SharePoint Server can be installed either in a single server farm or as a multi-server farm. Once the prerequisites for SharePoint are installed, we can install SharePoint Server in the farm. However, recently when I was trying to install the SharePoint pre-requisites in Windows Server 2012 Server, I was faced with a problem - “Tool was unable to install Application Server Role, Web Server (IIS) Role”.
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A quick search revealed that it is a common issue and Microsoft has provided a KB article on how to resolve this.
Run the below commands that will add the required Windows features for the pre-requisite installer to continue.
- Import-Module ServerManager
- Copy-Item -Path "$($ENV:SystemRoot)\System32\ServerManager.exe" `
- -Destination "$($ENV:SystemRoot)\System32\ServerManagerCmd.exe" –Force
-
- Add-WindowsFeature NET-WCF-HTTP-Activation45,NET-WCF-TCP-Activation45,NET-WCF-Pipe-Activation45
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- Add-WindowsFeature Net-Framework-Features,Web-Server,Web-WebServer, `
- Web-Common-Http,Web-Static-Content,Web-Default-Doc,Web-Dir-Browsing, `
- Web-Http-Errors,Web-App-Dev,Web-Asp-Net,Web-Net-Ext,Web-ISAPI-Ext, `
- Web-ISAPI-Filter,Web-Health,Web-Http-Logging,Web-Log-Libraries,Web-Request-Monitor, `
- Web-Http-Tracing,Web-Security,Web-Basic-Auth,Web-Windows-Auth,Web-Filtering, `
- Web-Digest-Auth,Web-Performance,Web-Stat-Compression,Web-Dyn-Compression, `
- Web-Mgmt-Tools,Web-Mgmt-Console,Web-Mgmt-Compat,Web-Metabase,Application-Server, `
- AS-Web-Support,AS-TCP-Port-Sharing,AS-WAS-Support, AS-HTTP-Activation, `
- AS-TCP-Activation,AS-Named-Pipes,AS-Net-Framework,WAS,WAS-Process-Model, `
- WAS-NET-Environment,WAS-Config-APIs,Web-Lgcy-Scripting,Windows-Identity-Foundation, `
- Server-Media-Foundation,Xps-Viewer
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This has added the required Windows features.
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Once the commands are run, restart the computer and run the pre-requisites installer again. This time, it proceeds without any issue.
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Summary
Thus, we have seen how to resolve the “Unable to install the Application Server Role” issue that occurs during the run of SharePoint 2013 pre-requisite installer.