Installing SPS 2010, other prerequisites & service accounts needed to set up a farm

In my previous post, i have povided high level 3- tier architecture for mid sized companies. In this article, I will show how we can install and service accounts needed to set up a farm.

Software

Verify that you have the following software installed or available to you. Please visit the Microsoft website for more complete descriptions but below is a summary

1.     Application Server

a.     One of the following OS’s

                                          i.    64-bit edition of Windows Server 2008 Standard, Enterprise, Data Center, or Web Server with SP2 Operating system

1.     You also need a hotfix

                                         ii.    64-bit edition of Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard, Enterprise, Data Center, or Web Server

1.     You also need a hotfix

b.     All Windows Updates

c.     If you would like to have the SharePoint server take in incoming email into lists, you should have SMTP service installed on your Windows Server OS

d.     Optional - The following prerequisites are automatically installed with the SharePoint 2010 media, however, you can install them yourself if you like beforehand:

                                          i.    Web Server (IIS) role

                                         ii.    Application Server role

                                        iii.    Microsoft .NET Framework version 3.5 SP1

                                        iv.    SQL Server 2008 Express with SP1

                                         v.    Microsoft Sync Framework Runtime v1.0 (x64)

                                        vi.    Microsoft Filter Pack 2.0

                                       vii.    Microsoft Chart Controls for the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5

                                      viii.    Windows PowerShell 2.0

                                        ix.    SQL Server 2008 Native Client

                                         x.    Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services ADOMD.NET

                                        xi.    ADO.NET Data Services Update for .NET Framework 3.5 SP1

                                       xii.    Windows Identity Foundation (WIF)

2.     Web Server (s)

a.     One of the following OS’s

                                          i.    64-bit edition of Windows Server 2008 Standard, Enterprise, Data Center, or Web Server with SP2  Operating system

1.     You also need a hotfix

                                         ii.    64-bit edition of Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard, Enterprise, Data Center, or Web Server

1.     You also need a hotfix

b.     All Windows Updates

c.     If you would like to have the SharePoint server take in incoming email into lists, you should have SMTP service installed on your Windows Server OS

d.     Optional - The following prerequisites are automatically installed with the SharePoint 2010 media, however, you can install them yourself if you like beforehand:

                                          i.    Web Server (IIS) role

                                         ii.    Application Server role

                                        iii.    Microsoft .NET Framework version 3.5 SP1

                                        iv.    SQL Server 2008 Express with SP1

                                         v.    Microsoft Sync Framework Runtime v1.0 (x64)

                                        vi.    Microsoft Filter Pack 2.0

                                       vii.    Microsoft Chart Controls for the Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5

                                      viii.    Windows PowerShell 2.0

                                        ix.    SQL Server 2008 Native Client

                                         x.    Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Analysis Services ADOMD.NET

                                        xi.    ADO.NET Data Services Update for .NET Framework 3.5 SP1

                                       xii.    Windows Identity Foundation (WIF)

3.     Database Server(s)

a.     One of the following OS’s

                                          i.    64-bit edition of Windows Server 2008 Standard, Enterprise, Data Center, or Web Server with SP2  Operating system (I think that Windows 2003 64 bit might work for ONLY the SQL Server as well but I’m not sure)

1.     You also need a hotfix

                                         ii.    64-bit edition of Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard, Enterprise, Data Center, or Web Server

1.     You also need a hotfix

b.     All Windows Updates

c.     One of the following version of SQL Server

                                          i.    64-bit edition of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 with Service Pack 1 (SP1) and Cumulative Update 2 or

                                         ii.    64-bit edition of Microsoft SQL Server 2005 with Service Pack 3 (SP3) and Cumulative update package 3 for SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3 or

                                        iii.    Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2

Service Accounts

Verify that you have the following service accounts created and their usernames and passwords available to you. Please visit the Microsoft website for more complete descriptions but below is a summary :

1.     SQL Server service account (account that SQL Server runs as)

a.     Domain account

b.     i.e. domain\svc-SQL2008Prod

2.     Setup user account (account used for the install and configuration)

a.     Domain user account

b.     Member of the Administrators group on each server on which Setup is run (this is key!!) or Domain Administrator

c.     SQL Server login on the computer that runs SQL Server

d.     Member of the following SQL Server security roles:

                                          i.    securityadmin fixed server role

                                         ii.    dbcreator fixed server role

e.     If you run Windows PowerShell cmdlets that affect a database, this account must be a member of the db_owner fixed database role for the database.

f.      i.e. domain\sp2010Admin

3.     Content Access account (account used to crawl and build indexes)

a.     Domain user account

b.     i.e. domain\svc-SP2010Crawl

4.     Server farm administrator account or database access account (account used to configure farm, timer service and Central Admin app pool identity)

a.     Domain user account

b.     i.e. domain\svc-SP2010Farm

c.     On the main application server where you are installing SharePoint Central Admin, you should have this account set as a local administrator (*this is the only way I can get User Profile Synchronization to work – need to validate correct way to do this)

d.     Ensure this account has Replicate Directory Changes on the Active Directory by performing the following – Great article on how to do this on sharepointdevwiki 

