Scenario:

Windows 2008 R2 Core SP1 – Domain joined, updated.

Denali RC0 ISO File attached to VM.

Preparing Windows 2008 R2 Core for Installation

1. Run the following Command File to pre prep the server.

1. Download a special .net 4 package for Windows 2008 R2 Core from this location here.
2. Run the .net 4 package and have it installed.
3. Run sconfig.cmd and choose option 6 to install any further updates.
4. Reboot the server

After this process, the Windows 2008 R2 SP1 Core is ready to be installed with Denali.

Installing Denali

1. Denali can only be installed on command line prompt at this stage. But as far as testing goes, with some special modifications you can modify the installation experience to involve the GUI mode as well.
   
2. The process described here involves , my favourite way of installing SQL, using a configuration file.
   

Configuration File

Description for the configuration file

1. Install mode to install a fresh install of Denali
2. Installs only the Database engine and the Replication Service for SQL
3. No Management Studio and Tools
4. Uses default location for Data, Log , TempDB, TempLog and Backup File Location
5. Domain_Name to be replaced with the domain name
6. SQL_SERVICE_ACCOUNT to be replaced with the SQL Service account that you would use to run the SQL Services for Database , SSRS etc
7. SERVICE_ACCOUNT_PASSWORD – password for all the service accounts
8. SQL_ADMIN__ACCOUNT1 and 2 is for the SQL Admin Account.

Command Line file to kick start the Denali Installation using the above mentioned Config File

Description for the command line file

1. D:\Setup.exe – location of your Denali ISO or Media
2. “C:\Scripts\SQL\DenaliConfig.ini” – location of this command line and config file on the Core SP1 server.
3. /SkipRules=NoReboot – Issue with Core installation involving Denali – need this parameter for it to work. Reboot the system after installation is completed J

To have a view of all the parameters and installations available using configuration file here over here.

Tips and Tricks I picked up during this process

1. To get to making folders and copying files (.net 4 installer , scripts etc.) over to the server core , try browsing from another domain joined machine to the core machine using \\NAME_CORE_SERVER\C$
2. Spend some time on sconfig.cmd especially Configure Remote Management Features of server core

   

3. Use Remote Computer Management from “MMC” console of a domain joined machine to manage your server core.

While automating a lot of my SharePoint builds I came across this issue across while provisioning a few service applications within SharePoint 2010. Usually the culprits were:-

Access Service Application

Word Automation Service Application

Excel Service Application

Visio Service Application.

This morning, the usual suspects were back except Word Automation Service. After a few VM resets and restart of scripts, I found the culprit to be PowerShell loading up its cmdlets properly so that those executions happen properly.

The cmdlets that will usually fail are

Get-SPExcelServiceApplication

Get-SPVisioServiceApplication

New-SPVisioServiceApplication

New-SPExcelServiceApplication

New-SPAccessServiceApplication

The error message will display as shown below

Resolution:

Add these two lines to the beginning of your script ,

So if you’ve previously loaded your cmdlets the following code should be sufficient (add this to your own function or whatever):

This post tries to cover topics thats relevant for building a Proof of Cocept (POC) or Test Environment SharePoint 2010 servers. The first part covers the basic installation of an Application Server for SharePoint within a 2-Tier server Model.

For smaller SharePoint 2010 installation such as foundation server,please refer to the Foundation Server post found here .

Introduction

The post tries to cover some of the basic requirements to be covered off before starting the installation and the gets into the installation process itself. The steps should be followed to be build a Proof of concept server (POC) or a development environment (DEV) before going production. Wherever possible, both GUI and Scripted options will be shown. To get a much deeper understanding, TECHNET should be used as your bible J.

Some of the basic components for a SharePoint 2010 that would be looked into via the post are :-

1. SharePoint Server
2. SQL Database Server
3. Service Accounts (For running SharePoint)
4. Virtualization or Physical Servers

Capacity planning, architecture of a SharePoint Farm is a completely different ball game and would be covered in another post.

Playground for this post involves the usual suspects:-

1. Windows 2008 R2 Servers and Domain
2. SQL 2008 R2
3. SharePoint 2010
4. Esxi Server host.

Active Directory

Creating service accounts helps avoid a lot of pitfalls during and after the installation of SharePoint. First and foremost , different service accounts for different parts of SharePoint ensures that troubleshooting would be much simpler , minimize the impact of an outage of a service account or part of SharePoint from the rest of the built and so forth.

I am currently rebuilding the network at home and thought it would be a good chance to completely rebuild the whole domain and start everything from scratch. So I have a brand new Windows 2008 R2 Domain Controller and have only started to populate the AD. For SQL server, a service account was created for use within the SQL server installation for all the services that run within it.

