Hi to all
The first three parts of this article series covers what Sharepoint Server is, the requirements for Sharepoint infrastructure and what is done for the configuration. We also created Active Directory accounts for installation and configuration of Sharepoint Servers. We installed MS SQL 2008 database server and two sharepoint servers. We created the necessary databases on our database server, ran the configuration wizard for sharepoint and finished the initial configurations. In this last part of the series, I will make some additional configuration changes, will create a new Shared Services Provider and will create the first site of our Sharepoint infrastructure.
You can remember the warning message that is seen in Figure 1 from the previous article. I will perform the third and fourth actions that are listed in Administrative Tasks list. These are; assigning services to servers and configuring the server farm’s shared services. Let’s do the services job first.
Figure 1: “Server farm configuration not complete” warning message
I click on the link “Initial deployment: Assign services to servers” from the list and a new page is opened. In this page when I click the link on Action field, the page which I will do the main job appears (Figure 2). It is seen that most of the services are not started. Here, I will configure the services which I want to be run on related server.
Figure 2: Services on server page
Let me introduce you the services here first. I will talk about which server will run these services also. “Document Conversions Launcher Service” is scheduling and triggering the document conversion processes. “Document Conversions Load Balancer Service” is the distributing the load of documant conversion. I will not do anything about these services because I won’t use them. The services that I am interested in are “Excel Calculation Services” , “Windows SharePoint Services Search” and “Office SharePoint Server Search” services. “Excel Calculation Services” loads the workbooks, makes calculations over thme and reflects the calculation results to end users. The other two services are used for searching purposes. But why two instead of one service? Actually, they are performing different jobs. “Windows SharePoint Services Search” service indexes only the help section of Sharepoint Server and helps the end user to search in help menu. “Office SharePoint Server Search” service indexes everything else in our site infrastructure and represents them to the end user. Namely, one of them is responsible of help menu indexing whereas the other one indexes all the content of Sharepoint infrastructure.
I will assign spsearch and spcrawl accounts to the related searching service. For doing this, I click the Start link for “Windows SharePoint Services Search” service. I enter all of the related data to their fields in the following page and press the Start button at the bottom of the page (Figure 3). The service is started successfully. I will do the same thing for “Office SharePoint Server Search” service. The configuration for this service is a little bit different. There are two checkboxes about indexing and querying in the following page. I will use mstipspapp01 server as an indexing server whereas mstipspweb01 will be used as a querying server. Therefore, I fill the first checkbox only. I will enter a responsible’s email address to the related field and write spsearch account as the service account. The server will write the indexing data to a local folder (which is not present but will be created as a result of this page). This folder is “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Servers\12.0\Data\Office Server\Applications” by default. I don’t change anything else in this page and press the Start button (Figure 4). As a last action, I press Start button for “Excel Calculation Services” and all the services that I am interested in are started successfully (Figure 5).
Figure 3: Configuration of “Windows SharePoint Services Search” service on mstipspapp01 server
Figure 4: Configuration of “Office SharePoint Server Search” service on mstipspapp01 server
Figure 5: The status of services on mstipspapp01 server
The only thing left about the services is enabling the Querying on mstipspweb01 server. To do this, I select Change Server from Server field and select mstipspweb01 server from the list. I click on Start link on the following page for “Office SharePoint Server Search” service. I fill the checkbox about querying (the second checkbox) and fill all the related fields on the page (Figure 6) and press the Start button. Unfortunately, “Failed to configure propagation share” error page appears. I google :) and find the solution. On the “Office Sharepoint Server Search Service Settings” page, I select “I will configure the share with STSAdm” for “Query Server Index File Location” field and only start the service. After that, I open a command prompt and run the following command (also it is shown in Figure 7):
Stsadm.exe –o osearch –propagationlocation “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Servers\12.0\data\Office Server\applications”
Figure 6: Enabling querying on mstipspweb01 server
Figure 7: Configuring the PropagationLocation share
Now I am done with the services. It is time for “Shared Services Provider” creation. First of all, what is Shared Services Provider (SSP) ? Actually, it is an infrastructure for other services. For example; SSP collects all of the data from Excel Calculations Services, searching services etc. and represents these data (ie) to web applications (a very nice article about this topic can be reached from http://msmvps.com/blogs/shane/archive/2007/06/29/what-is-a-shared-service-provider.aspx ).
To create SSP, I open Central Administration -> Application Management -> Create or configure this farm’s shared services. I click New SSP link. On the opening page, I fill the related fields. Actually, I have to create a new web application by pressing “Create a new Web application” link on this page (Figure 8). I don’t change anything while creating the web application. I write spsearch as the service account.
Figure 8: Creating new web application
When we return to “New Shared Services Provider” page, web application part is eligible now. I assign spssp account for “SSP Service credentials” on this page and left all other values as their defaults (Figure9). A warning message appears when I press the OK button. This page warns about the backup and restore procedures but I don’t have a backup/restore plan right now so pressing the OK button finishes the SSP creation process. The completion screen is shown in Figure 10.
Figure 9: Creation of new Shared Services Provider
Figure 10: SSP is created successfully screen
From now on, I won’t have a warning message on the main page of Central Administration web site (Figure11). Now it is time to create a new Web Site. For this purpose, I create a new web application first and then I will create a web site collection related with the application. I click on the link “Central Administration -> Application Management -> Create or Extend Web application” and create a new web application (Figure 12). As Figure 13 warns, I run the iisreset /noforce command from command prompt and restart the IIS service.
Figure 11: Central administration web site without the warning message
Figure 12: Creation of a new web application
Figure 13: “Application created” message screen
After that, I create a web site collection which we relate with the application. For this purpose, I click on link “Central Administration -> Application Management -> Create Site Collection”. After filling the necessary fields (Figure 14), I press OK button. A “Top-level site successfully created” page appears (Figure 15). During the creation, I enter the URL of web site as www.mstip.com, therefore I have to create a DNS record for this web site. On my DNS server, I create a DNS record for www.mstip.com which is referring to 192.168.2.17. When I write www.mstip.com on Internet Explorer, the web site is opened now (Figure 16). From now on, I can make any change on my top-level site and produce a new web site according to my needs.
Figure 14: Creation of a new web site collection
Figure 15: “Top-level site successfully created” screen
Figure 16: The newly created web site
This is the end of our “Step by step installation of Sharepoint Server 2007 on Windows Server 2008 R2 and MS SQL 2008” article series. I hope you find it helpful. Bye for now.
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