                                          i.    Login as a domain administrator on the AD Controller go to Active Directory Users and Computers, right click on the domain and Delegate Control to the farm service account to be able to replicate directory changes

Other Information

You should also have the following information on hand in order to be prepared for the configuration:

1.     SMTP Server name (for outgoing email configuration)

2.     SharePoint Administrator Email Address (for outgoing email configuration)

3.     AD forest name (i.e. mydomain.com) and Domain Server DNS name (for setting up the user profile synchronization service). You can get this by typing in “nslookup” in command prompt from a computer on the domain

4.     SQL Server Cluster DNS name. You should use a SQL Server cluster (active-passive or active-active) for your SQL Server and always reference this cluster name when configuring SharePoint

5.     Load balanced DNS name(s). If you are for example adding two web servers to the farm that are load balanced (either through hardware or software), ensure that you have the DNS name for this load balanced url ready and configured to use (http://intranet.mydomain.com/ points to http://webserver1.mydomain.com/ and http://webserver2.mydomain.com/ with affinity off or on).   

     

Recommended server topology for SharePoint 2010 for mid-size companies

Typical mid size farm should have following minimum configuration. And it can be expanded to larger farm. In terms of performance, capacity & scalability, a 3-tier topology is recommended than 2-tier. A three-tier topology provides the most efficient physical and logical layout to support scaling out or scaling up, and provides better distribution of services across the member servers of the farm.  The Web Front-End servers should be Load Balanced, and the Database servers should be in an Active/Passive cluster. (which is available in SQL Server 2008).

Server Type	RAM min	Processor	Application
Web Front-End	8 Gb	64 bit-four core	SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise Server – IIS Web Servers
Application	8 Gb	64 bit-four core	SharePoint Server 2010 Search and Index Services
Database	16 Gb	64 bit-eight core	Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2

Points to be noted:

• You can add Web servers to the Web tier (Front-end). These servers can be configured as typical front-end Web servers to handle user requests, or they can be configured to host dedicated query components or other service components.
• You can add farm servers to the application tier (Middle) and configure them as dedicated servers that will host the Central Administration Web site or other services on the farm that require dedicated resources or isolation from the Web tier;  i.e., crawl components, query components, and profile pages.
• You can add database servers to the database tier (Back-end) to implement a stand-alone instance, database mirroring, or a failover cluster. If you are configuring the farm for high availability, database mirroring or a failover cluster is required on the database tier.

Number of Servers and Product Licenses Needed for This Medium Server Farm Scenario

• Below is a breakdown of the minimum quantity of servers and product licenses needed for this example medium server farm environment.
• This Example assumes the site has content that is not publically available (i.e., an Employee Intranet/Extranet). For public web sites an additional license is required for each Web and Application server. This license is called “SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites, Enterprise” or “SharePoint Server 2010 for Internet Sites, Standard”.
• This Example also assumes Enterprise version of SharePoint is being used. For the same situation and Standard only version is used then drop the Server Enterprise license and the Enterprise User CALs. 
• For every additional 10,000 users, one (1) additional Web Front-End server is required. This will affect the number of web servers required and the number of licenses needed for Windows Server, SharePoint Server, and SharePoint User CALs. 

  Servers	Count
  Web Front-End Servers	2
  Application Servers	1
  Database Servers	2

• Product Licenses	Count
  SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise	3   (1 per Web and App server)
  SharePoint Server 2010 Standard User CAL	1 Per User
  SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise User CAL	1 Per User

The above product license needs are based on the calculation breakdown below: 

• Web Servers:               Windows Servers 2008 R2 + SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise
• Application Servers:   Windows Servers 2008 R2 + SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise
• Database Servers:      Windows Server 2008 R2 + SQL Server 2008 R2 x Number of Processors
• Users:         SharePoint Server 2010 Standard User CALS + SharePoint Server 2010 Enterprise User CALs

Note: This example is based on assumstion that, we are following 3 - tier architecture as per given above statisticts. However, through analysis with windows & network team is required bases on the client requirements. 

So for your SharePoint servers both web front end and application server the recommendations are as follows:-  

• 64 bit, dual processor, 3GHz
• 8 GB RAM
• Minimal 100 GB disk space
• DVD Drive
• Network / Internet Connectivity 

And for your database servers:-

• 64 bit environment
• Windows Server 2008 Enterprise + Service Pack 2
• SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3 + Cumulative Update 3
• SQL Server 2008 Service Pack 1 + Cumulative Update 2

Two tier small farm
 A two tier farm is predicated to support between 10,000 and 20,000 users with a dedicated SQL server for all SharePoint databases

In next article I will post some thing very interesting - Installing SPS 2010, other prerequisites & service accounts needed to set up a farm.