Building SharePoint 2013 Development Environment (1/4)

Microsoft released the RTM version of Microsoft SharePoint 2013 already. In this version, there're service hosted provided by Microsoft on the cloud called some developer can use "Napa" to develop their solution in the cloud. but there're still plenty of client especially in my country still willing to use on premise solution. So There's no doubt that you will need a development environment to develop, migrate, and test before deploy into the latest SharePoint.

Microsoft SharePoint 2013 comes with Hardware and software requirements for SharePoint 2013
for the test environment you must have at least

• 8GB of RAM
• x64 of CPU 4 cores
• and at least 80 GB of system drive

I've installed a single server on my VM with 4GB of ram trust me, it's totally crazy. It spends time on every click you made. So i'd recommend to follow the hardware requirements from the technet.

Next are prerequisite software, I download the evaluation software from Microsoft listed below.

1. Windows Server 2013
2. SQL Server 2012 SP1 x64
3. SharePoint Server 2013
4. SharePoint Designer 2013
5. Visual Studio Ultimate 2012 90-day trial
6. Office 2013 Professional Plus

There're also additional software for SharePoint prerequisite. I download them from this technet blog

After a long wait all files are complete and ready to install.
The step to install this environment are

1. Install Windows Server
2. Rename server, Set Locale, Disable Loopback check and set User Account Control.
3. Set network adapter and assign ip address
4. Add ADDS role and promote new forest and domain.
5. Create new domain user for SharePoint and SQL service
6. Install SQL Server 2012
7. Install SharePoint 2013 prerequisite
8. Install SharePoint 2013
9. Install Visual Studio 2012
10. Install Office 2013 Professional Plus
11. Install SharePoint Designer

There's a long long step to get this VM ready. I'd recommend to take a snapshot of your VM on some complicated step then your can roll back if something goes wrong.

To install Windows Server on the VM you just do a few click then the installation process is ready. I'll skip to the next step add ADDS role and promote new forest and domain you can follow the screenshot at this link

What Microsoft always told about the best practice for SharePoint installation is you should create separate service account for difference service responsibility. I agree with them but the question from the server administrator comes out "How many account you want for SharePoint farm?" 16!!

In this scenario I'll create 4 service account one for SQL and the rest for SharePoint

• SQL Service account runs every sql service (DB, SSRS, SSIS, SSAS)
• SharePoint Farm runs farm service
• SharePoint Service runs all SharePoint service applications
• SharePoint App runs all SharePoint application pools

Let's continue on the SQL 2012 set up in the next post.