How to install SharePoint 2016

Here we are with a new public version of SharePoint 2016 available. In this article a simple tutorial showing the steps to install the latest version on a Failover Cluster based on SQL 2014. This will cover the basic steps with a Single Server-Farm deployment type. In the next articles Always-On Availability Groups and SharePoint Database names renaming will be discussed using this installation as a basis. Separate articles covering the SharePoint Web, Services and Databases redundancy will be posted.

For those willing to install SharePoint 2016 in a production environment I will strongly recommend to read  the TechNet article about the minimum prerequisites .

First thing after launching the setup.exe embedded in the downloaded image file is to launch the wizard to check the prerequisites as it was happening with SharePoint 2013 installations

Once the prerequisites have been satisfied next step would be to start the installation. The provided link  for the trial image download includes the trail key valid for 180 days after which it can be converted to a proper license

Since we are running a Single Server-Farm deployment it is recommended to install the binaries into a drive with enough space to also store the index files which can grow very rapidly and with bigger size as well

As per previous screen now the wizard will start the PSConfig.exe to configure SharePoint 2016

If no other websites are hosted on the local machine it is safe to let the installation wizard to do a full restart of IIS. In theory SharePoint requires dedicated machines for the installation of its own web services. Also in other case the installation will stop

In this case we can specify a VIP cluster name along with the named instance that has been created

This is a new step in SharePoint 2016 configuration with the introduction of the Min-Roles. For this setup a Single Server-Farm will be used

After the installation of the binaries the wizard will automatically launch the steps to create the first user Web Application and create the Service Applications

For the current setup I will use a single account SPFarm and accept the default Service Applications to be created as proposed by the wizard

Once completed the wizard will now let the creation of the first user Web Application as per screenshot below

Once completed we can now access the Central Admin and the root Site Collection on the newly created Web Application

As expected the databases pertinent to the SharePoint 2016 Service Applications have been created accordingly. In the next article series I will cover the Always-On Availability Group configuration and also how to rename the SharePoint databases with friendly names