When an administrator is in the final stages of a Lync deployment, he must

enable the entire organization for Lync. Presumably, he will bulk enable

current Lync users by piping get-CSaduser PowerShell command into the

enable-CSuser command. But what about the new hires? Currently, there are

only two ways he would approach this: either manually enable Lync users

from the Lync control panel or enable Lync users via PowerShell. The

problem with these two methods is the likeliness of inconsistency in

accounts created. For example, in an organization with several

administrators, if Admin X chooses to enable voice chat for users, while

Admin Y does not, the lack of a standard can cause maintenance or

troubleshooting nightmares when user problems occur and an administrator

discovers that each user has varying enabled features.

It is essential that an organization conform to standards to ensure that

each and every account is consistent. With many attributes available for

different aspect of IT systems, this section can be easily overlooked

during the process of creating new accounts. At the very least, an

administrator should keep the following consistent: Conferencing policy,

External access policy, and Registrar pool.

The idea came upon me on a typical Friday night, working as usual, but

this time with help-desk team, when it occurred to me that there must be a

simpler and quicker way to create IT system accounts for our 10 new hires

starting on Monday. As a systems administrator, I understand the

frustration of help-desk personnel. One of the responsibilities of

help-desk is to create accounts for new hires as a part of the onboarding

process. Creating each individual account for every IT system, such as

Active Directory, Exchange and Lync, for each person is a lengthy process

and the quality of work often lacks consistency. Having worked for various

small and large organizations, even some of the most well-established

large organizations do not have this process automated. Yes, the process

can be automated via VBscript or PowerShell, but not all help-desk

personnel are familiar with command line and may find it too complicated.

Therefore, would it not be great to have one application that will create

an account for every IT system? I wrote an application that will automate

the creation of accounts for the following IT systems: Active Directory,

Exchange, Lync and Office 365.

With just one click of a button, the accounts for Active Directory,

Exchange, and Lync will be created. For Active Directory accounts, an OU

can be specified to dictate new user’s location. When specifying the

sAMAccountName format, the Z-Hire app will automatically generate a

sAMAccountName using the user’s first and last name. Other common active

directory attributes such as title, department, or company can also be set

from this app. This app will also allow admins to Templatize their

settings and save frequently used settings. For example, you may want all

users in marketing department to have same “Department” and add to

specific list of groups. This speeds up account deployment time

significantly since duplicate data doesn’t need to be entered.

In Exchange 2007, which runs on PowerShell 1.0, you must locally install

Exchange 2007 management shell if you want to create Exchange 2007

mailboxes using this application. Remember though, that this app simply

runs enable-mailbox PowerShell cmdlet in the background, which means that

all parameters such as mailbox database, managed folder policy, and

ActiveSync policy is configurable. The awesome part of Exchange 2010 is

PowerShell’s remoting feature of PowerShell 2.0, which allows the

application to connect to it remotely and execute remote commands. For

Exchange 2010, it supports Archive database, retention policy, managed

folder policy and ActiveSync policy. Lastly, this app allows configuration

of parameters associated with enable-csuser and set-csuser command,

including conferencing policy, external access policy, registrar pool, sip

domain, and peer-to-peer AV feature. For Office365, the only requirement

is the MSOL powershell module that can be downloaded from Microsoft. User

template information is simply saved in XML format which means you can

back up the data or modify it using Notepad. In short, this app works by

initiating a remote PowerShell session to both Exchange and Lync servers

and then executes PowerShell commands. For Office 365, It connects

directly to Microsoft cloud. It is as simple and basic as that, but the

fact that all three accounts can be simultaneously created with just one

click is pretty awesome. The only requirement for this application is that

you must enable PS remoting on the servers it is connecting to. This

feature is enabled by default. However, this can also be done by running

“Enable-Psremoting” PowerShell command on the Exchange and Lync servers

you wish to connect to.

Before you create a recovery database, you should be aware of the following key differences between a recovery database and a normal mailbox database:

• A recovery database can only be used for restore operations. You cannot back up a recovery database or any data it contains.
• Client connections are not allowed over any protocol. Recovery tools can use MAPI connections.
• You cannot create copies of a recovery database or configure it as part of a DAG.
• None of the normal mailbox database operations, like online maintenance, circular logging, retention policies, etc, are performed on a recovery database.
• ACLs are not restored as part of the recovery operations.
• You can have only one recovery database per mailbox server.
• A recovery database does not count against the maximum number of databases you are allowed by your license.

A recovery database is still an Exchange database, and will require enough space on the volume(s) to hold both the mailbox database content, and the associated log files. You may also want to separate the database and the log files across different volumes both for space and performance considerations.

Once you have your target server and volumes chosen, you can use the Exchange Management Shell to create a new recovery database. Open an EMS session and run the following command, substituting the appropriate values for the italicized data:

new-mailboxdatabase –recovery –name databasename –server servername –edbfilepath pathtodatabase –logfolderpath pathtologfiles[enter]

Once you have created a recovery database, you can mount a mailbox database you have restored from backup so that you can access the data contained within it. There is no attachment between a recovery database and a regular mailbox database, so you can access data in the recovery database while the user is still accessing data in a mailbox on a regular database without issue. Of course, if you are trying to recover a deleted or corrupt mailbox, your user won’t be accessing anything unless they have access to their mail content in an Exchange archiving solution.

This guest post was provided by Casper Manes on behalf of GFI Software Ltd. Read more on how to improve your Exchange archiving.

If you require any assistance with your Email Archiving solution or other IT needs, the team at GKM2 are happy to assist.  You can contact us via info@gkm2.com.au or  call us on 1300 797 288 within Australia.

Make sure you subscribe to this blog and join our Facebook and Twitter Pages to keep to date with the latest articles as they are published.

