Installing a Simple SharePoint Server 2010 Farm
- Examining SharePoint Installation Prerequisites
- Installing the SharePoint Server Operating System
- Installing SQL Server 2008 R2
- Installing Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010
- Summary
- Best Practices
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
After SharePoint architecture has been established, the actual SharePoint infrastructure must be installed and servers must be deployed. For the most part, installation of SharePoint 2010 is straightforward, particularly with the free SharePoint Foundation Server. The full Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 product, on the other hand, requires more thought and involves the installation of more components.
This chapter covers the specifics of how SharePoint 2010 is installed for a simple, single server farm. Although these examples outline a simple farm, the concepts can be extended to multiserver farm deployments. After reviewing this chapter, it is highly recommended to review the subsequent chapter (Chapter 4, "Advanced SharePoint 2010 Installation and Scalability") for more complex farm configurations.
It is recommended to review the design chapter (Chapter 2, "Architecting a SharePoint 2010 Deployment") before beginning installation of a production environment. However, installation of a SharePoint server for testing can be easily performed with only this chapter as a guide.
Examining SharePoint Installation Prerequisites
Before installing SharePoint 2010, several prerequisites must first be satisfied, including both hardware and software prerequisites.
Defining Hardware Prerequisites for SharePoint 2010
A server that will be running all SharePoint roles, including the database role, should have the following minimum requirements:
- 64-bit four core (minimum) processor
- 8GB to 16GB of RAM (8GB for evaluation or testing, 16GB for production)
- 80GB of drive space for the system drive (plus twice as much space as the amount of RAM in the system)
The server that holds the SharePoint database, whether on the same box (an all-in-one server) or on a dedicated server or existing SQL implementation, should generally be designed toward the high level on the hardware scale, because some of the more intensive activity is centralized on that server role.
As a rule of thumb, it is always recommended to deploy SharePoint on multiple servers, and at a minimum to deploy SharePoint on at least two servers: one for the database and one for the other SharePoint-specific roles. For more information on supported farm topologies, refer to Chapter 2.
Examining Software Requirements for SharePoint 2010
SharePoint 2010 requires either Windows Server 2008 SP2 or Windows Server 2008 R2. More specifically, the following Windows OS editions are supported:
- Windows Server 2008 R2 (x64) Standard, Enterprise, Datacenter, or Web Server Editions
- Windows Server 2008 SP2 (x64) Standard, Enterprise, Datacenter, or Web Server Editions
In nearly all scenarios, it is recommend to use the latest version of the Windows Server operating system (in this case, the R2 edition), though in the future, it is highly likely that SharePoint will use newer editions as well. For most deployments, the Standard edition of Windows Server is sufficient, except in certain scenarios when the Enterprise Edition is required for running SQL Server Enterprise Edition. The Datacenter edition, while supported, is not required, and the Web Server edition, while supported, is not recommended.
Service Account Requirements
It is strongly recommended that you create multiple service accounts for SharePoint. Although doing so might seem tedious, SharePoint will not be secure unless multiple service accounts are used. And in any situation, do NOT use a domain admin account for any SharePoint service.
The following provides a recommended list of service accounts that should be created. This should not be considered to be an exhaustive list; more might be needed depending on the requirements of the individual deployment:
- SQL admin account—SQL Server should be administered with a separate set of credentials than those used for SharePoint.
- Installation account—Used to install the SharePoint binaries on the SharePoint role servers. This account requires local admin rights on each SharePoint server and DBCreator and SecurityAdmin rights on the SQL Server.
- SharePoint farm admins—Used to administer the farm; should be configured. Typically, one account for each physical admin is created.
- Application pool identity accounts—Needed for each app pool. Generally speaking, it is good practice to have a separate app pool for each application. These accounts must be separate from farm admin accounts.
- Default content access account—The default account used to crawl SharePoint and other content. It must not be a farm admin, or the search results will include unpublished data in the results. There may be additional content access accounts created for other data sources that are crawled as well.
- Search service application account—This account is used to run the search service application.
- Additional service application accounts as needed—May require a separate service application account in certain scenarios.
Outlining Additional Prerequisites
In addition to the base Operating System, SharePoint also requires the hotfixes referenced in KB articles 976462 and 979917. These hotfixes are installed automatically when using the SharePoint installer. The SharePoint installer also installs the following server roles:
- Web Server (IIS) role
- Application server role
- Microsoft .NET Framework version 3.5 SP1
- Microsoft Sync Framework Runtime v1.0 (x64)
- Microsoft Filter Pack 2.0
- Microsoft Chart Controls for the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5
- Windows PowerShell 2.0
- SQL Server 2008 Native Client
- SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services ADOMD.NET
- ADO.NET data services update for .NET Framework 3.5 SP1
- Windows Identity Foundation (WIF)
Database Role Prerequisites
For the database role, it is recommended to deploy the latest version of SQL Server, SQL 2008 R2. The following versions of SQL Server are directly supported:
- SQL Server 2008 R2 x64, Standard or Enterprise Editions
- SQL Server 2008 x64 (x86 cannot be used) with SP1 and Cumulative Update 2 or CU5 (or later than CU5—CU3 and CU4 are not recommended), Standard or Enterprise Editions
- SQL Server 2005 with SP3 x64 (x86 cannot be used) and CU3
In addition, depending on whether advanced SQL functionality is required, the following components may also be needed:
- SQL Server 2008 R2, if working with PowerPivot workbooks.
- SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services add-in for Microsoft SharePoint Technologies 2010 (SSRS) to use Access Services for SharePoint 2010.
- Microsoft Server Speech Platform for phonetic name matching to work correctly for SharePoint Search 2010.
- If using the standalone server install option (not recommended), SQL Server 2008 Express with SP1, which is installed automatically.
FAST Search Requirements
If a FAST Search server for advanced SharePoint Search is required, different installation procedures and prerequisites apply. For more information on this topic, refer to Chapter 8, "Leveraging and Optimizing Search in SharePoint 2010."