Installing Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013 Preview–Step by Step

The new Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013 preview was released earlier this week and as usual I wanted to try it out. I started to make my own test environment with the following

• Windows Server 2012 Release Candidate
• Microsoft SQL Server 2012
• Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013

Since it was a “test” environment I started to install my AD, DB and SharePoint in one single server. Of course I am aware that it’s not best practice neither its recommended, but its on my a test environment

After installing Windows Server and configuring it as a Domain Controller, I started to install SQL Server 2012 on the same. Although SQL server gave a warning about installing on a domain controller, I continued the installation considering that this is a test environment and which will never go in to production.

The new SharePoint 2013 preview ISO can be downloaded from http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/en-us/preview/default.aspx

Attach the ISO and it will auto run

Since none of the pre requisites were installed I clicked on the Install Software Pre Requisites link to execute the SharePoint Product Preparation Tool

Upon clicking, the list of all the required Pre Requisites are listed, click Next

 

Once clicked next, the License and Agreement page is loaded, click I agree (as usual) and click Next

The Pre requisites installation starts off with the installation of IIS and so on..

The server might restart once or twice but the installation will resume automatically upon restarting. Pre Requisite Installation is successful and click finish

Click on the Install SharePoint Server Link

Setup Preparing to Install SharePoint

 

Enter Product Key 6RNT8-XV26M-GWH36-VMGQH-94MMH click continue

Accept the License and Agreement and click Continue

Choose the install file location and click Install Now (I continued with the default setting)

Installation Begins

Installation completes successfully, make sure the “Run the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard now” and click close. This will trigger the SharePoint Configuration Wizard

The Welcome Page for SharePoint Products and Configuration Page, click next

 

Notification on the Service startup and reset (similar to the previous version), click Yes

Connect to a Server Farm page opens, since I don’t have an existing farm I select the second option which is to create a new server farm and click next

Fill in the relevant details (database Server Name, Username and Password). Note the Database Name similar to the previous versions. Click Next

Specify a passphrase for the server farm security settings and click next

Specify an unused port number or use the default port number to access the SharePoint Central Administration Web Application and click next

Verify your configuration summary and click next

Configuration begins and this process might take some time

Configuration Successful screen, verify and click finish

Upon successful implementation and configuration the SharePoint Central Administration page will automatically open for the initial farm configuration

Click Yes and Ok to participate in the Customer Experience Program to give feedback to Microsoft If you wish to

Start the Wizard to walk you through your farm configuration

Select your managed account and services and click next

 

Fill in the information and select a template to create your first site collection within SharePoint 2013 and click Ok

Click finish on the Farm Configuration Completion page

Upon clicking finish it takes you to the Central Administration Page.

From there on you will have to create the necessary web applications, Site Collections, Sites, Libraries, Lists, Etc, as per your requirement.

I hope the above was useful

 

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Installing SharePoint 2010 Step by Step

Unlike the previous version of SharePoint, SharePoint 2010 has a lot of new features and has even improved in the installation process. Lets see on how to install SharePoint 2010 in a Server farm environment.

SharePoint 2010 was released by Microsoft as a X64 bit product only. So your physical or Virtual Server should support 64 bit computing and the base Operating System Should be a X64 bit Windows Server.

The prerequisites for SharePoint 2010 can be found here.

Once you have inserted the SharePoint 2010 DVD or mount the SharePoint 2010 ISO to a Virtual Server, It will start to Auto Play

The Server should have connectivity to the internet to make the installation more easier. Once the internet connectivity is established, click on the install software prerequisites link on the auto run splash screen. The prerequisite installation will commence and go on automatically. It will start downloading the necessary prerequisites and so on. (Because of this process you will not have to manually install the prerequisites like the previous versions)

Once the prerequisites are done, You can click on the Install SharePoint Server link on the auto run splash screen – as shown below

Once the Install SharePoint Server link is clicked, you will be prompted for the product key

Fill in the Product Key and click Continue

Accept the terms of the agreement and click continue

On this screen you will be asked to select the installation type. Whether it will be a Standalone (Single Server) Deployment or a Server Farm Deployment (scaled out to multiple servers such as frontend, backend server topologies). I will be selecting Server Farm as my SQL server is on another Physical Server.

  

On the Server Type we will be selecting the Complete option and click on the File Location tab

As a best practice, its better to install SharePoint on another Disk or Drive than the Operating System. hence I will be Installing my SharePoint on D:\ – Change the Drive and the path accordingly as shown above.

Click Install Now – the installation Begins and Finishes successfully.

 

Once the Installation is done Successfully, the next screen will be as similar to the above which will prompt to run the SharePoint Products and Configuration Wizard. Once you enable the check box and click close, the configuration wizard will start. I will cover the configuration wizard on another post.

Until the configuration wizard is executed successfully the installation will not be 100%.

Central Administration in MOSS 2007

Central Administration in SharePoint 2007 is a separate web application which is attached to a site collection. This Site Collection consists of three sites. Namely,

1. Home
2. Operations
3. Application Management

Only the farm administrators have access to the central administration by default and how do you open central administration? click on Start => All Programs => Microsoft Office Server => SharePoint 3.0 Central Administration.

Central Administration is the place where you will be performing/configuring almost all your administrative tasks for a SharePoint environment.

From starting services to backing up and restoring your SharePoint servers will be done through this page.

Click here to view the list of all settings and configurations that are to be configured and accessed via Central Administration and its sites.

In addition to the above sites, the Central Administration will be hosting the Shared Services Provider settings as well. these are a common set of settings which will be shared across your SharePoint.

The above information was requested by a friend of mine and and suggested that I blog it. Thank you for your idea 🙂 and i hope everyone who reads this will find it useful too.