Reduce your storage requirements

Just like Exchange archiving, email archiving with a third-party solution can help reduce the size of users’ active mailboxes, which leads to a reduction in mailbox database size, but email archiving doesn’t depend upon Exchange, and can store content on lower tier, less expensive storage. It can also reduce mailbox sizes by:

-               File storage

Email archiving can save off file attachments from emails to a storage space not dependent upon Exchange. Users can keep the email messages in their mailbox and quickly get to the attachments without taxing Exchange.

-               Single Instance Storage

Some email archiving solutions bring Single Instance Storage back to Exchange, so that one message with the 5MB attachment sent to all one thousand of your users can be archived as a single instance of the message. Instead of saving 5GB of attachments, you have 5MB.

Eliminate PSTs

Both Exchange archiving and email archiving can reduce your users’ tendency to save mail to PSTs, but unlike Exchange archiving, some email archiving solutions include tools to migrate content from existing PSTs into the archive. No longer depending on PSTs means no risk of data loss from PST corruption, or time wasted trying to recover PSTs.

Retention policies

Retention policies go hand in hand with archiving solutions, and can handle the aging and automatic purging of content that you no longer want lying around. Some content may include information you want to keep forever, but other content at best just takes up space, and at worst could be something that comes back to haunt you in the future. Retention policies ensure that content doesn’t stick around past its useful life, and doesn’t require your users to make decisions about what to keep and what to throw away.

Automatic or manual archiving

Email archiving solutions can support both automatic and manual archiving actions, so that you can automatically archive any or all content – including new content; or you can also empower your users to make their own archiving solutions, such as when they close out a project or complete a sales cycle.

Exchange archiving does what it does very well, and often provides all the archiving capabilities that a company needs. But for additional features, flexibility and deployment options without the need to license another Exchange Server, email archiving solutions are the way to go for many companies.

This guest post was provided by Casper Manes on behalf of GFI Software Ltd. Read more on how to improve your Exchange archiving. 

All product and company names herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

If you require any assistance with your Email Archiving solution or other IT needs, the team at GKM2 are happy to assist.  You can contact us via info@gkm2.com.au or  call us on 1300 797 288 within Australia.

Make sure you subscribe to this blog and join our Facebook and Twitter Pages to keep to date with the latest articles as they are published.

1. Installing SharePoint 2013 Preview on Windows 2012 Server with SQL 2012-Part 1
2. Installing SharePoint 2013 Preview on Windows 2012 Server with SQL 2012-Part 2

We finished off our last post by not proceeding with the configuration wizard and opted to cancel as we will be configuring the service applications individually.

Prerequisites

We first need to provision an account in Active Directory to be used as our service account Application pool id when provisioning our SharePoint 2013 web applications.  I have labelled it as sp_webapp but you can call it whatever you desire.  This is a standard domain user account with no additional privileges and will be the App pool id for content web apps. which we will provision later in this article.

In DNS we also need to create an A record entry for the fully qualified domain name of our web application.  I have labelled it as “intranet” and this will point to our SharePoint 2013 server.

To create our “A” record in DNS, navigate to our  Windows 2012 server which hosts the DNS server role and launch Server Manager and then click on Tools > DNS Manager. Expand your Forward Lookup Zones and create a new “A” record and enter “Intranet” as the Host Name and then enter the IP address of our SharePoint 2013 server.  Please note, we are adding a new “A” record and not a CNAME (Alias) record and the name could be anything.  I am using Intranet in this example.

Creating our first SharePoint 2013 Web Application

Let’s begin by navigating to the SharePoint 2013 Central Administration > Application Management page.

You will notice that the UI is fairly similar to that we have been accustomed to in SharePoint 2010.

The first thing we need to do is create our first Web Application to host our Site Collections and its sub sites.

Under the heading “Web Applications” click on Manage web applications.

Click on New

The below splash screen is unexpected from Microsoft, but it is notifying us in a somewhat candid way that the page is about to load.  I wonder if this will be deprecated in the final release of SharePoint 2013.

You will finally be greeted with the all familiar “Create New Web Application” modal dialog window with a few subtle additions.  I will post separate screen captures depicting our settings as we scroll down the modal dialog box presented and will explain each of these settings in some detail.

We will click on Register new managed account.  We will not be utilising the sp_farm account and register our sp_webapp domain account that we created earlier.

Click OK

Unfortunately, after clicking OK, our previous entries made are erased (same behaviour in SharePoint 2010), so you will need to begin from the top again)

Ensure you have selected the sp_webapp account as your Application Pool ID.

Ensure your Database Name and Authentication method is correct.

IIS Web Site:

Create a new IIS web site

Name: SharePoint – intranet.corp.gkhalil.com (Always best practice to create a new IIS website for each new SharePoint Web Application.)

Port: 80

Host Header: Leave Blank or specify a preferred host header. (If you specify a host header, the alternate access mapping will be created for you automatically.  Please ensure that you also create the relevant A record in DNS. e.g. intranet.corp.gkhalil.com which we have done above.

Path: Leave default C:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories\80 (This is usually determined by Port number and or Host Header Input)

Security Configuration

Allow Anonymous: No

Use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL): No

Claim Authentication Types

Enable Windows Authentication: Integrated Windows authentication (NTLM)

Sign in Page URL

Default Sign In Page – selected

Public URL: e.g. http://intranet.corp.gkhalil.com:80

Zone: Default

Application Pool

Create new Application pool: SharePoint -intranet.corp.gkhalil.com80

Configurable: CORP\sp_webapp (register the newly created service account as a managed account)

Database Name and Authentication

Specify your Database Server, Database Name and keep Windows authentication selected which is recommended.

Failover Server

This was first introduced in SharePoint 2010 providing you with the ability to specify a second SQL server that is participating in database mirroring, allowing you to easily failover if the primary SQL server fails. This was and still is a welcome addition providing a means of high availability.

