Sql-server – How to find which edition the SQL Server installation media belongs to

sql serversql-server-2008sql-server-2012

Without installing SQL Server media 2008 and 2012, how can we know that the media belongs to a certain edition (like Developer, Standard or Enterprise)?

Best Answer

Per this thread on MSDN:

SQL 2008 onwards SQL server setup allows you to chose the option which edition you want to install. That means one media has the files of all edition.

and

..., the FULL media is good to install all editions, it depends on the PID you provide during setup.

The media layout is found in \MediaInfo.xml, and the default product key is in \<platform>\DefaultSetup.ini. Note that the product key is the same, regardless of platform.

Unfortunately, I haven't found a way to determine the available editions without running Setup and looking at the list after entering the product key. (I assume this is by design for security reasons.)

If you have a lot of these to validate, it's probably faster to grab a list of the product keys and check against the keys available in your MSDN subscription. The corollary to that is to always replace the default product key during Setup with one of the keys on MSDN.

Related Question