Here begins and ends a story of a SharePoint IT Pro and his attempts to install the SharePoint 2010 Release Candidate (RC) on a Virtual Machine (VM) for a pleasant afternoon of testing. He thought to himself – this shouldn’t take too long as he had installed the Beta and the RC countless times. He:
- Prepped the Windows 20008 R2 Install
- Prepped the AD service
- Created my service account – service accounts for all!
- Installed SQL
- Installed the SharePoint Prerequisites using the SharePoint Install tool (so nice to have included – it’s like pixy-dust being spread on the road before you smoothing your install path)
Then he launched the SharePoint 2008 install and the sunny skies turned dark, the birds stopped singing and he found himself caught in a vertex that would devour his next 3 days. During this time his faith in SharePoint, his own abilities, and even the evidence of a good and loving God were all called into question. It wasn’t until the stroke of midnight of the third night and 5th install attempt did the light break the clouds and divine inspiration strike.
Did you spot the fatal flaw above? Did you see what piece of vital information is missing? I didn’t see it until I started to write a desperate email to an MVP friend and admit failure. I fell victim to the 2nd most classic blunder – the first of which is never get involved in a land war in Asia (name that movie), the second is: NEVER INSTALL SHAREPOINT 2010 RC ON A DOMAIN CONTROLLER. All of the above services were running on a single box. Uhg. I sure hope this issue gets fixed, patched, excercized back to the pits of hell before the RTM.
2 Morals to this story: Never install SharePoint 2010 RC on a Domain Controller and learn from my mistakes – they are many.