Service Application Connections:

Edit the following group of connections: default

Note, SharePoint 2013 as was the case in SharePoint 2010 allows you to connect a web application to all service applications available in a farm or a subset that you define.  This can be changed at any time.

Customer Experience Improvement Program

Enable Customer Experience Improvement Program: Yes or No

Click OK

Click OK

Our newly created Web Application will now be listed along side our SharePoint Central Administration Web Application under Central Administration > Application Management > Manage web applications

Creating our first SharePoint 2013 Site Collection

We are now ready to create our first site collection.  Navigate to Central Administration > Application Management > Create Site Collections

Ensure that the newly create Web Application is selected.

Enter a Title for your Site.

Select your Template.  You will notice that there is a 2013 and 2010 Template experience version on offer.  I am selecting 2013 and the all so common Team Site.

Enter your primary and secondary site collection administrators

Then Click OK

Our first site collection is up and running and as you can see from above, the procedure in doing so is identical to that in SharePoint 2010.

Click OK.

You should now be able to successfully  navigate to your newly created  site, in my instance it is http://intranet.corp.gkhalil.com

NB: If you are constantly being prompted for credentials you will need to do two things.  Firstly, you will need to add the fully qualified domain name website to the Local Intranet zone by following this TechNet article.  Secondly, if you are accessing the site from the Server itself, doing the above alone will not fix your issue.  You will need to make a registry change following this TechNet article.  As best practice, I did not disable the loopback check and followed method 1 – Specify host names which is the preferred method if NTLM authentication is utilised.

That is it!  As you can see from the below screen shot of the Team Site Home page, there has definitely been some changes and enhancements made to the look and feel.

It’s definitely exciting times ahead for all you SharePoint fans out there, and make sure you subscribe to this blog and join our Facebook and Twitter Pages to keep to date with the latest articles as they are published.  In future articles, we will continue to focus our efforts in configuring our SharePoint 2013 farm and its service applications.

If you require any assistance with your SharePoint or other IT needs, the team at GKM2 are happy to assist.  You can contact us via info@gkm2.com.au or 1300 797 288 within Australia.

Articles in this series – Installing SharePoint 2013

• Part 1 - Installing SharePoint 2013 Preview on Windows 2012 Server with SQL 2012-Part 1
• Part 2 – Installing SharePoint 2013 Preview on Windos 2012 Server with SQL 2012 – Part 2

Technical Resources

• Getting Started with SharePoint 2013 for IT Pros http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/fp142366.aspx
• Overview of SharePoint 2013 Preview installation and configuration  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee667264(v=office.15)
• Install SharePoint 2013 Preview http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc303424(v=office.15)

Articles in this series – Installing SharePoint 2013

• Part 1 - Installing SharePoint 2013 Preview on Windows 2012 Server with SQL 2012-Part 1
• Part 2 – Installing SharePoint 2013 Preview on Windos 2012 Server with SQL 2012 – Part 2

The Preparation – Installing SharePoint 2013

Before we delve into the actual installation, let’s begin to talk about what service accounts are required for the new SharePoint 2013 Farm setup. There isn’t much documentation (apart from the SharePoint 2013 deployment guide) or best practices noted yet for service accounts in SharePoint 2013, but we will adopt what we have learnt and accustomed to in SharePoint 2010.  Even though you can use one account for all, Microsoft will always recommend that you install SharePoint 2013 by using least-privilege administration.  The below describes the accounts that will be used to install and configure SharePoint 2013.

• SQL Server Service Account

This should be a standard domain user account which will be used to run the MSSQLSERVER and SQLSERVERAGENT services on your SQL server.
e.g. DOMAIN\sp_sql

• SharePoint Setup/Install User Account

This should be a standard domain user account that will be used as the logged in user when installing SharePoint 2013 and for when running the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard.  This account must be a member of the Local Administrators group for each server where SharePoint 2013 will be installed.  You will also need to create a SQL server login with the following SQL server security roles; “securityadmin” and “dbcreator”.  I have posted instructions below.  Please note that if you run Windows PowerShell cmdlets that affect a database, this account must also be a member of the db_owner fixed database role for the database
e.g. DOMAIN\sp_install

• Server Farm/Database Access Account

This account is also a standard domain user account, however we do not need to grant any necessary permissions to this account as this is handled by the SharePoint Setup User Account during the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard.  This is the account that we nominate as the “Database Access” account during the SharePoint Configuration Wizard.  This account will be applied against the SharePoint Foundation Workflow Timer Service and the SharePoint Central Administration Web Site Application Pool.  Please note that the server farm account is automatically added as a SQL Server login on the computer that runs SQL Server. The account is added to the following SQL Server security roles; dbcreateor, securityadmin and db_owner.
e.g. DOMAIN\sp_farm

• SharePoint Service Apps  This is the service application pool ID and should also be a standard domain user account.  e.g DOMAIN\sp_serviceapps

It’s imperative that all of the above accounts are created and provisioned before attempting any installation of the SharePoint 2013 bits.  Please note that we have already setup SQL 2012 in the previous post using the SQL Server service account.

Firstly, have your Active Directory Administrator create the above accounts in Active Directory Directory Services (AD DS) as standard domain users.   Then navigate to each server in which you will install SharePoint 2013 and add the DOMAIN\sp_install account (SharePoint Setup User Account) to the Local Administrator’s group of that respective server.  To do so;

Log onto the Windows 2012 Server as the Domain Administrator and add the account to the Local Administrators Group via Server Manager > Dashboard > Tools > Computer Management

Navigate to Local Users and Groups

Click on Groups > Administrators

Add the DOMAIN\sp_install user account

We now need to provide dbcreator and securityadmin SQL roles in SQL Server 2012.

Launch the Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio and navigate to Security > Logins

Right click and select New Login and search for the sp_insall login name.

