How to install a SharePoint 2010 Complete (Dev) Server without AD

This post details how you do install a SharePoint 2010 as a “complete” install without an AD, which is very useful to me as a development server (with or without Visual Studio).

This applies to both virtual and physical machines but I always work with VMs because traditionally SharePoint dev environments need to be re-installed once in a while and that’s easier with VMs.

Why would you want this?

• A development server with all components is likely to resemble your test/QA/production environment a lot more than the alternative standalone install
• A server with a local install of SharePoint with non-AD accounts can be run with or without an AD domain – you can even run the VM as a domain server disconnected from the actual domain e.g. at home or the commute
  • Alternative 1: Make your server an AD server but that changes all sorts of stuff with user management and will definitely not resemble any of your production servers
  • Alternative 2: Create two VMs one being the AD one being the actual development server connected on the same VLAN and waste a lot of resources for (almost) nothing.
• To eliminate any need for rogue AD servers on your network that some develop accidently connected directly to the network and running DHCP, DNS etc. Don’t trust your developers or external consultants to care about your network!
• I want a full SQL Server!

Why would you not want this?

• This is not a supported development environment from Microsoft – they support installing a so-called standalone development environment without any of the frills. It’s easier and it’s officially supported. It’s even doable on Windows 7.
  • Why anyone would want to develop SharePoint on a Windows 7 machine is beyond me, the runtime environment for your code will always be a server 2008 so why not develop and test it directly on such a box? Surely you develop only in VMs so that you are able to create a clean dev environment easily once in a while…

How to

The procedure is fairly simple except for the final steps. Note that you can (and should) use whatever tools you can to help you out, I’ll point at the promising AutoSPInstaller at CodePlex.

Procedure:

1. Create / install a Server 2008 (R2) 64 bit with
   1. Visual Studio 2010
   2. SQL Server 2008 (use a local user as service account)
   3. … and whatever other tools you are fond of …
   4. (Remember to sysprep/snapshot it at this stage)
2. Install SharePoint 2010 with all prerequisites
   1. Scripted or not – do not run Config Wizard yet (It would result in “Local accounts should only be used in standalone mode” error)
3. Create the farm by (trick #1)
   1. Start the SharePoint PowerShell
   2. Create a local service account
   3. Create a farm by running the “New-SPConfigurationDatabase” cmdlet and supply parameters for the service account, DB name, DB server and passphrase (thanks to Neil ‘The Doc’ Hodgkinson for that)
   4. After it finishes start the Config Wizard (interactive or not) and configure your server with all components
4. Configure the farm services as you like
   1. I usually just use the wizard in Central Admin to configure all the Service Applications with some fairly useful values it works well enough
5. Enterprise Search doesn’t work to fix it see below… (trick #2)

The Trouble with Search

Search will fail with a number of errors and in the search administration the Query Component will remain stuck in the initializing state:

The other bunch of event log errors etc. is listed at the end of this post for the benefit of Google.

As far as I can conjecture the problem is that the timer service is trying to setup a network share for every query component where the crawlers can dump their data. It is trying to setup that share with a domain account that happens to be a local user instead in this case and fails with either an “Access Denied” error or a “System.ArgumentException: The SDDL string contains an invalid sid or a sid that cannot be translated”.

The share name it’s trying to use is the same as the query role, i.e. “Guid-query-0″ pointing to (if using default locations) “C:\program files\Microsoft Office Servers\14.0\Data\Office Server\Applications” with change permissions for the “WSS_WPG” group.

Unfortunately it does not help to just create the share for it apparently the query components insist on waiting for the timer job to complete successfully. L

The Search Fix

The fix is fairly simple and almost completed by Gary Lapointe whom I owe great thanks for doing most of the hard work in his post on scripting the Enterprise Search installation and the comments below his post (thanks to Marco van Wieren).

The fix is simply to create and configure all the enterprise search components from PowerShell as it allows you to set a few more options, specifically the share name for the query components so that you are then allowed to create them yourself.

