexity for little gain.
Our images have everything needed except for the SQL Server, and we install that afterwards.

Community
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Reaces
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  • If I install Sql server according to your link "sysprep sql server", can I then have some databases preinstalled or is it only the Sql server binaries that get copied to the machine? – Mathias Rönnlund Sep 24 '15 at 09:44
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    While you can't have a SQL Server sysprepped with databases already present (it is sysprepped in an unconfigured state) you can already place the database files on your image and have them attached once the configuration is done. – Reaces Sep 24 '15 at 09:50