How to Install SQL Server 2025 RC0 on an Azure VM

I wanted to try out the new JSON index which is for the moment only available in the SQL Server 2025 preview version. I know, it’s not even available in Azure SQL DB. Cloud not first? What?

I already had a virtual machine in Azure, running SQL Server 2025 CTP 2.0 (which uses a pre-made image). I explain how to set that one up in the article Install SQL Server 2025 Demo Environment in Azure. But I wanted to use the latest preview, which is Release Candidate 0 at the time of writing. Unfortunately, there’s no image available (yet?), so I had to do it the old-school way: installing SQL Server manually.

I created a VM in Azure in pretty much the same way as in the article, except I didn’t pick an image with SQL Server pre-installed, but one with only a Windows operating system.

Once the VM was provisioned, I logged in using remote desktop, enabled Internet and downloaded the RC0 installation media (for which you need to fill in a form to get it). I started the SQL Server installer and launched SQL Server setup:

Most of the setup wizard is “next-next-finish”, so I’ll highlight the important parts. First, you need to pick a SQL Server edition.

New in SQL Server 2025 is that there’s a Standard Developer edition, meaning a Developer edition that only has the features of Standard. I want all the features, so I choose Enterprise Developer.

After accepting the license terms, checking for updates and installation rules, and finally ignoring Azure extension, we get to the feature selection page:

Pretty wild that it fits in one single screenshot. They really removed a lot of features which are now separate downloads (or just gone, like Data Quality Services). For contrast, check out this screenshot from SQL Server 2012:

I only need the database engine and I’m installing it as the default instance, so I skip straight through the instance configuration, where I check the box:

For the server configuration, I picked mixed mode because SQL authentication is a tad easier to use when logging in remotely (use a strong password for the sa account!) and it’s just a test environment. Add your user as an admin.

After that, hit next till SQL Server 2025 is installed (which should just take a couple of minutes).

Inside remote desktop, I can now log into my SQL Server 2025 instance using windows authentication. I also want to log into the database with SSMS from my own machine. I disabled the Windows Firewall (I know, not exactly best practice) and I added port 1433 to the VM firewall:

I also enabled the TCP/IP protocol in the SQL Server Configuration Manager:

After all that, you should be able to connect to the database instance from your local machine:

Don’t forget to prefix the public IP address of your Azure VM with tcp: to make sure the correct protocol is used.