 

SharePoint Terminologies

I recently posted on the step by step guide on how to install Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007. After installing MOSS 2007, MOSS automatically creates three web applications for you. These three Web Applications will be used as follows

1. For your Central Administration Page
2. For your Shared Services Provider
3. For your public/private site

Note: The above Web Applications are created automatically only when you do a basic installation. If you do a farm installation then you will have to manually create these Web Applications except for the Central Administration Web Application.

If you are planning to have the “My Site” functionalities in MOSS 2007 then you would be required as a best practice to create a Web Application for this.

Now, you might be wondering on what is this so called Web Application is? In Context with MOSS a Web Application is an IIS Web Site and was previously called as a Virtual Server in IIS. In fact Web Application were called Virtual Servers in WSS 2.0 and SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and then Microsoft released there server virtualization product named Virtual Server 2005 which made the IIS Virtual Server to be renamed as Web Application. So, as I said earlier a Web Application is an IIS Web Site which is an empty web service. you can host multiple Web Applications under a IIS Server with the help of Sockets. These Sockets are made out of a Port number, an IP and Host Name. The Public/Private site Web Application is what your users will be accessing as front end in order to browse your SharePoint Portal.

A Web Application can be created by going into the Central Administration page and under Application Management. Now you might be wondering, if it is a IIS web site then why should i create it through MOSS? Wouldn’t it be easier if I just go to the IIS Management Snap Console and create? The reason why you should create it through SharePoint is simply because, SharePoint will create with all the settings and configurations the way it wants. 

Next we will be looking at Site Collections,

Since a Web Application is an empty web service as I have mentioned earlier, you will have to create a Site Collection and attach it with the Web Application. A site collection is like a container or a folder or like an Organizational Unit inside the Active Directory. Under a single Web Application you can create multiple Site Collections depending on your requirement.

Inside a Site Collection you can have one or more sites and a site collection will share a common set features and functionalities between these sites. Usually inside a site collection you will have a hierarchy of sites, this hierarchy can be based upon your organizations requirement. It can be department based, project based, etc. Meaning, every department will have its own site/sub site.

Let’s look at an example. The Central Administration Page. The URL you type in in order to access will have a “http://hostname:port number” this can be considered as the Web Application under which you find the Central Administration Site Collection which hosts three sites namely, The Home page, The Operations page and the Application Management page.       

Every Site you create in MOSS will be based on a template and these templates will have unique settings and navigation options accordingly.

To create a Site Collection, you would have to visit the Central Administration and Operations page.

Alright, I think i should bring this post to an end now 🙂 and I hope the above was useful and helpful to you. 

 

Installing Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

Last week I had to conduct a training on Microsoft SharePoint Server 2007 for a Multinational organization. Usually I use a virtual image or a series of virtual images while conducting the training for the trainees to get the hands on touch and feeling about the product (I believe that the more hands on you get the more you will learn, rather than looking at a power point presentation).

Anyway, while preparing for this training, I had to install SharePoint from scratch and decided to post on the step by step procedure on how to install SharePoint 2007.

Prerequisites

• Windows Server 2003 with SP1 or higher
• Microsoft .Net Framework 2.0 and 3.0 or 3.5
• IIS
• SQL Server 2000 with SP3 or Higher or Express edition

Installation

Before installing SharePoint, you will have to install IIS, followed by .Net Framework 2.0 and 3.5. If you are installing SharePoint on a small or large farm, you will have to install SQL Server accordingly on your back end database servers. Here I will be using the built in Windows Internal Database (SQL Express Edition)

Let’s Start! 🙂

I Installed Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise edition and promoted it to a Domain Controller by running the DCPROMO.EXE command (since this is a lab environment i am going to install my SharePoint on my DC – Which is not recommended on a real environment).

I installed IIS, ASP.Net and followed by .Net Frameworks

As soon as you insert the SharePoint CD and run the setup.exe the first screen you will get is the screen to enter the product key. once you successfully enter the key you will be able to click continue  The next screen would ask you to accept the End User License Agreement (EULA) and if you don’t accept and agree you wont be able to move ahead

Next screen is one of the important screens where you will have to select your installation type, you have 2 options here, basic and advanced

Basic – (what i am going to use) – This will be a Standalone installation of SharePoint on a single server where you will have the DB also installed. This option will use the Windows Internal Database or the built in SQL Server Express Edition (MSDE) as the database.

Advanced – During the Advanced mode, SharePoint will prompt you 3 options

• Complete – This option will install everything that SharePoint got to offer you and I normally select this option when i have my SQL DB running on a separate server.
• Web Front End – If you have a SharePoint Server Farm you can select this option to add another web server which will be the front end to the users and will help to render service to the users who connect to MOSS
• Stand Alone – This is the same option as the Basic option

As you select on Basic the installation begins

As soon as the installation procedure is done you get a screen (below) which will ask to run the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard. You can either run this now or at a later time by accessing it through the administrative tools. until you run this the installation will not complete. 

When you click close on the above screen (while the check box is enabled) you will get the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard welcome screen. Click Next

Note: if you had selected the Complete option above then you would be prompted to enter your DB Server settings, etc during this wizard process.

Once you click next on the Welcome screen it will prompt you, requesting permission to reset 3 of the services which are running

Click yes and the SharePoint Products and Technology Wizard starts. This will take some time (this is where all the SharePoint features and the administration website is created).

Once all 10 SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Tasks finishes, you will be prompted to click on finish

And you are done with the installation of SharePoint 2007.

Next, You will need to create Site Collections, Sites, Shared Services Provider, Start and Stop Services as necessary which i will write another time.