For SharePoint, I have initially created a SharePoint Setup Account and a SharePoint Farm Account. There will be requirement to create more service accounts but the post will cover them as it goes through the installation process. So in order to kick start the installation, the requirement is for these 2 accounts to be created within the AD. Depending on the different environments that would be built within your organization ( DEV,TEST, PPTE/ Pre Prod , PRD,DR) create different service accounts to reflect the different environments.

Note: The service accounts will need to have the following settings

To start the installation process, the above mentioned steps would currently suffice.

SQL Server

There are a few steps to be completed on the SQL Server side of things, so as to prep the server for your SharePoint Installation. They are:

1. Security Role permissions within SQL for the SharePoint service accounts
2. Database settings

Security roles for SharePoint Setup and Farm Account will need to be completed before starting with the installation process. The Farm account doesn’t necessarily have to be manually provided any permission as the SharePoint installation process should complete the same.

Create a new login for SharePoint Setup account as shown below

And now provide the login with server roles as shown below

SharePoint Databases can be created in two ways. The installer can create the databases as the installation process goes through or you can also pre create your databases. The advantageous of pre creating databases is that the databases can be customized for their sizing, log file size and growth aspect and so forth. This helps a lot with the capacity planning that goes with SharePoint. Both methods are equally supported for the installation of SharePoint. Most scenarios where a pre created Database comes into effect are in situations when your database servers are looked after by a different team or organization for that matter. A list of databases can be provided with their sizing , naming conventions and other settings.

SharePoint Installation

Preparing the SharePoint Server with the pre requisite software is the first and foremost step that needs to be completed before starting the SharePoint Setup. If your SharePoint server has Internet connectivity, then the easiest way to install the pre requisite software would be to get to the Splash page of the SharePoint installer and choose the option to install the software. This will initiate the download of the hotfixes and setting up of the Application and Web Server roles on the SharePoint server.

Recommendation: Download all the individual Pre requisite software onto a common folder before and complete the installations and then run the pre requisites installer to setup the Application and Web Server roles on the server.

Once this has completed, the SharePoint 2010 binaries can be installed as followed

Choose “Server Farm” as the installation model for the installation.

On the file Location Tab on the next window choose to change the location of the Index Files to a different partition as this will grow tremendously. Default location is the System Drive and this should be changed strongly espacially for a production environment.

The Binaries can also be installed using PowerShell but the option to choose the location of the Index file cannot be placed at the same time the installation, but can be later changed. This is the only difference between doing a GUI installation of SharePoint 2010 Binaries compared to PowerShell installation.

Choose “Complete” as the server type to install all components.

This pretty much starts the installation process.

Untick the option to Run the config wizard now and instead “RESTART the Server at this stage”

Scripted Install of SharePoint 2010 Binaries

1. Set PowerShell to enable the remote execution of scripts. Open PowerShell and paste the command displayed below and click “Y” to enable the execution of scripts.

1. For the Script, I have created a folder within the System Drive as shown and will place all my scripts within this folder to be called by PowerShell or later by the SharePoint Management Shell. I have also downloaded and saved SPmodule (Download Link) onto the same folder. Set all the values within the script accordingly.

   1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

   #SharePoint Binaries Installation #Importing PowerShell Module for SharePoint 2010 Write-Host -ForegroundColor Blue "Importing SharePoint PowerShell Binaries" $env:PSModulePath = $env:PSModulePath + ";C:\SP\Scripts\SPModule" Import-Module SPModule.misc Import-Module SPModule.setup Write-Host -ForegroundColor Blue "Modules have been imported" Write-Host -ForegroundColor Blue "**************************" Write-Host -ForegroundColor Blue "Installing SharePoint Binaries" Install-SharePoint -SetupExePath "D:\setup.exe" -PIDKey "XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX" Write-Host -ForegroundColor Blue "Finished Installing SharePoint Binaries" Write-Host -ForegroundColor Blue "**************************"

   

   

   

SharePoint Config Wizard and Central Admin Website Setup

Once the server has rebooted from the last process, start the SharePoint Config Wizard from under the SharePoint folder on “All Programs”.

Choose the option to crate a new server farm.

Enter the details of the SQL server, the name for the Configuration Database for SharePoint along with the SharePoint Farm Account username and password. Use the Domain\username format.

The SharePoint farm account will be enabled the required Server Roles on the SQL server . This account is also known as the Database access account for SharePoint. At this point there is no option to use a proper naming convention for the Central Admin Website Content Database and will be pre created by the installer using a random name. Using scripted installation this can be avoided.

This will kick start the installation progress once the port for Central Admin and the type of Authentication (Choose NTML) has been completed and a summary page will be displayed.

Scipted Method of Install

From here on, the scripts will initially call a config file that contains all the variables that need to be passed within the scripts.

