SoYouStart has cheap servers with Windows options:

http://www.soyoustart.com/us/offers/sys-ip-1.xml

I could try to set up a Windows VM would need a license key.

Yes, the server looks OK to me. Please order one and I will make the payment.

With regards to the setting up a VM, I am not sure if it would be a cheaper option since we would need to purchase Windows server license.

The 4 lowest price servers are not available. The cheapest available is $56/month. Do you want to pay for the year or monthly installments?

Let's go for monthly payment options. If we do not have money during the year we can always cancel the server as it is for testing only, so it is not critical.

https://us.soyoustart.com/en/cgi-bin/order/displayOrder.cgi?orderId=267102&orderPassword=lzou

support+servers@tigase.com

QRHEPaCs

Paid OK

Seems only Hyper-V distributions are available for install. We need to purchase a license. The cheapest is Microsoft SQL Server Web Edition $57/month. This SQL server adds $32 to the price. Shall I check it out?

https://us.soyoustart.com/manager/?csid=penCf#/license/order

Do we really need SQL Server licence? Previously we were using free "Express edition which was more than enough for testing purposes.

I didn't know that. The license price is $25 monthly without Microsoft SQL Server

The $25/month is for Windows license, right? Please go ahead and order this service and we will use, as Wojciech, suggested Express edition as previously.

Artur you need to make the payment:

https://us.soyoustart.com/en/cgi-bin/order/displayOrder.cgi?orderId=280236&orderPassword=75GI

The order has expired. Could you please submit it again?

https://us.soyoustart.com/en/cgi-bin/order/displayOrder.cgi?orderId=282295&orderPassword=wGGH

Apparently the order is valid for 6h, so today it was expired as well at the time I got to the email. Can we synchronize it somehow tomorrow. You could ping me at about 11AM my time and place the order when I am online so I can make a payment right away?

https://us.soyoustart.com/en/cgi-bin/order/displayOrder.cgi?orderId=283394&orderPassword=X40T

Paid OK.

The Windows machine is up. I managed to install SQL Server Express. I am now trying to discover how to interface with the program in order to install our DB.

https://projects.tigase.org/projects/servers/wiki/So_You_Start

Managed to get this installed. I am able to connect remotely:

@eric&medusa private/ $ isql -v MSQLTestServer tigase mypass
+---------------------------------------+
| Connected!                            |
|                                       |
| sql-statement                         |
| help [tablename]                      |
| quit                                  |
|                                       |
+---------------------------------------+
SQL>@

Tests are still failing. In the raw output I see this:
tigase.util.DBSchemaLoader     	 <init>          	 CONFIG     Properties: [{dbHostname=sqlserverhost, logLevel=ALL, dbType=sqlserver, rootUser=root, dbPass=mypass, schemaVersion=5-1, dbName=tigasetest, query=drop database tigasetest, rootPass=6enef7spucrafreP, dbUser=tigase}]
...
tigase.util.DBSchemaLoader     	 validateDBConnection 	 WARNING    Login failed for user 'root'.

The db has this user NS501254\root which only has windows authentication enabled.

Changing the sa account password to 6enef7spucrafreP didn't fix the issue.

I don't want to make an irrecoverable mistake at this point when I think we are very close so I will pause here.

• none of the IPs were enabled (only local, non-network connections were possible) - I've enabled only one - external IPv4

• there are either windows authentication or sql server authentication; and the root was the first type which is not used when connecting over jdbc (and this one needs to be used as there is no sane tooling for ms sql server for linux cmd); there is default "superuser" - "sa" of the second type which can be used but because we are using this for TTS and how it works currently it's easier to have same user/pass for all databases then it's easier to create another superuser account "root" with correct credentials which was added.

Right now MS SQL tests run and pass except for a 6 tests - issue seems to be related to Repository access, still under investigation.

All tests pass now:

http://build.tigase.org/nightlies/tests/

http://build.tigase.org/nightlies/tests/files/static/tests/5.3.0-SNAPSHOT-b3651/func/mssql/functional-tests.html

Fixed an issue in execution of some stored procedures and handling the results for SQL Server - this only affected MUC and PubSub component and only once after first start, made the tests fail nevertheless.