Click on Server Roles and select dbcreator and securityadmin.

Click Ok

Now that our service accounts are in order, we can now proceed with the actual installation.

The SharePoint 2013 Install

We begin the install by logging  onto the Windows 2012 server where we will be installing SharePoint 2013 using our SharePoint install service account  DOMAIN\sp_install

Insert the SharePoint 2013 Preview media

Click on Install Software prerequisites (note you will need to have internet access otherwise you will receive errors as it attempts to download certain bits.)

You will be greeted with the following Welcome Screen.

Click Next

Accept the License Terms

Click Next.  The installation of the prerequisites will begin.

Once complete, you will be greeted with the following screen.

Click Finish and re-start your server.

Upon restarting and logging back in, the SharePoint 2013 preparation tool will continue automatically.

Installation complete

Click Finish

Now that we have successfully installed the SharePoint 2013 prerequisites, we can proceed with the actual product installation.  From the SharePoint 2013 splash screen under Install, click on Install SharePoint Server

Enter your product key (the below key is the SharePoint 2013 public preview key)

6RNT8-XV26M-GWH36-VMGQH-94MMH

Click Continue

Accept the terms

Click Continue

Select “Complete” as the Installation Type. Click on File Location if you would like to specify an alternate installation and data location for your SharePoint 2013 install.

Select Complete then click Install Now

You will finally be greeted with the Run Configuration Wizard.

Click Close to continue.  You will be greeted with the all familiar welcome screen.

Click Next

The usual pop up warning regarding the shut down and restarting of services will appear.  Click Yes to acknowledge.

Click Yes

On the connect to a server farm screen, click on create a new server farm

Click Next.

Specify your configuration database settings and enter the DOMAIN\sp_farm account credentials.

Click Next

Specify the Farm Passphrase which was first introduced in SharePoint 2010.  This passphrase is important and will be required for future installs of SharePoint 2013 when configured in the same farm.

Click Next

Here I like to specify an alternate more memorable port number.

Click Next

Click Next

Now this is were I ran into an issue.  The configuration process began and it failed at step 3

The error stated that the SQL Server instance does not have the required ”max degree of parrallelism” setting of 1.  Here I was scratching my head until Google came to the rescue.  I came across the following MSDN article which gave me the command I needed to resolve this.  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms181007(v=sql.105).aspx

We need to run the following script on our SQL 2012 server.

sp_configure 'show advanced options', 1;
GO
RECONFIGURE WITH OVERRIDE;
GO
sp_configure 'max degree of parallelism', 1;
GO
RECONFIGURE WITH OVERRIDE;
GO

Navigate to your SQL 2012 server and launch SQL Management Studio. Open a new SQL Query Window and paste the above.  That should do it!

You may have noticed in SQL under databases that the SharePoint_Config database had been created.  We need to delete the SharePoint_Config DB otherwise we would have to specify a new name when re-running the SharePoint Configuration Wizard.

After deleting the SharePoint_Config DB, re-run the SharePoint configuration Wizard.

This time is should go right through to the end without any errors and you will finally be greeted with the below successful screen.

Click Finish

Central Administration will launch automatically and you will be greeted with the Initial Farm Configuration page.

Click OK.

At this stage we have the option to start the wizard to configure the service applications or click cancel.  We will click cancel as we will be configuring the service applications separately in future articles, so stay tuned.

So, that’s all that is to it.  Before signing out, let’s venture into a couple of key areas to confirm the details of our farm configuration and then venture across to our SQL server and launch SQL Management Studio to determine what databases are created by default.

Let’s begin by navigating to Central Administration / System Settings / Manage servers in this farm.  After confirming the server listing as per our installation, navigate to your SQL 2012 server and launch SQL Management studio. Browse to databases to see our SharePoint 2013 Databases listed, namely the SharePoint config database and the SharePoint Central Administration Database.

This is the end of our 2 part series on Installing SharePoint 2013 .  In future articles, we will focus our efforts in configuring the different service applications, so stay tuned and subscribe to this blog and join our Facebook page and Twitter Page to keep up to date and be notified of our latest articles.

If you require any assistance with your SharePoint or other IT needs, the team at GKM2 are happy to assist.  You can contact us via info@gkm2.com.au or 1300 797 288 within Australia.

Articles in this series – Installing SharePoint 2013

• Part 1 - Installing SharePoint 2013 Preview on Windows 2012 Server with SQL 2012-Part 1
• Part 2 – Installing SharePoint 2013 Preview on Windos 2012 Server with SQL 2012 – Part 2

Technical Resources

• Getting Started with SharePoint 2013 for IT Pros http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/fp142366.aspx
• Overview of SharePoint 2013 Preview installation and configuration  http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee667264(v=office.15)
• Install SharePoint 2013 Preview http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc303424(v=office.15)

I can’t believe how time has flown and it was almost 3 years ago that I wrote my first blog post on Installing SharePoint 2010 beta on a Windows 2008 R2 Server.  Today will be the first of many blog posts on SharePoint 2013 so make sure you stay tuned as we begin a new adventure with the latest iteration of SharePoint.

In this two part series on installing SharePoint 2013 Consumer Preview, we will setup a 2 tier small farm topology and I will be using the latest bits offered by Microsoft to date.  Please note that SharePoint 2013 is still in beta form and this article is by no means a best practice approach.  It will take some time before we begin to nail the installation and configuration with regards to best practices which will surely develop over time.  This is merely a walk through on getting your testing and development environment up and running using a handful of Virtual or Physical Machines.

