I’ve been following Microsoft’s guide for installing a dev environment on Windows 7:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee554869.aspx
In order for it to not run like a dog I’ve created a SQL Server 2008 instance on our database server specifically for this dev machine. The article does mention that you might be wanting to use an external database in regard to making sure the database cumulative update is installed. It doesn’t make any other mention of configuring it to use a external database. I was hoping that the configuration wizard would then prompt about which database to use but annoyingly it just set-up the configuration database locally.
How do I go about installing SharePoint on a dev environment with an external database, and will I need to reformat this machine and do it all again?
Well, this depends on what your environment looks like. For instance, is this machine part of a domain?
If so, it should be as simple as selecting “Server Farm Install”, or something like that when you did the binaries installation. Then, when you run Products and Configuration Wizard, it will ask you for DB info. Note: if you are doing this, I would recommend you to be part of the ‘sa’ role on the database server as you will be creating databases.
If you are not part of a domain, it gets a little trickier, but not too bad. Check out this article.
http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blogs/fromthefield/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=112
-= Plan B =-
You can always give this a whirl. This is the method we use to keep the DB guys from screaming. It also allows us to give our databases nice names.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262869.aspx