The first script will be used to run the configuration Wizard to setup the Config Database and Admin Database

I will be using the script to create two databases called “SP_CONFIG_DB” and “SP_CONTENT_CA_DB” . The scripts can also connect to these databases if they are precreated within the SQL server. For the sake of the post, I will be precreating the databases and the using then same script to connect to them.

The databases have to be created using the Collation “Latin1_General_CI_AS_KS_WS”

The two precreated databases can be seen here

Note: If these databases have been created by another user account other than SharePoint Setup Account (Which would be the situation most of the time, since your DBA administrator would be making these databases for you) ensure that both the Setup and Farm accounts for SharePoint are added as new users for these two databases with DB_owner permissions associated.

As mentioned before the config file contains the variables for the scripts to execute

Run the script from the PowerShell Window and it will ask you to enter the Farm account credentials

At this point the Central Admin Website can be opened using http://Server_Name:Port_Number

This completes the basic Installation of SharePoint Application Server.

Getting this error while specifying the Configuration Database settings while Installing SharePoint 2010

Follow the steps from Eric’s post to fix it.

EricHarlan.com – SharePoint 2010 RTM Cannot connect to database master at SQL server.

UPDATE: Also found this

Technet Blog Article

Let’s accept a few things, SQL installation is usually looooooong and quite boringJ.

And knowing the life in IT, we are always looking for an awesome quick and effective way to go about our work.

Playground for this post:-

1. Windows 2008 R2 DC
2. Bare Windows 2008 R2 box that has just been domain connected.
3. SQL server 2008 R2 installation media and license key.

Work to be completed on the Domain Controller

1. Connect the new Windows 2008 R2 box to the Domain and verify that a proper FQDN and static IP has been issued to the new server.
2. Within your AD create a SQL service account (an OU already exists if your DC is on Windows 2008 R2 called Managed Service Accounts) to run all the services on your SQL server. If the scenario demands, NT AUTHORITY\NetworkService can also be used for the services.

Work to be completed prior to SQL Server Installation

I usually prefer working on scripts and installation media from a local workstation. So for this post, I have completed the following:-

1. If you have an iso image of a SQL Server 2008 R2 use either 7zip, WinRAR or your favourite compression software to extract the iso file to a folder called SQL which will contain all the files within the iso.
2. Make a folder within the SQL folder called SQL_Scripts.
3. Once you have completely edited your scripts depending your AD account and other necessary changes to the scripts the whole SQL Folder can be copied on to the local C drive.

Now the above mentioned steps could be quite time consuming and you might wonder why not just do a standard installation? Well following an unattended installation has the following benefits:-

1. Any scripting, editing of media work needs to be in most circumstances only completed once.
2. Standardised method of installation.
3. Good for creating a VM template that can be reused. (Remember to create the VM template with just the folder containing all the media and scripts and before installing SQL. This way you won’t have to change the name of the server every time the template is used. Meaning installation of SQL can be completed once the VM has been issued a FQDN )
4. Less human error as the whole process is scripted and can be edited at any time.

SQL server installation script

This is my first edition of the script so it is always a work in progress and I shall be looking out for suggestions and improvements. At this point I would like to thank the original author’s post that I found:-

Derek Seaman and MSDN

Both of them use the same method of installation using a configuration or “ini” file to setup a customized SQL installation. You could either copy the “ini” from the above post or start creating one using the parameters found on the MSDN post but I found it a bit easier to do it the following way:-

1. Log onto your SQL server box as an administrator.
2. Connect either the iso file to the VM or load the SQL server 2008 R2 DVD onto the server.
3. Start the installation as you would from the DVD drive and go till the end of the installation just before it finally shows you the summary tab before beginning actual software installation.
4. At this point browse to the following folder C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Setup Bootstrap\Log\20100804_145901 (the last folder may be different) which will have a file called Configuration File as shown

   

5. Copy the file out to a local location and cancel the installation.
6. Depending on all the selections that you made previously the configuration file would be completely updated with all the necessary details

Changes to the configuration file

Following screenshots will show all the necessary changes that need to be made to script

• 
• DO NOT forget to add this to the script so that the end user doesn’t have to click on accept the license agreement for complete unattended installation purposes

  

Now unlike other Microsoft Products I am still unable to find a location to put this configuration file along an installation media so that I could pretty much go click on setup.exe. So instead I used a command file to call setup.exe using the configuration file

Command file to run setup.exe

Basically this would need to be edited according to your environment. I usually have both the above scripts within the SQL media using a folder called SQL_Scripts and the command file edited to correct file location.

That’s it. You have a fully unattended ( erm you got to open command prompt as an administrator and run the command file ) installation of SQL server 2008 R2. Now this method will work with SQL 2008 Server famiy.

Few screenshots from the installation progress

• Wait for the script to finish and return a value “O” which shows that SQL server has been fully configured on the server.
• Restart the server.

Have fun!