Articles in this series – Installing SharePoint 2013

• Part 1 - Installing SharePoint 2013 Preview on Windows 2012 Server with SQL 2012-Part 1
• Part 2 – Installing SharePoint 2013 Preview on Windos 2012 Server with SQL 2012 – Part 2

The Environment

Please be aware that SharePoint 2013 requires some extra grunt above and beyond the system requirements for SharePoint 2010 and you can read more about both hardware and software requirements from the following Microsoft TechNet article; http://technet.microsoft.com/library/cc262485(office.15).aspx

The setup environment will comprise of the following;

• Windows 2012 Server Release Candidate running Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS)
• Windows 2012 Server Release Candidate running SQL 2012 RTM
• Windows 2012 Server Release Candidate running SharePoint 2012 Consumer Preview
• Windows 2012 Server Release Candidate running Exchange 2013 Consumer Preview
• Windows 8 Consumer Preview Client running Office 2013 Consumer Preview

My SharePoint 2013 Testing Environment Setup

If you don’t have your Active Directory in place for your test environment, you can follow my step by step guide in Configuring Active Directory (AD DS) in Windows 2012.

Installing SQL 2012 RTM on Windows 2012 Server

As we don’t have any best practice guidelines, I will utilising a similar best practice approach when it comes to service accounts and installing SharePoint 2010 using the least privilege model.

For SQL, I have created an account in Active directory for the SQL Server Service Account. This should be a standard domain user account which will be used to run the MSSQLSERVER service on your SQL server. e.g. DOMAIN\sp_sql.  If you are installing from this account, this account will require Local Administrative Privileges.

So let’s begin the installation of SQL 2012 using our newly created SQL server service account.

Prerequisite

If you are like me and went ahead and installed SQL 2012 without installing .NET Framework 3.5 you will receive errors on failed components, notably, the Database Engine Services and Management Tools.

As noted in the Hardware and Software Requirements for Installing SQL Server 2012 MSDN article, .NET 3.5 SP1 is a requirement for SQL Server 2012 when you select Database Engine, Reporting Services, Replication, Master Data Services, Data Quality Services, or SQL Server Management Studio, and it is no longer installed by SQL Server Setup.  You will need to install this prior to install SQL 2012.

To do so, Navigate to the Server Manager Dashboard, , Click on Add roles and features and add the .NET 3.5 Features.

Select Role-based or feature-based installation option

Click Next

By pass the Select server roles screen by click Next.

In the Select features screen, select .NET Framework 3.5 Features.

Click Next and then Install.

If you receive the following warning, “Do you need to specify an alternate source path? Make sure your Windows 2012 media is mounted and ready.

Once the .Net Framework 3.5 which include .NET 2.0 and 3.0 have been installed, we can proceed with the installation steps for SQL Server 2012.

Insert the SQL Server 2012 media and from the SQL Server Installation Center click on Installation;

Then click on New SQL Server stand-alone installation or add features to an existing installation.

Click OK when the setup support rules have succeeded.

Enter your product key and click Next and then accept the License Terms and click Next again.

The installation will then check the internet for any product updates. Click Next or Skip.

You will then be greeted with the setup support rules page.  If all is OKAY, click next to proceed.

In the next screen, select your SQL Server Setup Role. In this instance, we are selecting SQL Server Feature Installation.

Click Next

Select the required features

Click Next

The Installation rules will then appear.  If the installation rules succeeded, click Next to continue.

In the Instance Configuration screen, keep Default Instance selected.

Click Next.

The Disk Space Requirements screen will then appear, hopefully confirming with a green tick.

Click Next.

Specify the SQL server service account that we had created earlier.

Click Next

In the Database configuration specify your SQL Server administrators, and make any changes to data directories as necessary.

Click Next

If you had selected the Reporting Services previously, you will be greeted with the below screen.  As we are installing Reporting Services SharePoint Integrated Mode, our only option is to Install only.

Click Next

The Error Reporting screen will then be displayed.

Click Next

The Installation Configuration rules will run and note any warnings or failures.

If everything is Ok, Click Next to proceed.

The below all familiar summary screen is displayed.  This is your last chance to double check your options and configuration.

If you are happy with the above, Click Install

You will eventually reach a screen saying that the installation was successful.

A few new tiles in relation to SQL will appear in the Windows 2012 Metro UI and you can launch SQL Management Studio to confirm a successful installation.

This is the end of part 1 of a 2 part series on Installing SharePoint 2013 .  In part 2, will begin the installation of SharePoint 2013 Consumer Preview, so stay tuned and subscribe to this blog and join our Facebook page and Twitter Page to keep up to date and be notified of our latest articles.

If you require any assistance with your SharePoint or other IT needs, the team at GKM2 are happy to assist.  You can contact us via info@gkm2.com.au or 1300 797 288 within Australia.

Articles in this series – Installing SharePoint 2013

• Part 1 - Installing SharePoint 2013 Preview on Windows 2012 Server with SQL 2012-Part 1
• Part 2 – Installing SharePoint 2013 Preview on Windos 2012 Server with SQL 2012 – Part 2

Technical Resources

• SharePoint 2013 Hardware and Software Requirements http://technet.microsoft.com/library/cc262485(office.15).aspx
• SQL 2012 Hardware and Software Requirements http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms143506.aspx

This post will focus on Installing a Windows 2012 Server and then promoting it as the first domain controller in a new Forest.  Even though the logical steps haven’t really changed dramatically since the introduction of Windows 2008, the interface has! especially with the new metro look.  So let’s begin our journey with Windows Server 2012 as this will be the first of many articles on configuring different components that Windows Server 2012 has to offer.

Installing Windows Server 2012

The first step is to boot up from the CD or ISO image and select your language settings.

Select your Language and input options and then click on Next.

Click Install Now

Select the operating system you want to install.  I have selected Windows Server 2012 Release Candidate Server with a GUI.  The other option is server core which was first introduced in Windows 2008 and is a minimal install with no GUI but provides remote management through Windows PowerShell and other tools.

Click Next

Accept the License terms

Click Next

We are performing a new installation of Windows Server, so click on Custom.

Partition your drives and then click Next.

