Collecting Infrastructure Information - Installing SQL Server (Part 1/3)

This is the first part of our video series on how to collect domain infrastructure information using Sys-Manage CopyRight2's Infrastructure Reporting module. The video explains how to install Microsoft® SQL Server 2016 and Reporting Services onto a Windows 2012 R2 server.

Microsoft SQL Server and the accompanying Reporting Services are a requirement if you want to use the pre-installed infrastructure reports.

CopyRight2’s report model will allow you to access these reports using your favorite browser. The advantage of using a report model is that it adds an additional abstraction layer, because tables in a database may not necessarily correlate with entities as you know them in the real world.

For example, the data for a customer, may actually be split into multiple SQL tables or located in more than just 1 database or data source. All of that can be hidden by a properly designed report model.

The Reporting Service’s drill-through feature gives you the possibility to surf through your data via hyperlinks, for example if looking at the members of a group, you can simply click on one of the members and then get detail information on that member account (user or group). Additionally, you can export reports based on a schedule and build custom reports by using Microsoft’s Report Builder, all without knowing a single bit about how to write a SQL query.

Without SQL Server you can still produce infrastructure data using CopyRight2 in a decentralized way and automatically import the results to a central location, for example as text files in CSV format or Access MDB databases. You could then use something like Excel or build a custom solution tailored towards your requirements.