...does not work, it looks like.

I upgraded my installation (hosting this site) of Windows Server 2008 from Beta 3 (June CTP) to RC0 today - over remote desktop! My server is located in a locked server room, so I wanted to try a remote upgrade before asking for the key, and it went well. I extracted the ISO onto the hard drive, started the installation from remote desktop and selected the upgrade option. It turns out that the Windows setup doesn't (luckily) show any dialogs where you have to click next during the upgrade. I had a continuous ping trace running and observed the server going up and down a few times, before it completed the installation and enabled incoming remote desktop connections again. Pretty cool!

But, back to the title. Everything worked well after the upgrade, except SQL Server 2008 July CTP. I kept getting error messages from Management Studio when connecting saying "No process is on the other end of pipe", and this led me into thinking that I had a certificate problem. See this blog post.

But, it turns out that this wasn't the issue. The issue is that Windows Server 2008 RC0 ships with a version of SQL Native Client that is newer than what the SQL Server 2008 July CTP supports, so it just doesn't work. This thread says it will be addressed in the next SQL Server CTP. Until then you have two options:

• Use Management Studio 2008 from another machine to administer SQL Server. This will probably still give you problems if you run SharePoint on the same server, at least my SharePoint installation gets the "No process in end of pipe"-error
• Install SQL Server 2005

For now, I'm going with SQL Server 2005 while I'm waiting for the next CTP of SQL Server 2008. I read somewhere that it is expected in the next one to two weeks. It will probably contain lots of new stuff, like spatial data support, Intellisense in Management Studio and so on. Looking forward to it!