Setting up SharePoint 2013 Development Environment - Part 3

This is the Part 3 of the series for setting up a development environment for SP 2013 on a VM. As we know, this is the latest release for the new Microsoft stack of products that involves Windows Server 2012, SQL Server 2012, Visual Studio 2012 and SharePoint Server 2013 (or SP 15).

In this part 3, we will focus on Installing SSAS with Tabular and PowerPivot for SharePoint Integration modes.

So let’s fire up the SQL install once more and continue exactly as we did earlier till you reach the step to choose the Installation Type.

Choose to perform a New Install of SQL Server 2012.

Click Next, Next till you see the Setup Role screen. Select the SQL Server Feature Install.

In the feature Selection screen, choose the Analysis Services feature and click on Next.

Specify a name for your SSAS Tabular instance and click on Next.

Define SQL Server Analysis Services service account and click on Next.

Choose the Tabular Mode option, add click [Add Current User] to add an administrative user account, and click on Next till you hit the install button on the last step of the wizard screen.

You should see a success message after a while:

We are now going to install SSAS for PowerPivot for SharePoint.

Click through the same steps as we did in the previous method for “Tabular” mode till you see the Setup Role screen.

On this screen, select the SQL Server PowerPivot for SharePoint Installation option. Also uncheck the option for “Add SQL Server Relational Engine Services to this installation”, as we already did that earlier with the Tabular mode.

Click Next. The feature selection screen must already have the features selected for you.

Click Next.

Note that the Named Instance has already been set for you “POWERPIVOT”, so let’s name the instance ID, say “POWERPIVOT” to keep things simple.

Specify SQL Server Analysis Services service account and click on Next.

Add the Current User.

Continue with the installation process, and wait until the installation completes successfully.

Okay, now we need to install the following SQL Server 2012 SP1 CTP4:

(www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=34700)

This is required, as this gets you the Configuration Tool needed to configure the PowerPivot for SP 2013 integration mode.

So go ahead, download and Install the CTP4.

IMPORTANT: DO NOT run “PowerPivot for SP 2013 Configuration Tool” at this time. We will come back to this once we are done with the “SP 2013 Setup, Install and Configuration Wizard” process.

Setting up SharePoint 2013 Development Environment – Part 2

This is the Part 2 of the series for setting up a development environment for SP 2013 on a VM. As we know, this is the latest release for the new Microsoft stack of products that involves Windows Server 2012, SQL Server 2012, Visual Studio 2012 and SharePoint Server 2013 (or SP 15).

In this part 2, we will focus on Installing SQL Server 2012 on top of Windows Server 2012 that we installed on our VM.

- Start the Setup wizard for SQL Server 2012. Click on the “New stand-alone install…”.

Once you go through the steps of Updates for SQL Server, Setup Support Rules, License Keys and Accept Terms, you’ll need to choose from 3 different Setup Roles. I chose SQL Server Feature Installation.

On the next screen, Click [Select All].

Click Next. It should pass all the 3 Installation Rules as below:

Choose “Named Instance” and provide a name. Press TAB, this should update the Instance ID and all the 3 directory paths. Click Next.

Click Next on the Disk Usage Summary.

Specify Service Accounts as created earlier for SSRS and SSAS. I’ll leave others as is (as a best practice, in prod environments, you may want to specify the service accounts for others as well).

Click Next.

Leave the Auth Mode = “Windows” and click [Add Current User]. Click Next.

Click Next. Then Click [Add Current User] to specify which user has permissions for the distributed replay controller. Click Next.

Specify controller name and leave the directory locations as is. Click Next.

Click Next. Then Click Next again on Error Reporting. It should be something like:

Click Next and then Install. Wait for the setup to complete.

This completes the SQL Server installation with SSRS (SQL Server Reporting Services) configuration in Native mode only.

At this point of time, let’s take another snapshot of the VM and do a windows restart.

So, that’s it for getting the basic SQL Server 2012 installed and running.

We will move to the Part 3 of this series, where we will get the SSAS with Tabular and PowerPivot for SharePoint Integration modes.

