SharePoint Server 2010 Step by Step Small Farm 3-tier Architecture Installation Guide – Instructions
Application Server Install
1.
Ensure all prerequisites from Hardware, Software, Miscellaneous and Service Accounts above
2.
Make sure your media is available in the DVD drive of the server or accessible locally or a network share
3.
Under Administrative Tools  Server Manager  Configure IE ESC, I normally turn it off for Administrators
4.
Under Control Panel  User Accounts  User Accounts  Change User Account Control settings, I normally set it to
Never notify
5.
Run the splash page
6.
Click on and Install software prerequisites
7.
Click on Install SharePoint Server from the splash page
8.
Enter your Product Key and hit Continue
9.
Choose a Server Farm installation
10. Choose a Complete Server Type and specify the File Location if applicable
11. Once installed, Run the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard now
12. Click Yes to reset services
13. Create a new server farm
14. Enter the configuration database settings along with your username/password for your Farm Administration
service account defined above in the prerequisites
15. Enter a Passphrase (this is used to add servers to the farm at a later point) – don’t forget to log this somewhere!
16. Specify a Port Number you would like to use (or use the default) for Central Administration and choose the
authentication provider
17. Once you hit Finish, it will automatically open the Central Administration website; click No to not participate in the
Customer Experience Improvement program (unless you really want to!)
18. You can configure the farm using the Wizard or manually, I would recommend using the Wizard (and disable
the services you want after the install) but if you are confident you can just install the services you
need manually
19. The first part of the configuration wizard is to select the services to run on the farm. As of SharePoint 2010 beta,
there was a problem getting user profiles working without using the Farm Administration account, so I would
advise using this account for now, I think it can be changed later without much work.
20. Select the farm administration service account from the dropdown and select the services you want to
run on the farm and press ok
21. If you now look at your SQL Server, you will notice a whole wack of new databases have been created
22. At this point it will ask you to create your first SharePoint site configured at the port 80 web application. I usually
skip this step because I want my own custom web applications to be created. Go ahead and create your own Web
Application & Site Collection at this point if you like
23. At the end it will give you a completion screen notifying you of all the services that have been installed
24. The next step is to change the SharePoint Web Services Root application pool to run as the Farm Administrator
account by changing it in advanced settings and starting it (note: I’m not sure if this is a bug or not as you would
think this would be automatically done for you)
25. Next start the Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Sandboxed Code Service (if you are allowing Sandboxed solutions
on your farm). This can be found under Central Administration  Manage Services on server
26. Next configure the Search Service Application under Central Administration  Manage Services on server 
Search Service Application  Search Service Applications
i.
Change the Default content access account to the domain service account that was created
(optional) as well as the Contact e-mail address to the SharePoint Administrator defined in the
prerequisites
ii.
Create a crawl schedule under Search Service Application  Content Sources  Local
SharePoint Sites. I usually do a full crawl every day at midnight and incremental crawls every
hour after that.
27. Next step is configuring the User Profiles. This is probably the trickiest part of the configuration. If something goes
wrong here, there are many resources out there in the www to help you track down your issue and if needed, the
best resource that I have found is by Spencer Harbar and outlined here:
http://www.harbar.net/articles/sp2010ups.aspx
***Note make sure “replicate directory changes” is set for the farm administrator service account as defined
above in the prerequisites.
a.
To start this user profile synchronization service, it seems that the farm administrator account
needs to be a member of the local administrator group on the application server (Needs
verification). Note: If you are just adding this account to the admin group now, you should
restart the SharePoint Timer Service under startrun services.msc before continuing
b.
Under Central Administration  Manage Services on Server  start the User Profile
Synchronization Service
c.
Enter the credentials of the Farm Administrator Service Account defined in the prerequisites above
and press Ok
d.
Run IISReset from the run menu or command prompt
e.
At this point, a timer job called ProfileSynchronizationSetupJob will run for a while which you
can see at Central Administration  Monitoring  Check Job status
f.
You should wait until the service is completely started before proceeding
g.
At this point, you should have the Forefront Identify Manager Service and the Forefront Identity
Manager Synchronization Service running in your services.msc as your farm administrator
account
h.
Run iisreset in startrun or from the command prompt (if you don’t do this you will get an error
when you perform the next step that I outline here:
http://www.khamis.net/blog/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?List=6c8a23d1%2D47ea%2D47e5%2Db56f%
2D2bc57cb95b93&ID=28 )
i.
Next step is to actually configure the User Profile Service Application under Central
Administration  Manage service applications (click on the User Profile Service
Application link)
j.
Click on the Configure Synchronization Connections link under Synchronization
k.
Create a New Connection
l.
Enter the appropriate settings for the synchronization connection:
i. Give the connection a name
ii. Enter the domain controller name as per the prerequisites defined earlier (e.g. type nslookup
from a computer on the domain) or enter the forest name (i.e. mydomain.com) and
leave it on Auto discover domain controller (I would advise specifying the domain
controller as I have had problems with auto-discover mode).
iii. Under account name/password use the farm administration account that has replicate
directory rights as per the prerequisites defined earlier
iv. Press the Populate Containers button, select the containers you want synchronized and
press ok. Be careful that the farm administration service account you specified as having
replicating directory changes is applicable to the domain containers you select. Ensure
that you only select the OU (i.e. SharePoint Users) that you want synched or else it will
take a long time to complete the synch.
v. Iisreset at this point (might not be needed)
m. Next we want to start a full profile synchronization under Central administration  Manage
Services on Server  User Profile Service Application  Start Profile Synchronization
n.
