Automating Your SharePoint 2010 Installation

Introduction

Deploying a large-scale Microsoft SharePoint 2010 farm is typically a challenge for Enterprise IT administrators. To resolve this challenge, IT administrators can follow these options that may ease the work for them. However, this may sometimes create more issues if the administrator is unfamiliar with the SharePoint SDK and PowerShell. In this situation, an automated and easy-to-use SharePoint setup script will be necessary to address these challenges.

Option 1

If you're just installing SharePoint for development purposes then you can use this Script to Install SharePoint 2010 on Windows 7. Note, that is for Windows 7 only. This script does a nice job of getting you up and running fast. It enables all the required Windows Roles and Features, downloads and installs pre-requisites, and installs SharePoint 2010. It's a single uncomplicated script with just a few prompts (such as for your product key).

Option 2

For a less restricted approach, such as being able to install on Windows Server, you can use SPModule. You can also navigate to SPModule.HelloWorld() that has some more specifics on how to install the module, sign it, and use the command functions. Simply use "Install-SharePoint" to install and "New-SharePointFarm" to create a new farm!

Option 3

Finally, an even more elegant option is to use AutoSPInstaller. You just unzip the package into your existing SharePoint installation source (I recommend copying/extracting your SharePoint DVD/CD/ISO to a network share) and edit an XML file. Then, you simply run "launch.bat" and away it goes.

Unlike the other two options, when you're done here, you have all the essential services you need (Managed Metadata, User Profile, Search, Secure Store, Web Analytics, and more). You can configure it to not install one or all of these (for example, Web Analytics). Additionally, it can create a Web Application with a site collection and even your My Site host.

Best of all, since you're specifying your database names, they're clean without GUIDs!

Conclusion

Overall, this article will help IT Administrators simplify and standardize the SharePoint deployment process. That should save a lot of time and effort.