Hello all
In the first part of the article series, we talked about what Sharepoint is, what we need for the installation and configuration of Sharepoint Infrastructure. We also created the necessary user accounts in Active Directory. In this part, we will install the MS SQL 2008 database server.
For installation, we logon to mstipspsql01.mstip.com machine (which is a member of Active Directory) with spsql account. As I mentioned before, this account is a member of local administrators group. We open Server Manager and install .Net Framework 3.5.1 via Server Features (Figure 1) field by selecting Add Feature link (Start -> Administrative tools -> Server Manager -> Features).
Figure 1: :Net Framework 3.5.1 installation
After the .Net Framework 3.5.1 installation, we double click the MS SQL 2008 setup file (setup.exe) and begin the installation process. But I want to mention few things that we have to take care of first. These are:
a) After the installation of MS SQL 2008, Service Pack 1 (SP1) has to be installed. During the installation process, a warning message as in Figure 2 will appear.
b) Collation has to be selected as Latin1_General_CI_AS_KS_WS during installation.
c) spadm account (which is the installation account for Sharepoint) has to be given dbcreator and securityadmin rights after SQL installation.
d) In network configuration of SQL server, Named Pipes protocol has to be enabled.
e) spn (service principal name) has to be configured for spsql account.
Figure 2: Warning message for SP1 necessity
In related parts of the article, I will explain these five points in detail but it is helpful to mention here briefly. Because these are important and can be overlooked easily.
At the first screen of the installation wizard, we decide what we will do. We start a new SQL server installation by pressing the “New SQL Server stand-alone installation or add features to an existing installation” link (Figure 3). At “Setup Support Rules” screen, wizard checks for the prerequisites of installation (operating system, WMI services etc). We enter the license key at the next screen. Wizard checks for various other prerequisites at the following screen (DC check, Windows Powershell etc). After pressing Next button, the “Feature Selection” screen appears. I can use any of these features in the future so I choose all of the them at this screen (Figure 4) and press Next button. I select Default instance at the “Instance Configuration” screen and press Next button (Figure 5).
Figure 3: New SQL server installation selection
Figure 4: Feature Selection screen
Figure 5: Instance Configuration screen
The next screen is “Server Configuration” screen. At “Service Accounts” tab, I press Use the same account for all SQL Server services button and enter the spsql credentials for the services. With this configuration, all of the SQL services will run under this credential (Figure 6). At “Collation” tab, I press Customize buttons for Database Engine and Analysis Services , then fill all of the necessary checkboxes (case-insensitive, accent-sensitive, kanatype-sensitive and width-sensitive) to make the collation type Latin1_General_CI_AS_KS_WS (Figure 7).
Figure 6: Assigning spsql account for SQL services
Figure 7: Configuration of collation type
After pressing Next button, “Database Engine Configuration” screen appears and Windows Authentication is selected as the authentication method. I also press the Add Current User button and add the spsql account to the SQL Server administrators group (Figure 8). After pressing Next, the appearing screen is “Analysis Services Configuration” screen. Again, I press the Add Current User button, add spsql account and press Next button (Figure 9).
Figure 8: Addition of spsql account to SQL server administrators group
Figure 9: Giving the administrator rights for Analysis Services to spsql account
We finish the wizard by pressing Next button at the following screens. We begin the installation of SP1 for SQL Server without running anything about SQL after the SQL server installation. After downloading SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1 from www.microsoft.com website, we double click the file and finish the installation after a few mouse clicks.
Now it is time to enable the Named Pipes protocol. For this purpose we open Protocols for MSSQLSERVER (Start -> All Programs -> Microsoft SQL Server 2008 -> Configuration Tools -> SQL Server Configuration Manager -> SQL Server Network Configuration -> Protocols for MSSQLSERVER), right click the Named Pipes on the right side of the screen and select Enable (Figure 10). After this, we have to give dbcreator and securityadmin rights to the spadm account. For this purpose, we right click on Logins (Start -> All Programs -> Microsoft SQL Server 2008 -> SQL Server Management Studio -> Security -> Logins) and select New Login… . After writing mstip\spadm on Login Name field (Figure 11), we fill the dbcreator and securityadmin checkboxes on the Server -> Roles field (Figure 12).
Figure 10: Enabling Named Pipes protocol
Figure 11: Addition of spadm account
Figure 12: Giving dbcreator and securityadmin permissions to spadm account
As a last job in SQL installation process, we have to configure spn (service principal name) for spsql account. This is a necessity for SQL server installations where domain accounts are assigned for SQL services (as we did). For spn configuration, setspn.exe file is used and it is available in default Windows Server 2008 R2 installation. Therefore, I run the following two command via the command prompt on domain controller (don’t forget to run the command prompt with administrative privileges):
setspn –A HTTP/mstipspsql01 \spsql
setspn –A HTTP/mstipspsql01.mstip.com \spsql
As it is seen in Figure 13, when we run the command “setspn -L spsql” , we can check whether the necessary configuration is finished or not. With this last check, our SQL server installation is finished.
Figure 13: spn records for spsql account
In this part, we installed the MS SQL 2008 database server for our Sharepoint infrastructure. In the next part of series, we will start to install Sharepoint Server 2007. We will point out some tricky points for installation of Sharepoint Server 2007 on Windows Server 2008 R2 and explain the details of application server and web front-end server installations. Bye for now.
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