SharePoint 2013 Challenges with On Premise Set Up

Determining the environment for on Premise Set up
You need to choose either a local computer or an Office 365 Developer Site, prior to installation. Distributing apps for SharePoint through an app catalogue, will give you complete permission for a complete installation of SharePoint 2013 on local computer.

Installation of OS for creating environment for apps
Hardware and software requirements are essential and have to be at par to configure a conducive for SharePoint apps.

• You can install SharePoint 2013 on Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 x64 or Windows Server 2012.
• In a development environment, you should use a computer with an x64-capable CPU, 16 GB of RAM in order to install and run the SharePoint 2013 and 24 GB of RAM.
• You can use Microsoft Hyper-V and install SharePoint 2013 on a virtual machine running a Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 x64 or Windows Server 2012 guest operating system. Choose to deploy the best practice configurations for the SharePoint 2013 virtual machines and Hyper-V environment for guidance on setting up a Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machine for SharePoint 2013.

Installing the prerequisites for the Set up
SharePoint 2013 comes with a PrerequisiteInstaller.exe tool.

• You have to run the Setup.exe tool with your installation files.
• It is mandatory to accept the Microsoft Software License Terms.
• On the page of Choose the Installation, choose stand-alone. If you come across any error during the installation then you have to review the log file. The configuration steps include infrastructure configuration, Farm configuration and App Auth configuration.

A link to the log file appears when the process of installation is completed. Once the installation is completed, you can directly start the SharePoint Products and Technologies Configuration Wizard. As the process of configuration wizard is complete, you can see the Template Selection, in the SharePoint 2013 site. Choose the developer site template on this page.

Few challenges that a user might come across

• During the installation of SharePoint 2013, you might come across an error in installing Application Server Role, Web Server (IIS) Role : Configuration error : To fix

1. You can insert the Windows Server 2012 image or DVD for installation
2. Then open a command prompt window (i.e. run as an Administrator) to run the following:
3. Dism /online /enable-feature /featurename:NetFX3 /All /Source:D:\sources\SxS /LimitAccess
4. Note: D:\ is a Label for CD Drive, where Windows Server 2012.

• While running the Configuration Wizard you may get an error like: Failed to create the configuration database: To fix

1. Then login with system admin user
2. Right click on the instance name and You can open the Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio
3. select properties >> Advanced
4. Change Max Degree of Parallelism to 1
5. Again, restart the SQL Service

• During running Configuration Wizard you will get the following error in the step: Failed to secure the SharePoint resources: To fix

1. Go to C:\Windows\Tasks
2. You can right click on the task folder and select properties
3. Then, go to Security Tab
4. Click on the Advanced button
5. Click on the Change link in owner filed
6. Enter local Administrators group (Where SharePoint account, in which it will perform the installation, that belongs to this group)

• During installing April 2013 Cumulative update, you may get an error reading : The installation of the package failed: To fix

1. Make sure when you downloaded the package to keep the cap file with the exe.file, during the installation and that is the reason CU has two files when its size more than 2 GB.

Common Installation issues to avoid

• Avoid doing the same process of installation repeatedly manually; instead use accurate, simple and easily understandable scripts.
• Do not make wrong configurations. By doing so you will only land up in new installations.
• If your farm is not stable enough, then a configuration issue might occur leading to security permission issues. It requires very little manual changes on servers and also in database.
• No amount of documentation must be in an unknown or unstable state.
• Do not miss important planning and preparation steps. It only leads to failure of configuration. Then comes the process of searching and problem solving issues which leads to time loss and missed milestones.

After the deployment of the SharePoint hosted app to your installation you will be prompted to log in with your credentials, as you try to launch it. You may need to disable the loopback in order to check and get rid of the prompts. When you browse a Website that uses Integrated Authentication and is hosted on IIS 5.1 or a later version for instructions on how to disable the loopback check.