Friday 4 November 2011

SharePoint 2010 – Step By Step – 1


Objective 1 –> Installing Hyper-V on a Windows 2k8 R2 x64. This will be the Host OS.
Objective 2 –> Creating a Virtual Machine with the OS as Win 2k8 R2 x64. This will be the Guest OS.

Learning new stuff is the best part of my job. And for me the biggest motivation for learning is sharing. I just tend to learn more in the process and it feels really good when I get a random comment or mail saying it helped someone, somewhere out in the globe. I always have a lot on my plate to learn, and in near future I am planning to focus more on SharePoint 2010. I will share my ramblings and any errors that I encounter in this journey.
My first target is to install SharePoint 2010 on a single machine so that I don’t end up troubleshooting and fixing a problem which I don’t have any idea about. And I sincerely feel it will be simpler to begin that way. The biggest challenge for me was that I have a laptop (Lenovo T61) with only 4GB RAM and it couldn’t be upgraded. Thankfully, I have ample storage space so that shouldn’t be a bottleneck for now.
NOTE : SharePoint 2010 works on x64 ONLY, so I will not be calling it out explicitly.
A few days ago, I formatted my Win 7 setup so that I could start with Windows 2008 R2 with Hyper-V. This approach would have worked pretty well, IFFFFFFFFF I had a Desktop. BUT, I soon realized that I have shot myself in my foot by doing it. Sleep + Hibernate options were snatched away from me, and I was almost helpless. It made sense to not have sleep and hibernate option with Hyper-V Server, but somewhere in my heart it still ached, that I couldn’t get it back by any means. Anyways, I moved on, and reformatted my machine. This time… back to the Windows 7 – the best OS I know of (now please don’t start Mac is better and stuff… if you like Mac, please stick with it. I have had enough of MAC vs PC and seriously don’t want to indulge into that discussion again because of its fruitless nature <rant ends />). Smile
After installing all my necessary stuff on the C Drive, and documents on D Drive, I started installing Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise. I was pleasantly surprised that I just had to choose D Drive while installing the R2 server, and it didn’t even require to format the drive (yes, I had the backup to be safe). Thus, my documents and all the other files on D Drive are still safe. Now my laptop dual boots and I am happy.
First step - let’s enable Hyper-V. Please keep in mind that even before you could use Hyper-V Role, you must enable some settings in your BIOS. Event Viewer is your friend here in case you see any issues.
Start –> Administrative Tools –> Server Manager
Right click on Roles in the left pane –> Add Roles –> Hyper-V, and click Next all the way.
Reboot –> Roles Summary will show you success –> Hyper-V installed.
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I have added the following features through the Server Manager to make my desktop experience a bit better.
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To add a new machine to Hyper-V, here is what needs to be done…
Open Hyper-V Manager
In the Actions pane, select New –> Virtual Machine
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Click Next.
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Change the name to Win2k8, and click Next.
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Change the memory to 2048 MB (or more if you have enough) and click Next
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Change the Connection, and click Next.
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Select Create a virtual hard disk
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Choose to Install an Operating System from a boot CD –> Image File (.iso). I have selected ISO. Click Next –> and then Finish
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In the right pane, right click on Win2k8 and select Start Setup the Win2k8 R2 x64 bit Operating System in a normal way.
Shortly, you will have a Win 2k8 R2 machine that will be your “learning stage” for SharePoint.
The challenge now is to activate the Guest OS. If you are using a laptop with wireless connection, this should help.
Bridging the connection was simple, and I was able to activate my Guest OS.image
The objectives mentioned in the beginning of this post are thus, complete. It is time to shut down this machine, and take a backup of the VHD (and keep it safe) in case anything bad happens

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