To Install SharePoint is a common task… either you install it for your own and colleagues or you need to install it for your customers. Anyway setting up a working environment is beneficial and here are some of the SharePoint 2010 installation best practices which worked for me.
Lets start with requirements...
Requirements
SharePoint has its requirements and you need to meet them. It has requirements regarding hardware, software like Windows Server 2008, SQL Server setup, Active Directory domain accounts or DNS settings. Messing around with the requirements isn’t good and should be avoided. For example some customers try to save money when buying servers but after months they need to invest more time and resources when they are not sufficient.
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Time
Take your time and schedule resources in time if you need them. Installing SharePoint can be done in an hour, some hours or days.
Since every environment is different there can occur problems you’ve never seen before.
Install Packages
Prepare your packages in time or verify if your customer has prepared everything. It’s a waste of time if you need to wait or prepare it by yourself when you are ready to install SharePoint. I met a lot of customers where time and resources were limited but the preparation wasn’t done.
Documentation
Documentation is everything. Usually there is more than one environment to set up: staging, production or a recovery environment. Since nobody remembers all the steps which were done it’s important to write them down. This way the installation process can be done by different people or at a different time.
Summary
The installation process from a technical point of view wasn’t really a problem or the reason why problems occurred. It’s all about the organization. So here are my tips which worked best for me:
- Meet the requirements
- Try to get resources in time
- Take your time and do it properly
- Verify if you prepared everything for yourself and if your customer has done it too
- Document everything