Many novice questions to install SP2010 on Win2008R2

Question

Hi,

SP 2010 is the version I begin with SP. I have read some Technet doc on planning and some blogs to guide for the installation. The instructions are still diffcult to follow for a brand new novice. My goal is to setup a DEV virtual machine to learn & practice. Ideally this Dev VM must be self-sufficiant, working in disconnected mode in the train for example.

The OS is Windows Server 2008 R2. I know well the parts involving hardware, OS, SQL Server 2008, and all the related updates. But nearly nothing related to SP. Can you please help me to clarify a few questions? I apologize in advance for a long post, but SP is so vast.

Q1 . Does a SP DEV machine need a domain account? I have seen in a blog post "Single Server Complete Install of SharePoint 2010 using local accounts"
http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blogs/fromthefield/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=112
I followed all the instructions (including suggestions in the comments) , I always end up with the error "The user does not exist or is not unique"

The reason I would like to avoid to install the Active Directory Services is to save resource and to have a more responsive Dev VM. Even if it is possible to configure SP to work with local account, is there any catch?

Q2. IPv6 is it necessary? It is enable by default. Is there anything to do with IPv6 to improve performance? (disable it?)

Q3 . Is DNS Service necessary? This is a Dev VM, nobody will connect to it. The VM normally boots with a dynamic IP. But in the case it is advised to use a domain account (which means I need to install AD DS, which then suggest to install DNS Service). Is it OK to disable it and what would be the consequence?

Q4. SQL Server 2008 : any extra component required? Analysis Service, Reporting Service, Fulltext Index, File Stream, etc.?

Q5. Does SP2010 install everything it need? Or is there any extra component to install (before and/or after)?
Example: Office 2010, Visual Studio 2010.

Q6. One single big VM or two separate smaller VMs? Let's assume that it is recommended to install Active Directory Services. I may end up with a very loaded machine. Is it better to have one single big VM or 2 smallers VMs? In case two VMs are better, can you suggest how to split the services between VMs?

Q7. Windows 7 as OS? Is there any advantage to use Windows 7 instead of Windows 2008 R2 for the DEV machine? In particular, how to solve the requirement of the domain account for SP installation?

Q8. SP 2010 Installation guide & Tutorial? I would greatly appreciate if you can suggest any source of documentation accessible for novice.

Thank you very much for any help.

Answer 1

Q1. I was going through this kind of installation too. Create a brand new user (i.e. svc_sharepoint) and give it admin rights. Use this user as an account. Also - when putting database server name - use your machine name (plus instance name if applicable). When putting user credentials - put machine name instead of domain. Based on my experience, if something fails - you NEED to restart Power Shell, all susequent tries at the same Power Shell WILL fail.

Q2. No, it is not necessary. You can switch it off. There is no difference in performance, so my recomendation to leave it as is.

Q3. You don't need it if you using local accounts - not sure otherwise.

Q4. Not required. But you can use some in SharePoint - i.e. Reporting Services.

Q5. They are not required for the Server to run. But for the DEV enfironment you will need to install Visual Studio 2010, Office 2010 (InfoPath) and SharePoint Designer 2010. Also if you want to play with FAST search - you need to install it too.

Q6. 1 VM will consume less resources, I do not see any pluses in 2 VMs.

Q7. No advantages. Same way as with Server R2.

Q8. http://blogs.msdn.com/opal/archive/2009/11/16/installation-notice-for-sharepoint-2010-public-beta.aspx
and http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee554869(office.14).aspx and http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blogs/fromthefield/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=112 were the most usefull.

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Paul Shkurikhin blog.sharepointalist.com

Answer 2

Q1. I was going through this kind of installation too. Create a brand new user (i.e. svc_sharepoint) and give it admin rights. Use this user as an account. Also - when putting database server name - use your machine name (plus instance name if applicable). When putting user credentials - put machine name instead of domain. Based on my experience, if something fails - you NEED to restart Power Shell, all subsequent tries at the same Power Shell WILL fail.

Thanks Paul for taking the time to go through all the questions. Can you please elaborate more on Q1?