At this point, it will do a bunch of stuff in user profile synchronization, a little known fact is that
you can actually see the progress via a shell that Microsoft has created located here: C:\Program
Files\Microsoft Office Servers\14.0\Synchronization Service\UIShell\MSIISClient.exe. It has to go
through a lot of successful steps before it completes:
o.
To see that the user profile synchronization actually worked go to Central Administration 
Manage Service Applications  User Profile Service Application  Manage User Profiles
and put your domain in the find box and it should show you a bunch of the user profiles that have
been synched
p.
By default the user profile synchronization occurs every day at 1am but this can be changed
under Central Administration  Manage Service Applications  User Profile Service
Application  Configure Synchronization Timer Job
28. Set up outgoing email, under Central Administration  System Settings, Note: You need the Outbound
SMTP server and from/to SharePoint administrator email address as defined in the prerequisites
29. Optional - Set up incoming email, under Central Administration  System Settings, Note: You need the
SMTP service setup locally on the Windows Server OS before this is done as defined in the prerequisites
30. Setup My Sites under Central administration  Manage Services on Server  User Profile Service
Application  Setup My Sites. Fill in all the properties according to your farm requirements.
a.
What you can do here at this point is create a new web application to host your My Sites before
configuring My Sites and point to it here
b.
Also, create a web application/site collection that will host your preferred Search Center and point
to it here
c.
Under Site Naming Format, I always to be on the safe side, set it to use Domain and user name
Web Server Install
Now that we have the main Application server up and running, the next step is to add the web server and in fact
any other server to the farm
1.
Ensure all prerequisites from Hardware, Software, Miscellaneous and Service Accounts above
2.
Make sure your media is available in the DVD drive of the server or accessible locally or a network share
3.
Under Administrative Tools  Server Manager  Configure IE ESC, I normally turn it off for Administrators
4.
Under Control Panel  User Accounts  User Accounts  Change User Account Control settings, I normally set it to
Never notify
5.
Run the splash page
6.
Click on and Install software prerequisites
7.
Click on Install SharePoint Server from the splash page
8.
Enter your Product Key and hit Continue
9.
Choose a Server Farm installation
10. Choose a Complete Server Type and specify the File Location if applicable
11. Once installed, Run the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard now
12. Click Yes to reset services
13. Connect to an existing server farm
14. Enter the name of the Database Server and the Configuration Database name
15. Enter the same Passphrase that was used when setting up the Application server
16. If you want to host the Central Administration web site on this web server, you can do this under Advanced
Settings, otherwise hit next
17. When you hit Finish, it will open the Central Administration, again, I would advise using the Wizard
18. The next step is to change the SharePoint Web Services Root application pool to run as the Farm Administrator
account by changing it in advanced settings and starting it
19. Once all your servers have been added to the farm, you should now select and deselect the services you would like
to run on each web/application server under Central Administration  Manage Services on Server. This
should clearly be thought out and planned beforehand as to which services should reside on which server based on
their roles and perceived load. Notice the Server drop down from where you can select the server at the top right
[12].
20. Just start and stop the services you need for each web or application server from this page
**Update**: There have been a lot of people asking which services to turn on and off for the application and web
servers. Jeff Cate has just posted a great blog on SharePointSolutions.com [13] which talks about this. I have
been trying to find a good reference for this for ages! In it he indicates that:
The web front end should have these services:
1. Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Web Application (this is what turns IIS into a
SharePoint “page-serving” machine)
2. Search Query and Site Settings Service (the process that takes the user’s query string and
looks it up in the index)
3. SharePoint Server Search Service (but just the functionality that is necessary for the
query processor)
4. Central Administration (assuming you didn’t decide to move it to the Application Server)
And the application server should have:
1. Access Database Service
2. Application Registry Service
3. Business Data Connectivity Service
4. Excel Calculation Services
5. Managed Metadata Web Service
6. Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Incoming E-mail
7. Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Workflow Timer Service
8. PerformancePoint Service
9. Secure Store Service
10. SharePoint Server Search (but just the scheduled content crawling and indexing building
functionality)
11. User Profile Service
12. Visio Graphics Service
13. Web Analytics Data Processing Service
14. Web Analytics Web Service
15. Word Automation Services
16. Word Viewing Service
The hardest part is adjusting the the search application topology, I suggest reading Jeff’s blog on
SharePointSolutions.com [13] if you would like to do this.
And there you have it, a small 3-tier server farm using SharePoint 2010!
References
[1] http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263199.aspx
[2] http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc262485.aspx
[3] http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=66ab3dbb-bf3e-4f46-9559ccc6a4f9dc19&displaylang=en
[4] http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=165962
[5] http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=ae7387c3-348c-4faa-8ae5949fdfbe59c4&displaylang=en
[6] http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=165748
[7] http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=656C9D4A-55EC-4972-A0D7B1A6FEDF51A7&displaylang=en
[8] http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkID=160770
[9] http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=166231
[10] http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee662513.aspx
[11] http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee721049.aspx and
http://sharepointdevwiki.com/display/spadmin2010/10+-+Creating+the+delegate+user+for+farm+account
[12] http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee794878.aspx
[13] http://sharepointsolutions.com/sharepoint-help/blog/2011/02/how-to-scale-out-a-sharepoint2010-farm-from-two-tier-to-three-tier-by-adding-a-dedicated-application-server/