The script was originally made for configuring search components across an entire farm and therefore a bit more complicated than it strictly has to be. I left it in there while adding support for single server install as well. Gary’s script was made for beta 2 and I’ve fixed a few simple errors/typos, corrected the few API changes between beta 2 and RTM and finally added the share name support.

The script is quite long a not suitable for pasting into a blog – download instead.

The script needs a configuration file with something like this:

<Services>
    <EnterpriseSearchService ContactEmail="no-reply@SharePointDev1.com"
                             ConnectionTimeout="60"
                             AcknowledgementTimeout="60"
                             ProxyType="Default"
                             IgnoreSSLWarnings="false"
                             InternetIdentity="Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.01; Windows NT; MS Search 6.0 Robot)"
                             IndexLocation="C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Servers\14.0\Data\Office Server\Applications"
                             PerformanceLevel="PartlyReduced"
                             Account="localhost\saservice"
                             ShareName="SearchShare">

        <EnterpriseSearchServiceApplications>
            <EnterpriseSearchServiceApplication Name="Enterprise Search Service Application"
                                                DatabaseServer="localhost"
                                                DatabaseName="SharePoint_Search"
                                                FailoverDatabaseServer=""
                                                Partitioned="false"
                                                Partitions="1"
                                                SearchServiceApplicationType="Regular">
                <ApplicationPool Name="SharePoint Enterprise Search Application Pool" Account="localhost\saservice" />
                <CrawlServers>
                    <Server Name="localhost" />
                </CrawlServers>
                <QueryServers>
                    <Server Name="localhost" />
                </QueryServers>
                <SearchQueryAndSiteSettingsServers>
                    <Server Name="localhost" />
                </SearchQueryAndSiteSettingsServers>
                <AdminComponent>
                    <Server Name="localhost" />
                    <ApplicationPool Name="SharePoint Enterprise Search Application Pool" Account="localhost\saservice" />
                </AdminComponent>
                <Proxy Name="Enterprise Search Service Application Proxy" Partitioned="false">
                    <ProxyGroup Name="Default" />
                </Proxy>
            </EnterpriseSearchServiceApplication>
        </EnterpriseSearchServiceApplications>
    </EnterpriseSearchService>
</Services>

Remarks:

• I replace “localhost” with the actual computer name in the script
• The Share Name (here “SearchShare”) will be created by the script as well, so whatever you call it doesn’t matter
• The config file shown can be reused on every machine provided that the local service account “saservice” has been created before

To continue and complete step 5 in the procedure above (sorry for the numbering wordpress is messing up the html):

1. Start PowerShell shell (I will load the SharePoint snapin if it’s not a SharePoint Management Shell)
   1. Load the “SetupEnterpriseSearch.ps1” script (just drag the file into the shell and execute) which will define the required functions
   2. Execute “Start-EnterpriseSearch “<path>\searchconfig.xml””
   3. Wait for a few minutes and watch for errors
2. Go to the Search Administration and verify that your new search topology works
   1. It should look something like this:

      

   2. If you configured search in step 4 you will have two
   3. If you have two you can safely go back to “Manage service applications” and delete the one named “Search Service Application 1” (and associated databases) – the one created by the script is “Enterprise Search Service Application”
3. Try it! Go to a local SharePoint site and search for something
   1. Before the search would return a server error 500 so anything else than that can be considered a success
   2. I like to add a few documents and have them show up in the search before I call it a success…

Caveats / Fast Search

Don’t know if it fair to call it a caveat however only the Enterprise Search is demonstrated here, the Fast Search behaves similarly in respect to the “share trouble” and will probably need the same fix as the enterprise search. I’ve not found the time or need to poke around with that just yet, but it should be doable in less than a day given the foundation above (for someone skilled in SharePoint and powershell).

Conclusions

It works; I’ll use it from now on 🙂

… and I hope the nice chaps at AutoSPInstall will include this fix in their tool.