"Use this user as an account ": Does that mean:
- I login into the VM using this account?
- Or login with my normal Windows account and use the svc_sharepoint account to configure SP 2010?
- Or use the svc_sharepoint account for everything: login to VM, configure SP, used as services account for SQL Server 2008?

"When putting user credentials - put machine name instead of domain ": So I suppose you are referring to the scenario where it is possible to configure SP with a local account. If so is there anything against good practice for NOT using a domain account? Besides the fact that the DEV VM doesn't replicate exactly the Production environment, is there anything that would make a non-domain installation lose any feature or run into scenario not supported by Microsoft?

"restart Power Shell ": does that mean close the PowerShell terminal window and reopen it gain?


For the documentation link you suggested. The 2nd one (Setting Up the Development Environment for SharePoint Server, http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee554869(office.14).aspx).

Does this still apply to SP 2010 Beta2? The install file I got (en_sharepoint_server_2010_beta_x64_x16-19249.exe) has a menu where there is an item "Install Pre-Requisites". Do I still need  to extract it and follow the steps described in this article?

Thanks again for your help.

Answer 3

> Q4. Not required. But you can use some in SharePoint - i.e. Reporting Services.

From my reading of posts in the SP - BI forum Analysis Services is used in connection with SP as well (as Reporting Services)

>Q6. 1 VM will consume less resources, I do not see any pluses in 2 VMs.

Using several VMs (for instance 1AD; 1 SP; 1 SQL Server) better matches a production system. If you have enough memory that is a good reason for going for that approach.

>Q7. No advantages. Same way as with Server R2.

No advantages for sure. The disadvantage of not matching a production system (as you are never going to run any SP system on Windows 7 when in production)

 All my opinions, They don't negate the usefulness of the list.

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FAQ sites: (SP 2010) http://wssv4faq.mindsharp.com; (v3) http://wssv3faq.mindsharp.com and (WSS 2.0) http://wssv2faq.mindsharp.com
Complete Book Lists (incl. foreign language) on each site.

Answer 4

Thanks Paul for taking the time to go through all the questions. Can you please elaborate more on Q1?

Q1 was referring to the installation full of SharePoint 2010 on the non-domain standalone server - the situation described here http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blogs/fromthefield/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=112

In order to make this work, you have to use power shell. When you run "New-SPConfigurationDatabase" you need to supply a few parameters:
DatabaseName: SharePoint_ConfigDB
DatabaseServer: YourServerName or YourServerName\InstanceName if you have a named instance
Farm Credentials: YourServerName\UserName and a password.
Passphrase: some password that you'l need later in the wizard for security verification. 

If for whatever reasons something failed, you need to:
Close the PowerShell terminal window and reopen it gain
Delete all the databases
try again :)

It might take a few tries - it took me around hour to get through this.

svc_sharepoint account might be used as Farm account. No need to login to Server under it. It is optionable - you shlould be able to use Administrator too.

As for using AD vs using Local. My recomendation is to use AD to be able to test out user profiles import, etc. This is closer to production.

Although I am using the local accounts for right now just being a little bit lazy to set it up right now :) I will probably trash my current install in a month or two and will do clean install again anyway. 

As for the link I provided - I used that one for reference mostly. As we allready figured out - you have to install a newer version of Geneva Framework to be able to run some commands. That post is a good reference on what actually being installed and required for SharePoint 2010 installation.

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Paul Shkurikhin blog.sharepointalist.com

Answer 5

Q5 - You may also consider Office Web Applications to enable web viewing/editing of some office documents. It is a seperate download on download center. Please also note Office Web Application does not install on Windows 7.

Answer 6

Q1 was referring to the installation full of SharePoint 2010 on the non-domain standalone server - the situation described here http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blogs/fromthefield/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=112

In order to make this work, you have to use power shell. When you run "New-SPConfigurationDatabase" you need to supply a few parameters:
DatabaseName: SharePoint_ConfigDB
DatabaseServer: YourServerName or YourServerName\InstanceName if you have a named instance
Farm Credentials: YourServerName\UserName and a password.
Passphrase: some password that you'l need later in the wizard for security verification. 

