December 13, 2015

Autodesk Vault install on Remote SQL Database

Aldred Boyd | Application Engineer - Technical

I recently did an Autodesk Vault Professional installation with a difference from the normal installs I do. This installation had the SQL database on a remote server. (Please note that you are only able to have the SQL database on a remote server if you are using the Professional version of Vault)

I first setup the SQL instance to be used by Inventor by referring to the Autodesk Vault Advanced Configuration Guide. The latest one is for Vault 2014. These install setup instructions are very important and should be followed closely.

For those of you who have not worked with SQL, you can have different instances (or installations) of SQL on one computer. Each instance of the SQL database that you install will run independently from each other and you can connect it to a different software package that you are running. So you can run Vault on a machine with other software that is also running on SQL because the instances are totally separate.

I had installed Microsoft SQL 2012. I needed to install Service Pack 2 for this as it is a requirement for the Autodesk Vault 2016 installation

This is a bit of a different install (compared to Autodesk service packs) as you need to download service pack 2(and please do not be alarmed at this) it is about 1GB in size. When you start installing the service pack it will look for any instances that you have of SQL that does not have service pack 2. If it has service pack 3 then that instance will be greyed out. You will pick the instance that you want the service pack to be applied to and then run the update.

Once this was done I then configured the IIS on the server that the Vault was going on. Once again using the Advanced configuration guide. A very handy document to have about. If you did not have the IIS installed at all, you could let Vault do the configuration for you. This has been available since Vault 2014.

Once this is done you need to create a shared folder whose permissions are accessible by the user account that is running the SQL instance and the user account that is running the Autodesk Vault.

Now we can start the Vault install.

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About the Author

Aldred Boyd | Application Engineer - Technical

Aldred is an Application Engineer with over 22 years of experience working with Autodesk products. His primary focus is in a consultative role for the manufacturing industry, where he identifies potential challenges within a company's workflow and processes. His extensive experience enables him to identify these challenges and resolve them through the addition of software, training, or further development to address the issues encountered.