The Installation of Windows then proceeds.

The installation will eventually re-start your Windows Server where it will go through the final stages of preparing the environment for first time use.

You will eventually be prompted to enter a password for the built-in Administrator account.

Click Finish

You will now be presented with the new Windows Login Screen, which is a fair change to what we have been accustomed to with previous releases of Windows Server.

Hit Ctrl – ALT – Delete to sign in, and enter your password.

You will be presented with the new Server Manager Screen which really simplifies the administration and configuration of your new server.  Our main goal for this article is to configure Active Directory and its related services such as DNS.

First thing I want to do is change the computer name.  Windows goes ahead and provides a default unique name in the form of WIN-<random characters>

To do so, from the Server Manager > Dashboard screen, click on Local Server and then click on the computer name hyperlink.

This will take you to the all familiar System Properties

Click Change, enter a more desirable Computer Name and then click OK.

You will then be prompted to restart your computer to apply the changes.  Click Ok and then Click on restart now.

After your computer has restarted, we will be presented with the Server Manager Screen.  Now we are ready to configure this server as an Active Directory Controller.

Adding the Active Directory Domain Services Role

From the Dashboard click on “Add roles and features”.  You will be presented with the “Before you begin screen.  Click Next.  In the “Installation Type” screen click on “Role-base or feature-based installation”.

Click Next

You will be presented with the following screen asking you to select a destination server.  This is a new feature of Windows 2012 where you have the ability to deploy roles and features to remote servers and even offline virtual hard disks.

In our case, we are selecting the current server from the server pool.

Click Next

We are now back in familiar territory (if you have worked with Windows 2008 Server) and we will select the “Active Directory Domain Services” and DNS Server if it hasn’t already been provisioned.

You will then be prompted to add features that are required for Active Directory Domain Services.

Click on Add Features

Click Next

If you want to add additional features, you can do so from the next screen, otherwise click Next

You will now be presented with the Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) screen outlining some information about AD DS and its requirements.  You will notice that DNS is a MUST and has always been the case.

Click next

You now provided with a summary of installation selections

The installation will now begin

Upon completion you will be presented with an installation succeeded message.

Click Close.

Back in Server Manager, you will notice that AD DS has been added to the left navigation tree.  Click on it and then click on More on the right navigation pane where it states that Configuration is required for Active Directory Domain Services.

You will now be presented with the All Servers Task Details, in which you will click on Promote this server to a domain controller under Action.

The Deployment Configuration screen appears and we will select “Add a new forest” as this is the first domain controller.

Enter your Root domain name and then click Next.

The following screen will then appear in which you will enter and select your Domain Controller Options.

You will then get the below warning in which you can ignore for now.

Click Next

The NetBIOS domain name will then be inputted automatically.  In the event of a conflict, it will suggest an alternative by appending the original name with a 0.

Click Next

Confirm or change the locations of your database folder, log folder and SYSVOL folder.

Click Next

Review your selections and then Click Next.

If all of the prerequisites checks have passed successfully, you will be able to click on Install to proceed.

Click Install

The installation will now proceed and you will see the progress being displayed.

The computer will most likely restart on its own to complete the installation so don’t be alarmed if it does.  You will receive a brief warning advising so.

Upon restart, you should be able to login using your domain credentials for the user administrator.

So let’s add our first user!  We can do so via the new Active Directory Administrative Center or via the well known Active Directory Users and Computers.  For something different, lets try the former.

Once Server Manager has launched, click on Tools > Active Directory Administrative Center

You will be greeted with the below Welcome screen.

Click on your domain on the left navigation pane, in my instance it is corp (local).

Let’s begin by creating our first Organizational Unit that will house our corporate users (I am not a fan of using the default Users).  On the right navigation pane under Taks > <domain name> click on New and then select “Organizational Unit”.

Enter the mandatory details.

Click OK

This will immediately create the Organizational Unit in the designated location.  Double click on your newly created Organizational Unit and on the left navigation pane, select New User.  The below screen appears in which you will fill in the necessary details.

Make sure you scroll down to the bottom and fill in all the necessary sections such as Groups, Profile Settings and Organization settings.

Once completed, Click OK.

Your newly created user will now be listed in the middle navigation pane.

As you can see it is relatively straight forward configuring your first domain controller in a new forest using Windows Server 2012, in particular if you have had experience with Windows Server 2008.

The team at GKM2 Solutions are proficient and certified with all version of Windows Server dating back to 2000 and 2012 will be no different.  If you require any assistance with your Windows Server migration needs or Active Directory in General, don’t hesitate to contact us via our website form or call us on 1300 797 288.  We will be more than glad to help with your IT requirements.

Resources

Windows 2012 Resource Center http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsserver/hh534429.aspx

In my last article, I provided you with a step by step guid on configuring SQL PowerPivot for SharePoint 210.   In this article I will be providing you with a step by step guide in installing and configuring Reporting Services in SharePoint integrated mode.

Installing SQL Reporting Services for SharePoint 2010

We begin by installing SQL Reporting Services for SharePoint on our Application Server or on a dedicated Reporting Services Server with SharePoint running.

Launch the SQL Server Installation Center and Select Installation and then click on New Installation or add features to an existing installation.

Click Install to install the Setup Support Files.

The setup support rules are then run.  At this stage you should rectify any errors if present.

Click Next

In the Installation Type page, select New installation or add shared features

Click Next

Enter the product key at the Product Key screen and click Next.

Accept the License Terms and then click Next.

Select SQL Server Feature Installation

Click Next

Select Reporting Services and Management Tools only.

Click Next

Setup will run the Installation Rules.  Address any failures and then click Next

Type a Named Instance

Click Next.

Check your Disk Space Requirements

Click Next

In the Server Configuration page, enter a domain user account.

Click Next

In the Reporting Services Configuration Page, the only option was to Install, but do not configure the report server.