If for whatever reasons something failed, you need to:
Close the PowerShell terminal window and reopen it gain
Delete all the databases
try again :)

It might take a few tries - it took me around hour to get through this.

The link open an error page "Service Unavailable" hopefully it will be fixed soon.
I did try the New-SPConfigurationDatabase Powershell cmdlet. Tried so many times, including updating Geneva Framework, changing Windows account, etc. The only thing I didn't try was to close / reopen the Powershell terminal. So now I hope it will work with this trick.

Also, after I installed SP 2010 (in Server Farm mode), the config wizard automatically poped up and asked me to fill in a form with DB name, DB Server and WIndows account. As soon as I entered the account, it returned an error saying that it's a local account. I then open the Powershell terminal to run New-SPConfigurationDatabase. May be it was not the proper sequence of action.

My goals is very simple, I just want to succeed an installation, and start practicing some baby steps tutorial. I have no idea why domain user account is needed. If it is an absolute requirement to succeed and installation, I will do it. If not, then I will skip it. As you might guess, "user profiles import" is not my immediate concern, I don't know what is this feature. So it seems like the local account scenario would fit my need for now. Later on, hopefully when my SP knowledge will improve, I will have plenty of opportunity to rebuild a better SP setup.

I am going to re-attempt another installation of SP 2010 beta2, here is my starting point:

- Windows 2008 R2 x64, up to date

- SQL Server 2008 x64, up to date (SP1 + CU5). DB engine enabled. Analysis Services, Reporting Services, SSIS installed but are disabled for now.

- Software prerequisites executed (run en_sharepoint_server_2010_beta_x64_x16-19249.exe and click on the "Install software Prerequisites" menu item)

- Geneva Framework x64 update installed (http://download.microsoft.com/download/F/3/D/F3D66A7E-C974-4A60-B7A5-382A61EB7BC6/MicrosoftGenevaFramework.amd64.msi, from Step 7 on this post "SharePoint 2010 Lab Environment Part 1 – Installing SharePoint on Windows 7"  http://sharepointsolutions.com/sharepoint-help/blog/index.php/2009/10/sharepoint-2010-lab-environment-part-1-installing-sharepoint-on-windows-7/

- WCF FIX for Windows 2008 R2 applied (from Jie Li's post: Installation Notice for SharePoint 2010 Public Beta)


Q9. What is the next step to install SP Server?
I hope that I can just run the SP 2010 installer (en_sharepoint_server_2010_beta_x64_x16-19249.exe) and click on "Install Sharepoint Server". If this is the correct step, what should I select, Standalone or Server Farm? And BTW does standalone also mean "Single Server"?

Please note that I would like SP Server to use the SQL Server 2008 already installed and active. I would like the SP Installer NOT to create a new SQL Express instance.

Q10. When to run the Powershell cmdlet New-SPConfigurationDatabase ?
- If the SP Config Wizard is opened automatically at the end of SP Server installation, should I close it? En then open the Powershell terminal to run the Cmdlet?

- Let imagine the cmdlet New-SPConfigurationDatabase is successful, do I need to resume the SP Config Wizard by restarting it from the Start Menu?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Answer 7

Q9. The only way to be able to use you current SQL Server Instance - selecting Server Farm. (Full install). Standalone = Single Server = installing SQL Server Express Instancve.

Q10. Yes - just close it. Then do the power shell. If anything goes wrong on this step - close the powershell -> open SQL Server Management Studio -> Delete Databases Created for SharePoint -> start power shell -> try again.
When it is successfull -> Start SPConfig Wizard -> and it will be allready preconfigured to connect to your new database.

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Paul Shkurikhin blog.sharepointalist.com

Answer 8

Hi Paul,

Thank you very much for your patient help. The installation was successful. The cmdlet New-SPConfigurationDatabase was executed successfully right at the first try.

I think the key point was that I closed the SP Config Wizard after SP Server installation was completed. Yesterday, I input the info in the form of the config wizard and got an error (not domain account). This error probably got stuck somewhere and I didn't know how to clear properly. Also for today installation, I create another Windows account used as Farm Admin instead of using Administrator.

Now finishing up SP 2010 Central Administration.

Thanks again for all your help.