Netweaver Sneak Preview - ABAP Stack Installation - My Experience

[RichHeilman]

My installation was not flawless but did go fairly smooth.  In comparison to my experience in installing a java stack early this year,  this was far easier.

The Machine

I did the installation on my laptop. It is an HP/Compaq nx7010 which has a Centrino 1.7ghz processor and 1gb of RAM.  It is running Windows XP Pro Service Pack 2.

The Download

I downloaded the RAR file while I was at work.  It took about 5.5 hours.  I think that it would have been much faster if I had downloaded it from home.

RAR Extraction

I downloaded WinRar from http://www.rarlab.com/rar/wrar350.exe.  After installation, I was able to extract/unpack the RAR file to my desktop.  This was my first and only mistake, and would prove to be crucial when installing the database instance.  If you are planning to install the Sneak Preview, I would strongly suggest that you extract the RAR file to your local hard drive(C:/).  If you extract to your desktop, the database instance installation will dump with a FSL-02015 error.  So save yourself the head->wall.

MS Loopback Adapter

Thanks to the documentation on this, this step was really easy.  I had done this before when installing a 6.20 Sneak Preview on another machine, but it has been a while.  So the documentation was really handy.

Central Instance Installation

This part was a breeze,  I entered/accepted some parameter values and clicked start,  6 minutes later, the installation is finished with no errors. 

Database Instance Installation

Here is the part that gave me a lot of trouble.  After entering the size for the log and database, the installation dumped, giving me the FSL-02015 error.  The error indicates, "Node C:/Documents/DATA does not exist".   This threw me for a while.  I really was not sure what to do.  I tried creating the directory manually, but still the error came.  I searched SDN, but was searching in the wrong forum.  At about 1:00am EST,  I found a Cannot install database instance for ABAP version  in the SDN Code Samples/Downloads Forum that solved my problem.  The problem was where I extracted the RAR file to.  Since I extracted to my desktop, the file path was to long for the installation to handle.  I then moved the extracted folder to C:/ and re-ran the database instance installation.  This time I was able to start the installation.  It took about 1.5 hours.

All Done

The installation finished successfully and all that was left was setting up the connection in SAPgui.  Everything seems to be running fine.  I don't seem to have any performance issues right now.