Awhile back i did a post on Windows 2008 using the previous build and I highlighted some of the gotchas I encountered during my build. Lessons learned. Because this OS will be coming out fairly soon I want to make sure I am on top of this both for myself, my company, and my clients. For this reason today October 29 2007 I am officially going to work solely with Windows 2008 as my OS of choice for my lab environments. Yes I will keep a spare 2003 image hanging around for testing out Service Packs and various patches but my primary lab will be on Windows 2008.
So lets take a little dive into what im going to do with this and my various setups I will have on hand. One thing i stress to people when working like this is to keep a pristine image on hand to fall back to. I cant stress this enough and I am living by that rule myself. Lets take a look at the build first.
My Virtual environment mainly is run on VMWare 6.0 For official Demo's around MSFT i also will use VPC if required but VMWare is my tool of choice. After the OS build is complete and i am sure all my patches (if any) are up to date its time to start configuring. First off I want to make sure my computer name is set to a friendly name and not a funky long string of numbers so i will enter into Computer Properties and name it something simple like Srv1. Name it what you like but the simpler for me the better. This will require a reboot. After the box comes back up I will then set it up to be a domain controller. For my images I generally put everything onto one box and that includes AD, DNS, SQL, IIS, and WSS or MOSS 2007. I will also install Office 2007, SharePoint Designer and Visual Studio 2005 as well. Why? Because with this method i can demo anything I want and not have to rely on an outside connection from my Guest to my host to the world. Ok easy enough right? Lets procede.
Before the AD installation I would highly suggest configuring your NIC to use a static IP address. THis generally works for me:
IP 192.168.1.10 (use what you like here but dont go above 255)
Subnet Mask 255.255.255.0
Gateway 192.168.1.1 (i use this because when im connected at home i can utilize my router and gain access outside the wire to download updates and such)
DNS 192.168.1.10 (Since this box is all of one box in the domain stick with your IP address)
Now that this is complete you can procede with your Active Directory Install. The reason we set the TCP Info first is because i generally let the AD install process do the DNS set up and without a static IP the DNS portion will fail.
Once AD has been set up you will need to reboot. Upon the reboot of the box I go in and set some accounts to use. SPSQL and SPADM. Once this is done I will add the IIS Role to the Server. One of the things I like about Windows 2008 is the ease of setting up roles. For instance if i chose to set up the WSS role (which we will discuss in a bit) I wouldn't be able to because IIS was not in place. It tells me this and offers to set up everything in one sweep. Yes its obvious that you need IIS installed before WSS but what im getting at is the ease of doing this via the Role Wizard. Back to the accounts, I want to set the SQL account because my next step is to install SQL Server 2005 and I will need to specify a Domain account for use. Once SQL is installed I imediatly install SQL Server 2005 SP2 (why? simple, I may want to integrate Reporting Services and SP2 is the requirement)
Once the SP2 completes a reboot is required to finish the installation. Bringing the box back up I move onto my final steps. I need to set another Role.... If you recall from my previous post I mentioned that WSS is now a core role that must be set before installing MOSS 2007. I open up the ROLE wizard and choose WSS. Its just the role being set that im concentrating on. I am not looking to do any configuration yet.
Notice in the above screenshot I have the second box checked. WHy? Because this box will become part of a farm and if i select "Install only on this Server" It will install the Windows Internal Database. We dont want that. We want to utilize SQL 2005 for our backend Database.
As you can see this will ensure you have all the necessary components needed for installing Windows SharePoint Services.
So were almost done. The next areas I want to cover are the client components. I will next install Office 2007, SPD and Visual Studio (yeah i know.... those that know me are like... Bob you idiot.. you dont do dev work) Well I like to pretend that perhaps I can learn something down the line..... and... im not installing just any Visual Studio... Im installing the Team Suite so I can take advantage of the Load Testing Tool that accompanies this :) See? Visual Studio can be for us Admin types too ;)
Ok Bob so now what.... I have set this up as you detailed... now what do i do. Remember.... Pristine System... Save the bastard off someplace in case you need to revert back to it. The only thing I would do with this box after saving it is to occasionally run it and patch it. Other than that this box is no touchy :)
The build that I just walked through will serve many purposes for me and from here i can set a number of different configurations. I can set up a standard MOSS farm or i can set up a box that uses Kerberos Authentication. I can set up a simple WSS implementation and again maybe another using Kerberos or even utilizing SSL (SelfCert is sweet for demos)
There you have it. Thats how i roll at least.