Scared of being in unsupported land?

• It’s only your dev server and it did move a lot closer to production that the standalone dev machine option
• It also protected your network from rogue AD servers that might potentially kill half your network if you are unlucky

So how well is this tested? Quite well for a single server install and not at all for a farm install (not by me at least). Trust it with the former and test it yourself if you need the latter.

Observed Errors

I got a lot of different errors, here they are for the benefit of Google.

Event log entry after completing the configuration wizard in Central Administration:

Log Name: Application
Source: Microsoft-SharePoint Products-SharePoint Server Search
Date: 11-06-2010 22:20:17
Event ID: 2579
Task Category: Administration
Level: Error
Keywords:
User: SHAREPOINTDEV1\saservice
Computer: SharePointDev1
Description:
Component a61ca0ca-194f-4cf0-bb5c-8ca998178935-query-0 of search application ‘Search Service Application’ has failed to execute transition sequence ‘initialize with empty catalog’ due to the following error: System.ArgumentException: The SDDL string contains an invalid sid or a sid that cannot be translated.
Parameter name: sddlForm
at System.Security.AccessControl.RawSecurityDescriptor.BinaryFormFromSddlForm(String sddlForm)
at System.Security.AccessControl.RawSecurityDescriptor..ctor(String sddlForm)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Win32.SPNetApi32.CreateShareSecurityDescriptor(String[] readNames, String[] changeNames, String[] fullControlNames, String& sddl)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Win32.SPNetApi32.CreateFileShare(String name, String description, String path)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPServer.CreateFileShare(String name, String description, String path)
at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.QueryComponent.CreatePropagationShare(QueryComponent component)
at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.QueryComponent.ExecuteCurrentStage(). It is now in state Uninitialized.
Event Xml:
<Event xmlns=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event“>
<System>
<Provider Name=”Microsoft-SharePoint Products-SharePoint Server Search” Guid=”{C8263AFE-83A5-448C-878C-1E5F5D1C4252}” />
<EventID>2579</EventID>
<Version>14</Version>
<Level>2</Level>
<Task>14</Task>
<Opcode>0</Opcode>
<Keywords>0×4000000000000000</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime=”2010-06-11T20:20:17.723875000Z” />
<EventRecordID>3926</EventRecordID>
<Correlation ActivityID=”{B1431F7E-1D0C-4CB7-B690-F0F016447FE4}” />
<Execution ProcessID=”956? ThreadID=”3484? />
<Channel>Application</Channel>
<Computer>SharePointDev1</Computer>
<Security UserID=”S-1-5-21-452889701-636363473-2591022535-1012? />
</System>
<EventData>
<Data Name=”string0?>a61ca0ca-194f-4cf0-bb5c-8ca998178935-query-0</Data>
<Data Name=”string1?>Search Service Application</Data>
<Data Name=”string2?>initialize with empty catalog</Data>
<Data Name=”string3?>System.ArgumentException: The SDDL string contains an invalid sid or a sid that cannot be translated.
Parameter name: sddlForm
at System.Security.AccessControl.RawSecurityDescriptor.BinaryFormFromSddlForm(String sddlForm)
at System.Security.AccessControl.RawSecurityDescriptor..ctor(String sddlForm)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Win32.SPNetApi32.CreateShareSecurityDescriptor(String[] readNames, String[] changeNames, String[] fullControlNames, String&amp; sddl)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Win32.SPNetApi32.CreateFileShare(String name, String description, String path)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPServer.CreateFileShare(String name, String description, String path)
at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.QueryComponent.CreatePropagationShare(QueryComponent component)
at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.QueryComponent.ExecuteCurrentStage()</Data>
<Data Name=”string4?>Uninitialized</Data>
</span
</EventData>
</Event>

And from the ULS log:

