Installing a New Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Portal: Step-by-Step In

In this post, I'll demonstrate with words and screen shots how to install and get working a portal using Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007.  Installing this product is not difficult, but it does require some forethought and planning.  You can use this post as a reference for getting your version of MOSS 2007 installed.

You need to have downloaded the software from Microsoft's site.  For information on how to do that, please go here.  Once you have registered and downloaded the software, you're ready to start.

First, you'll need Windows 2003 Server, fully patched and ready to go.  I believe I've seen blog postings recently that indicate that you can install MOSS07 on a Vista server.  I'll leave that discussion for other threads and posts.

Once you have the operating system ready to go, you'll want to start by running the setup.exe for MOSS 2007.  Figure 1 illustrates that after you start the installation process, you'll need to enter a valid product identification key code.  This key code can be found on the download site and should have been a part of what you did to get the software in the first place. 

Figure 1: Product Identification Key Code Input Screen

After entering the product identification key code, click Continue.  The next screen is the licensing agreement screen.  Now, I always recommend that you read the licensing agreement since it is a legal document and you are bound by its' terms.  But I also recognize that in the 10+ years I've been in this industry, I've never seen an agreement that I didn't agree with.............if you get my drift.

Figure 2: Licensing Agreement Screen.

Be sure to select the "I accept the terms of this agreement" check box and then click Continue.

The next screen will give you the chance to select which type of installation you wish to commit.  The Basic installation is used for those who:

• Need to install everything on a single server

• Do not need to grow into a multi-server farm

• Need a quick, easy deployment during installation with lead administrative effort

The Advanced option is selected by those who wish to install MOSS 2007 selecting some of the customizable features.  In this illustration, we'll select the Advanced option and follow that route.

Figure 3: Installation Type Selection Screen

After clicking on the Advanced button, you'll find that the selections default to StandAlone (Figure 4).  However, we'll choose Complete.  The meaning of the three options is as follows:

• Complete:  Enables all of the options for one server to offer the entire range of MOSS 2007 services and features to the network.  You can scale out this deployment, start and stop services on this server and use a SQL server to host your databases.

• Web Front End:  Enables only those options that allows the server to run as a web front end server.  What this means is that server is merely the entry and exit point (or one of them among the other WFE servers) for the farm.  The actual servers that users will consume will be hosted on other servers (presumably).  This cannot be the first choice of a farm unless you plan on installing other servers in the farm to offer the services and features that users will want to consume.

• Stand-Alone:  Similar to complete, this option enables all of the services and features for the MOSS 2007 farm, but assumes that there is no SQL server, so the MSDE engine is installed locally on this server.  You cannot scale out this server into a larger MOSS 2007 farm.

Note that in reality, all of the MOSS 2007 binaries are installed in all three choices.  All these choices really do is (pragmatically, not technically) turn on and off the code that is required for the server to fulfill the functions that have been assigned to it.   Note also that you can select the location where the binaries should be installed in the File Location tab and then sign up to give feedback directly to Microsoft if you'd like to do this.

Make your selections, then click Install Now.

Figure 4: Server Type Selection Screen

During the installation, you'll be presented with a status bar that is illustrated in Figure 5.

Figure 5: Installation Status Screen

After installation has completed, you'll be given the chance to run through the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard (Figure 6).  You'll use this wizard to commit the initial configuration options for your new SharePoint farm.

Figure 6: Entry screen to the SPPT Configuration Wizard.  Note that you can come back to this screen using the Administration menus that automatically install with the SharePoint Server binaries

One you start the SPPT wizard, you'll receive a pop-up box (Figure 7) that will inform you that certain services are going to be stopped.  Be sure it is a good time to stop these services before moving on with the configuration options for your farm.

Figure 7: Informational Pop-Up Box

The following set of screens in the SPPT Configuration Wizard are design to help you setup the farm.  In Figure 8, you'll be able to create a new farm or join and existing farm.  Farm membership, at the server level, is determined by which servers are using the same configuration database in SQL and which servers are not.  In my illustration, I want to create a new farm, so I select the "No, I want to create a new server farm" radio button.  If I had wanted to connect to an existing farm, I would have selected the other radio button.

Figure 8:  Connect to a server farm configuration screen in the SPPT Wizard

After making our selection in Figure 8 and then clicking Next, I'm taken to the next screen illustrated in Figure 9.  On this screen, I can enter the following configuration values:

• The SQL database server name.  I'm not clear if this is the host name or netbios name, but I suspect this is the host name.  However, you don't need the FQDN here, but you do need name resolution to this server or SQL Instance.

• The farm configuration database name is needed in the next input box.  Note that the screen just asks for a name, but you need to understand you're entering the most persistent database name for the entire farm - the farm configuration database name.  Be sure this name supports your database naming convention.  You should decide the name of this database in advance of getting to this screen

• The database access account will need to be a member of the local admins group on each SharePoint server along with having db_creator and db_security permissions in SQL.  I would suggest you have an account setup just for this purpose in your Active Directory and that you have a strong password associated with this account.