I recently had to setup a new windows dev machine with a local instance of SQL Server and it turns out you can run it completely from the command line although it’s not very obvious how.

Once you download the installer it will extract everything to a folder which contains the SETUP.exe executable which you can run from the terminal and pass all the options you want instead of clicking through the UI.

If you’re like me and just needed a fairly standard installation for local development, then this should do it:

.\SETUP.EXE /IACCEPTSQLSERVERLICENSETERMS /ACTION="install" /FEATURES=SQLEngine,FullText /INSTANCENAME="MSSQLSERVER" /SQLSYSADMINACCOUNTS="$env:USERDOMAIN\$env:USERNAME" /SQLSVCACCOUNT="NT Service\MSSQLSERVER" /AGTSVCACCOUNT="NT Service\SQLSERVERAGENT" /SQLSVCINSTANTFILEINIT=True /INDICATEPROGRESS /Q

Management studio is no longer included with the main installer but you can use winget: winget install -e --id Microsoft.SQLServerManagementStudio

If you need additional features then you need to look up the options to set on the /FEATURES param, like RS for reporting services.

Details

This is what the above command does:

  • /IACCEPTSQLSERVERLICENSETERMS - Required to accept the SQL Server license terms.

  • /Q - Runs setup in quiet mode. This is needed otherwise it will just open the regular install UI.

  • /ACTION="install" - Specify that we want to install vs uninstall or upgrade.

  • /FEATURES=SQLEngine,FullText - Specify which SQL Server components to install:

    • SQLEngine: The core database engine
    • FullText: Full-text search

  • /INSTANCENAME="MSSQLSERVER" - "MSSQLSERVER" is the default instance name.

  • /SQLSYSADMINACCOUNTS="$env:USERDOMAIN\$env:USERNAME" - Use powershell environment variables to set the current user as the sql server admin

  • /SQLSVCACCOUNT="NT Service\MSSQLSERVER" - Set the service account for the SQL Server Database Engine service. "NT Service\MSSQLSERVER" is the common default when using the UI.

  • /AGTSVCACCOUNT="NT Service\SQLSERVERAGENT" - Sets the account for the SQL Server Agent service (handles scheduled jobs and alerts)

  • /SQLSVCINSTANTFILEINIT=True - Enables Instant File Initialization, which seems like a worthwhile performance optimization according to the docs.

  • /INDICATEPROGRESS - Shows installation progress in the console window, useful for monitoring the installation status

Also, you can apparently install from a configuration file that the installer can generate for you.