06/11/2010 22:20:17.72         OWSTIMER.EXE (0x03BC)         0x0D9C        SharePoint Server Search         Administration         fea9        Critical        Component a61ca0ca-194f-4cf0-bb5c-8ca998178935-query-0 of search application ‘Search Service Application’ has failed to execute transition sequence ‘initialize with empty catalog’ due to the following error: System.ArgumentException: The SDDL string contains an invalid sid or a sid that cannot be translated. Parameter name: sddlForm at System.Security.AccessControl.RawSecurityDescriptor.BinaryFormFromSddlForm(String sddlForm) at System.Security.AccessControl.RawSecurityDescriptor..ctor(String sddlForm) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Win32.SPNetApi32.CreateShareSecurityDescriptor(String[] readNames, String[] changeNames, String[] fullControlNames, String& sddl) at Microsoft.SharePoint.Win32.SPNetApi32.CreateFileShare(String name, String description, String path) at Microsoft.S…        b1431f7e-1d0c-4cb7-b690-f0f016447fe4
06/11/2010 22:20:17.72*        OWSTIMER.EXE (0x03BC)         0x0D9C        SharePoint Server Search         Administration         fea9        Critical        …harePoint.Administration.SPServer.CreateFileShare(String name, String description, String path) at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.QueryComponent.CreatePropagationShare(QueryComponent component) at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.QueryComponent.ExecuteCurrentStage(). It is now in state Uninitialized.        b1431f7e-1d0c-4cb7-b690-f0f016447fe4
06/11/2010 22:20:17.72         OWSTIMER.EXE (0x03BC)         0x0D9C        SharePoint Server         Unified Logging Service         2m1i        Verbose         Adding event 2579 (category: Administration, product: SharePoint Server Search) to spam monitoring list        b1431f7e-1d0c-4cb7-b690-f0f016447fe4
06/11/2010 22:20:17.72         OWSTIMER.EXE (0x03BC)         0x0D9C        SharePoint Server Search         Administration         djs2        Medium         SearchApi (): executing SetQueryComponent(d355048f-d4fa-4f31-88b0-342b5ed48e5c, null, null, null, null, Uninitialized, Uninitialized, null, -1, Failed, null, False, null, null, False, null)        b1431f7e-1d0c-4cb7-b690-f0f016447fe4

And another event log:

Log Name: Application
Source: Microsoft-SharePoint Products-SharePoint Foundation
Date: 12-06-2010 20:40:26
Event ID: 6398
Task Category: Timer
Level: Critical
Keywords:
User: SHAREPOINTDEV1\saservice
Computer: SharePointDev1
Description:
The Execute method of job definition Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.CrawlReportJobDefinition (ID 9529aace-a679-4fc9-ab8d-325780484cf0) threw an exception. More information is included below.
The search service is not able to connect to the machine that hosts the administration component. Verify that the administration component ’3147b99c-8f3a-41e9-a08b-296f930af877' in search application ‘Enterprise Search Service Application’ is in a good state and try again.
Event Xml:
<Event xmlns=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event“>
<System>
<Provider Name=”Microsoft-SharePoint Products-SharePoint Foundation” Guid=”{6FB7E0CD-52E7-47DD-997A-241563931FC2}” />
<EventID>6398</EventID>
<Version>14</Version>
<Level>1</Level>
<Task>12</Task>
<Opcode>0</Opcode>
<Keywords>0×4000000000000000</Keywords>
<TimeCreated SystemTime=”2010-06-12T18:40:26.553054700Z” />
<EventRecordID>4159</EventRecordID>
<Correlation ActivityID=”{6CED0041-2038-43E3-AB79-4DEFBB4216B3}” />
<Execution ProcessID=”1324? ThreadID=”1532? />
<Channel>Application</Channel>
<Computer>SharePointDev1</Computer>
<Security UserID=”S-1-5-21-452889701-636363473-2591022535-1012? />
</System>
<EventData>
<Data Name=”string0?>Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.CrawlReportJobDefinition</Data>
<Data Name=”string1?>9529aace-a679-4fc9-ab8d-325780484cf0</Data>
<Data Name=”string2?>The search service is not able to connect to the machine that hosts the administration component. Verify that the administration component ’3147b99c-8f3a-41e9-a08b-296f930af877' in search application ‘Enterprise Search Service Application’ is in a good state and try again.</Data>
</EventData>
</Event>

