The Admin editor maintains the paths and defaults every install starts from. The Domain-Admin editor maintains the per-domain exceptions on top, collation, drive letters, and which AD groups get sysadmin. Users never touch either one; they just run against whatever these editors currently say.
Start-AdminConfig.cmd opens the admin configuration editor. It writes Config\settings.ini, the values every domain profile builds on.
| SetupSourceRoot | Root directory of the SQL installation sources. |
| BackupRoot | Target directory for system-database backups. |
| ScriptsRoot | Path to post-install scripts. |
| Versionen | Comma-separated list of available SQL Server versions. |
| DefaultVersion | Pre-selected SQL Server version (e.g. 2022). |
| DefaultEdition | Pre-selected edition (Developer / Standard / Enterprise). |
| DefaultPort | TCP port (default: 1433). |
| BrowserPort | SQL Browser UDP port (default: 1434). |
| Format64kCheck | 64K block-size check for data drives. |
| PowerBI_Enabled | Offer Power BI Report Server as an optional component. |
| PowerBI_SourcePath | Installation source for Power BI Report Server. |
Start-DomainConfig.cmd opens the domain-profile editor. Each profile lives at Config\domains\<DOMAIN>.ini, keyed by NetBIOS domain name, and takes priority over the global defaults.
| Left column | List of all profiles in Config\domains\. |
| + New | Creates a new profile, enter the NetBIOS domain name (e.g. CONTOSO). |
| - Delete | Removes a profile (DEFAULT is protected). |
| Save | Writes the currently displayed profile. |
| Display name | Descriptive name for the profile. |
| Collation | SQL Server collation (e.g. Latin1_General_CI_AS). |
| Sysadmin groups | Comma-separated AD groups that get the sysadmin role after install. |
| Monitoring type | 0-based index into the monitoring types list from settings.ini [Monitoring]. |
| Target server base path | Path for ZIP export (empty = export disabled). |
| Data drive | MDF / NDF user database files. |
| Log drive | LDF transaction logs. |
| TempDB drive | TempDB files. |
| Backup drive | Backups plus the system-database directory. |
| Install drive | SQL Server binary files. |
By default, PostInstall removes the BUILTIN\Administrators SQL login entirely after install, but only if another active sysadmin login already exists at that point (usually an AD group from the sysadmin-groups setting). If none does, the step is skipped so nobody gets locked out. This follows the same domain-profile-overrides-global priority as the rest of the configuration; toggle it via [Security] Standard in the Admin editor, or per domain.