Click Next

The Installation Configuration Rules are run.  Address any issues and click Next.

Click Install to proceed with the Installation.

Once the installation has completed, Navigate to Start > All Programs > Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 > Configuration Tools and launch the Reporting Services Configuration Manager.

Select the Report Server Instance and click Connect

On the left Task bar, select Database and click on Change Database

The Report Server Database Configuration Wizard is displayed and select Create a new report server database.

Click Next

Enter a valid database name where you want to install the Report Server database.  I will be hosting this on a remote SQL server which also houses my SharePoint Configuration and Content Databases.

Click Next

Enter the Database Name and Select your Report Server Mode as SharePoint Integrated Mode.

Click Next

Under Authentication Type, select Windows Credentials and enter a domain user account.

Click Next

Review the Summary and Click Next

Click Finish once the configuration Wizard completes.

Navigate to Web Service URL and change any values.  I have changed my TCP port to 1111.  Click Apply.

You should notice that the new URL was successfully reserved.

Copy the Report Server Web Service URL to clipboard.  This will be needed a little later.

Click Exit

Integrate Reporting Services with SharePoint

Launch SharePoint Central Administration and navigate to General Application Settings > Reporting Services > Reporting Services Integration

Enter the details below

After clicking OK you will return to the Reporting Services Integration Summary Page with hopefully 3 green ticks with successful status’.

We now need to confirm that the that the Report Server Name and server instance is correctly listed in SharePoint. We do so by navigating to SharePoint Central Administration > General Application Settings > Reporting Services > Add a Report Server to the Integration.

To verify that we have correctly configured and integrated Reporting Services with SharePoint 2010, we navigate to our SharePoint Site, Site Settings > Site Collection Features and Activate the Reporting Server Integration Feature.

After the activating the Report Server Integration Feature, we can navigate to our SharePoint Site and add the SQL Server Reporting Services Report Web Part, located under SQL Server Reporting.

You can now upload your reports which will render directly in SharePoint.

If you require any assistance with your SharePoint or other IT needs, the team at GKM2 are happy to assist.  You can contact us via info@gkm2.com.au or 1300 797 288 within Australia.

In summary, PowerPivot allows you to store massive amounts of data which can then be displayed as a powerful data mashup.  By turning your workbooks into shared applications on SharePoint 2010, you gain the collaborative and document management  features that are provided out of the box such as versioning and workflows.

The Installation

We begin by installing SQL PowerPivot for SharePoint on our Application Server or dedicated PowerPivot Server with SharePoint running.

Launch the SQL Server Installation Centre and Select Installation on the left navigation pane and then click on New Installation or add features to an existing installation.

Enter the product key at the Product Key screen and click Next.

Accept the License Terms and then click Next.

Click Install to install the Setup Support Files.

The setup support rules are then run.  At this stage you should rectify any errors if present.

Click Next.

You will now be greeted with the Setup Role Screen identical to the below.  Select SQL Server PowerPivot for SharePoint and select Add PowerPivot for SharePoint to Existing Farm.

Click Next.

The next screen will automatically select the Analysis Services for SharePoint Integration feature.

Click Next.

The installation rules are run.  If you receive any failures, you will need to address these before you can continue.

Click Next.

You will then be greeted with the Instance Configuration screen in which you will accept the default named instance and Instance ID.

Click Next.

The wizard will then check the Disk Space Requirements and provide you with a green tick to continue.

Click Next.

Here we will use a dedicated domain account for SQL Server Analysis Services.  (Please note that the installation wizard will not accept any built in machine accounts.  This could be your existing SharePoint SQL account that may already be setup in your environment or a dedicated SharePoint SQL Server Analysis Services Account.  This account will be a member of the SQLServerMSASUser$<server>$PowerPivot security group and the WSS_WPG security groups on the local computer.  This will occur automatically.

Click Next.

The Analysis Services Configuration screen will then appear in which you will specify and add your Analysis Services administrators.  I would add the current user as a minimum and your SQL Server Analysis Services Account. Click on Data Directories and make any necessary drive changes in there.  Note that Analysis Services administrators will have unrestricted access to Analysis Services.

Click Next.

The Error Reporting screen appears.  Click Next.

The Installation Configuration Rules screen appears.  Address any Errors before you proceed.

Click Next.

Review the Summary and click on Install.

The installation will now proceed.

You may receive a warning about restarting your computer at the completion.  Please restart your computer to complete the installation process.

In order to check whether the installation was successful, venture into SharePoint Central Administration > System Settings > Manage services on server.  The SQL Server Analysis Services and SQL Server PowerPivot System Service should be set to started.

Deploying the PowerPivot Solution Package

Now that we have confirmed that our PowerPivot services are up and running in Central Administration, we will now proceed to deploy the PowerPivot Solution Package.

Launch Central Administration and navigate to System Settings > Farm Management > Manage farm solutions.

You will notice there are two power pivot Solutions listed as below.

You will notice that the powerpivotfarm.wsp is already Globally deployed.  This is automatically deployed when you install the first PowerPivot for SharePoint instance in your SharePoint farm.  You will not need to deploy this ever again.  The powerpivotwebapp.wsp on the other hand is only deployed to SharePoint Central Administration Web Application and you must manually deploy it to each Web Application that will require PowerPivot data access.  In order to do so;

Click on powerpivotwebapp.wsp.

Click on Deploy Solution.

Specify your time and select your SharePoint Web Application and then click OK.

If you need to deploy the solution to other SharePoint Web Applications, repeat the above process each time.

We now need to ensure that the necessary pre-requisite services are started.  These are Excel Calculation Services, Secure Store Service and Claims to Windows token service.

Launch Central Administration and navigate to System Settings > Manage Services on server.  In my instance, the Claims to Windows Token Service and Secure Store Service were stopped.  Click on Start and ensure their status is set to started.