And one for foundation search:

Log Name:      Application
Source:        Microsoft-SharePoint Products-SharePoint Foundation
Date:          …
Event ID:      6398
Task Category: Timer
Level:         Critical
Keywords:
User:          …
Computer:      …
Description:
The Execute method of job definition Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.QueryTopologyActivationJobDefinition (ID de8eac2b-57db-4069-896d-747ae4fb35ed) threw an exception. More information is included below.
Topology activation was aborted because of System.ArgumentException: The SDDL string contains an invalid sid or a sid that cannot be translated.
Parameter name: sddlForm
at System.Security.AccessControl.RawSecurityDescriptor.BinaryFormFromSddlForm(String sddlForm)
at System.Security.AccessControl.RawSecurityDescriptor..ctor(String sddlForm)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Win32.SPNetApi32.CreateShareSecurityDescriptor(String[] readNames, String[] changeNames, String[] fullControlNames, String& sddl)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Win32.SPNetApi32.CreateFileShare(String name, String description, String path)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPServer.CreateFileShare(String name, String description, String path)
at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.QueryComponent.CreatePropagationShare(QueryComponent component)
at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.QueryComponent.ExecuteCurrentStage().
Event Xml:
<Event xmlns=”http://schemas.microsoft.com/win/2004/08/events/event“>
<System>
<Provider Name=”Microsoft-SharePoint Products-SharePoint Foundation” Guid=”{6fb7e0ce-52e7-47dd-997a-241563931fc2}” />
<EventID>6398</EventID>
<Version>14</Version>
<Level>1</Level>
<Task>12</Task>
<Opcode>0</Opcode>
<Keywords>0×4000000000000000</Keywords>
<EventRecordID>10895</EventRecordID>
<Correlation ActivityID=”{6E239D20-A2CD-45B4-AC87-4477A82558BB}” />
<Execution ProcessID=”2016? ThreadID=”2288? />
<Channel>Application</Channel>
<Computer>id1314</Computer>
<Security UserID=”S-1-5-21-30024279817-590149927-1659320300-1003? />
</System>
<EventData>
<Data Name=”string0?>Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.QueryTopologyActivationJobDefinition</Data>
<Data Name=”string1?>de8eac2b-57db-4069-896d-747ae4fb35ed</Data>
<Data Name=”string2?>Topology activation was aborted because of System.ArgumentException: The SDDL string contains an invalid sid or a sid that cannot be translated.
Parameter name: sddlForm
at System.Security.AccessControl.RawSecurityDescriptor.BinaryFormFromSddlForm(String sddlForm)
at System.Security.AccessControl.RawSecurityDescriptor..ctor(String sddlForm)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Win32.SPNetApi32.CreateShareSecurityDescriptor(String[] readNames, String[] changeNames, String[] fullControlNames, String&amp; sddl)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Win32.SPNetApi32.CreateFileShare(String name, String description, String path)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPServer.CreateFileShare(String name, String description, String path)
at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.QueryComponent.CreatePropagationShare(QueryComponent component)
at Microsoft.Office.Server.Search.Administration.QueryComponent.ExecuteCurrentStage().</Data>
</EventData>
</Event>

And finally from Gary’s blog (Marco van Wieren):

Component: 3b609311-67da-4df8-8c12-e597e9228dd3-crawl-0
Details:
The system cannot find the file specified. 0x80070002Propagation for search application 3b609311-67da-4df8-8c12-e597e9228dd3-crawl-0: failed to communicate with query server 3b609311-67da-4df8-8c12-e597e9228dd3-query-0.