Introduction
SharePoint is a business productivity platform that puts emphasis on collaboration, information sharing and management. It gives users in a work place the ability to communicate and share information effectively and has been gaining in popularity. In this tutorial we are going to go through the initial steps that are necessary in order to install & configure SharePoint Server 2013 on a Windows 2012 Server.
Scenario
The prerequisites for this guide require that a domain controller has already been configured and there is a SQL Server that can be used to host the SharePoint 2013 database. We will be installing SharePoint 2013 onto a Windows 2012 Server. Please note that it is strongly recommended not to install SharePoint onto a Domain Controller for security reasons.
Minimum Hardware Requirements
Please review the following minimum hardware requirements before proceeding with the rest of this guide.
RAM:
· 8GB for a Small Deployment
· 16GB for a Medium Deployment
CPU:
· 64Bit, 4 Cores for a Small deployment
· 64Bit, 8 Cores for a Medium Deployment
HDD:
· 80 GB for System Drive
Operating System:
· Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1, 64-Bit Edition Standard, Enterprise or Datacenter
· Microsoft Windows Server 2012, 64-Bit Standard or Datacenter
Installing SharePoint Server Environment
1. Prerequisites
There are several prerequisites that must be installed prior to the installation of SharePoint 2013. Luckily Microsoft makes this easy. On the SharePoint 2013 CD, there is an application called “prerequisiteinstaller.exe”.
When you double click on the “prerequisiteinstaller” it will open up the Sharepoint 2013 Product Preparation Tool. This preparation tool will install all of the prerequisites required by Sharepoint 2013. Follow the prompts and it will begin to install the prerequisites required. During this installation process, the server may need to reboot several times.
Upon completion, you will be presented with a report that indicates whether the prerequisites were installed successfully or not. Simply close the Product Preparation Tool once completed. If there are errors (as per the image below), you will need to review the log and address these issues before proceeding further.
It is also important to ensure that the following have been correctly set prior to proceeding with the next steps:
· Correct Computer Name
· Correct Time and Date Settings
· Server has been registered to the Domain
We must also create three accounts in Active Directory and give those users Domain Admin privileges as well as Local Admin privileges on the server where SharePoint 2013 will be installed.
sqSQL – Database engine and agent service account
spFarm – Configures and manages the server farm. You will also need to ensure that this user has securityadmin and dbcreator roles on the SQL Server.
spAdmin – For SharePoint setup & configuration. You will also need to ensure that this user has securityadmin and dbcreator roles on the SQL Server.
2. Installation
Browse to the SharePoint 2013 CD and run setup.exe.
Enter your license key and click Continue. It will then ask you to accept the Microsoft Software Licensing Terms. Once you have accepted, click Continue to proceed.
You will then be prompted as to the type of server install you would like to proceed with. Complete is a for a full production environment, whereas Stand-Alone is for a development environment. Select Complete. If you want to change the location where SharePoint is installed, click the File Location tab and modify this. Otherwise just click Install Now.
Once this process is complete we will still not be able to browse SharePoint. The base configuration is the next step we must complete.
3. Base Configuration
The SharePoint configuration wizard allows you to configure the base level configuration for the SharePoint server. This include things such as which SQL database to utilize. If for some reason you quit this wizard, you can access it at a later time via the start menu.
Upon clicking on next you will be warned about the following services needing to be restarted during the configuration. The main service that may be of concern is the Internet Information Service (IIS). If you are currently hosting a website on the server you are installing SharePoint on, you may want to take care as it may temporarily bring down your website.
Upon continuing you will be asked whether you wish to Join a server farm or create a new server farm. Seeing as we are installing a fresh standalone server we need to create a new server farm.
Click Next and you will prompted to enter specific configuration settings for your database. In this case I installed the standalone version and I am just using the local SQL server. However in a production environment you would specify the name of your SQL Server here. The database name can be left as default.
Next enter the SharePoint farm account and password (username spFarm) which you added in Active Directory earlier and click Next. You will be prompted with a passphrase, this passphrase will be needed if and when you would like to add another SharePoint server to the farm.
The last dialog box will give you the option to change the port number used for central administration. Here you can also select what type of security you want the central administration web application to use in order to authenticate you. Leave these as defaults.
Once you have hit next, you will have an overview of the configuration that will be completed on the SharePoint server. Simply click next and the wizard will complete the base configuration for SharePoint.
4. SharePoint Central Administration
You may now browse to Central Administration. Simply go to your Start screen and select SharePoint Central Administration and it will load Central Administration in a web browser. You may then login with the spAdmin account we setup previously and begin customizing your SharePoint server.
Cristian has over 10 years experience in the IT&T industry, specialising in infrastructure implementation and VoIP technologies. He works as a Senior Consultant for Cloud BT IT Services
which specializes in Cloud Solutions and is based in Sydney, Australia.