Setting up SharePoint 2013 Development Environment - Part 1

Today I will be starting a fresh new series for setting up a development environment for SP 2013 on a VM. As we know, this is the latest release for the new Microsoft stack of products that involves Windows Server 2012, SQL Server 2012, Visual Studio 2012 and SharePoint Server 2013 (or SP 15).
I know there are a lot of blogs out there, already with many of these contents. My idea is to bring all those steps together in this series which will help me (or anyone else) try to begin exploring these new stack of products. (Note: It will be assumed that we have downloaded all the products required in this series.)

So here we begin:
Part 1: Installing Windows Server 2012. (You are reading this part.)
Part 2: Installing SQL Server 2012
Part 3: Installing SQL Server 2012 with SSAS with Tabular and PowerPivot for SharePoint Integration modes.
Part 4: Installing SharePoint Server 2013.
Part 5: Configure PowerPivot for SharePoint 2013 using the PowerPivot for SharePoint 2013 Configuration tool.

The first things first. As this is my virtual machine environment, you might need to trouble-shoot several other issues pertaining your local environment. As for example, network adaptor errors, connecting to internet on the guest machine, setting up the required services to run on the windows server, etc.
So, with these things in-place and working as per expectations (which normally does not in this real world), let us begin the part 1 now to get our OS installed.
- I will definitely say this was the easiest of all as it’s just about starting the setup and following the installation wizard to let the install step complete by itself. Once completed, you’ll get to see the Server Manager screen. Verify and make sure that the BITS Services is started. If not, start the service.
- Rename the Computer as per your liking. Do not restart at this moment. (This may lead to an error during the restart process while trying to update windows, and force an auto-reverting process.)
- Setup the windows auto-update and try to perform a manual check for recent updates. Download the updates and then restart and install updates. I saw that this process did avoid the auto-revert process while trying to perform certain updates.
- AD DS Configuration: Click [Add roles and features] on the server manager and click Next.

Select Role-Based or Feature-Based Installation. Click Next.

Click Next.

Select Active Directory Domain Services -> Then Click Add Features on the pop-up.
Click Next until you see the confirmation screen.

Select this check-box to auto restart after install completes, click Install.

Click Close.

Click on the Notification Icon and then click “Promote this server to a domain controller” (as “dcpromo” is no longer available in 2012).
Select “Add a new forest” and provide a Root Domain name (for ex: “ mydomain.com” without the quotes).

Now, it’s time to provide the restore mode password:

Click Next. As earlier, we will have to live by the DNS delegation warning:

Click Next on the Verify the NetBIOS Name assigned to domain.
Click Next on AD DS DB, LogFiles and SYSVOL.
Click Next on the Review Summary screen.
The install performs few prerequisite checks, shows the below success message (including few warnings):

Review the Results summary to verify if there are any major concerns for you to dig through.
I am happy with all that I see and click Install.
Once it completes, the server restarts.
The server aborted the restart, so I had to stop and then start the server manually.
Once it restarts, you’ll notice the domain in the username displayed:

You might also want to go ahead and install the Guest Additions to support the full screen display of the VM.
- Now let’s craete some user accounts. As this is just a Development environment, I will not be creating a separate account for each service applications as we normally do it for SP 2013. Instead I’ll simply create these two user accounts:
=> SSASSvcAcct: SQL Server Analysis Services Account.
=> SSRSSvcAcct: SQL Server Reporting Services Account.
=> SPConfigAcct: SharePoint Configuration Service Account.
Now, ensure that these accounts are added to “Domain Administrators” group.
At this point of time, let’s take a snapshot of the VM and do  a restart.
So, this is all for getting the OS installed and running.
We will move to the Part 2 of this series, where we will get SQL Server 2012 installed.

Figuring out the SQL Server Version Number

I was about to install the SP2 from SQL Server when things started to give me woes with all sorts of issues. I wanted to uninstall and then tried to figure out the version and what SP did I have, when I realized, how difficult some little things could be. You can figure this out in two different ways:

#1 In SQL Server Management Studio Object Explorer when connected to the instance.

#2 By executing the query SELECT SERVERPROPERTY('ProductVersion') against a Database Engine instance.

The following table shows the version numbers that correspond to versions of SQL Server 2005:

Version Number   SQL Server Version

9.00.1399   SQL Server 2005 (initial version)

9.00.2047   SQL Server 2005 SP1

9.00.3042   SQL Server 2005 SP2