Creating the PowerPivot Service Application

We can now proceed and create our first PowerPivot Service Application.  Launch Central Administration and navigate to Application Management > Service Applications > Manage service applications.

Click on New and select SQL Server PowerPivot Service Application.

Enter the details or the Service Application Pool as follows;

Name: PowerPivotServiceApplication1

Application Pool: Create new application pool; SharePoint-PowerPivotApplication1

Select your registered managed account.  This account must have Analysis Services system administrator permissions on the local Analysis Services service that is installed on the same computer.  This was set during the installation of SQL in our earlier steps above.

In my case, I am using the account sp_sql.

Enter your Database Server and enter a Database Name and select Windows Authentication.

Also ensure the that the “Add the proxy for this PowerPivot service application to the default proxy group” is checked.

Click OK.

You should hopefully receive a window stating that the PowerPivot service application has been successfully created.

Click OK.

Activating the PowerPivot Feature Integration for your Site Collections

We now need to activate the PowerPivot Feature activation to make application pages available to your SharePoint sites.

Click on Site Actions from within your SharePoint Site and select Site Settings > Site Collection Administration > Site Collection Features.

Navigate down the page until you reach PowerPivot Feature Integration for Site Collections and click on Activate.

You will need to do this for all other site collections where you would like to run PowerPivot on.

Configuring the Excel Services Application

PowerPivot relies heavily on Excel Services so we need to ensure that our Excel Services Application is configured.

• Launch Central Administration and navigate to Application Management > Manage Service Applications.
• Click New and select Excel Services Application
• Enter a Name, and Create a new application pool as per the below screen capture
• Ensure Add to default proxy list is checked.

Click OK

Your Excel Services Application should now be listed under Service Applications in Central Administration and Started.

Click on the newly created Excel Services Application and click on Trusted File Locations.  This is the area where we need to specify our SharePoint Locations.  Please note that PowerPivot cannot access any workbook that is stored outside SharePoint.

• Click on the existing http entry and make any modifications such as increasing the Maximum Workbook size.
• Under External Data, select Trusted data connection libraries and embedded for the PowerPivot access.
• Deselect the Warn on Refresh checkbox

Configuring the Secure Store Service Application

We need to ensure that we provision the Secure Store Service Application in order to allow PowerPivot to store its credentials.  Essentially we are configuring a PowerPivot unattended account for data refresh to work.

• Launch Central Administration and navigate to Application Management > Manage Service Applications.
• Click New and select  Secure Store Service
• Enter a name for the service application, specify your database settings and create a new application pool similar to the below screen captures

Click OK.

You should receive confirmation that the Secure Store Service Application was successfully created.

The Secure Store Service will now be listed with the other service applications.

We will now  need to generate the master key.  Click on the Secure Store Service application.  This will direct you to a page with the below warning

“Before creating a new Secure Store Target Application, you must first generate a new key for this Secure Store Service Application from the ribbon”

Click on Generate New Key from the Ribbon.

You will be asked to enter a Pass Phrase.  You will need to keep this pass phrase in a secure location as it will be required to be entered when adding a new secure store service server or when restoring.

After you have entered and confirmed your pass phrase, click OK.

Configuring the Unattended PowerPivot Data Refresh Account

Now that we have configured the Secure Store Service, we can proceed to configure our PowerPivot unattended data refresh account.  This account is used when you schedule PowerPivot data refresh jobs and allows workbook authors to schedule data refreshes without using their own credentials.  Because we are setting up PowerPivot on an existing farm, this is a manual step configure all in Central Administration.

• Launch Central Administration and navigate to Application Management > Service Applications > Manage Service Applications and select the Secure Store Service Application that we created earlier.
• Click New which will bring us to the Target Application Settings Window.
• Enter a name for your Target Application ID such as PowerPivotUnattendedAccount and a Display Name and Contact Email Address.
• Leave Target Application Type set to Individual and select Use default Page

Click Next

The Specify the credential fields for your Secure Store Target Application page is displayed as per the below screen capture.

Accept the default values and click Next.

The Target Application Administrators page is displayed next.  Here we need to specify the account used for the PowerPivot Service Application Pool.  You should also add any other Windows domain account account which requires Full control permissions.

Click OK.

Your Target Application ID should now be listed under the Secure Store Service Application.

Click on the checkbox beside the newly created Target Application ID and click on Set Credentials from the Ribbon interface.

Here we need to specify the Credential Owner first which is the Account we specified right at the start when we ran the Analysis Services Setup.   In my instance I had used the account sp_sql.

You will also be required to enter the Windows User Name and password for an account that we specified above under Target Application Administrators.

Click OK

Navigate back to Central Administration > Application Management > Manage Service Applications.

Click on the PowerPivot Service Application.  This will now load the PowerPivot Management Dashboard.  Under Actions, click on Configure service application settings.

Scroll down until you reach the Data Refresh section and enter the Target Application ID that we created earlier; PowerPivotUnattendedAccount.

We now must grant the contribute permissions to the PowerPivot Unattended data refresh account.  This needs to be applied to any PowerPivot workbook for which it will be utilised.

So how do we know if this is all working?!  There are a number of steps, but a quick indication that we are pretty much there is to navigate to the PowerPivot Management Dashboard.  We do so via Central Administration > General Application Settings > PowerPivot Management Dashboard.  We should receive something similar to the below without any errors or warnings.

As you can see from the above there are a number of steps involved but hopefully this guide will provide with a good basis.

If you require any assistance with your SharePoint or other IT needs, the team at GKM2 are happy to assist.  You can contact us via info@gkm2.com.au or 1300 797 288 within Australia.

What will happen to SharePoint George you may ask?  Well, it is being re-ignited and it will be a personal goal of mine to get back into blogging and share with you more SharePoint goodness that you have all come to love.

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