Building a sharepoint 2016 home lab a how to reference on simulating

Building a
SharePoint
2016 Home Lab
A How-To Reference on Simulating a Realistic
SharePoint Testing Environment
—
Stacy Simpkins
MCT, MCSE SharePoint 2013, MCSA Server 2012,
MCITP EA SharePoint 2010


Building a SharePoint
2016 Home Lab
A How-To Reference on Simulating a Realistic
SharePoint Testing Environment

Stacy Simpkins
MCT, MCSE SharePoint 2013,
MCSA Server 2012,
MCITP EA SharePoint 2010


Building a SharePoint 2016 Home Lab: A How-To Reference on Simulating a Realistic SharePoint Testing
Environment
Stacy Simpkins
Brandon, Florida, USA
ISBN-13 (pbk): 978-1-4842-2169-3

ISBN-13 (electronic): 978-1-4842-2170-9

DOI 10.1007/978-1-4842-2170-9

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016948362
Copyright © 2016 by Stacy Simpkins
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Printed on acid-free paper


Contents at a Glance
About the Author ..................................................................................................... xi
About the Technical Reviewer ............................................................................... xiii
Acknowledgments ...................................................................................................xv
Introduction ...........................................................................................................xvii
■Chapter 1: Home Lab Hardware and Software....................................................... 1
■Chapter 2: Hyper-V vs. VMware and Virtual Switch Creation .............................. 11
■Chapter 3: Creating Your Domain ........................................................................ 21
■Chapter 4: Active Directory ................................................................................. 97
■Chapter 5: Domain Name System (DNS) ............................................................ 117
■Chapter 6: Joining the Machines to the Domain ............................................... 133
■Chapter 7: Group Policy ..................................................................................... 151
■Chapter 8: Certificate Authority......................................................................... 175
■Chapter 9: SQL Server ....................................................................................... 213
■Chapter 10: Installing and Configuring SharePoint ........................................... 257
■Chapter 11: SharePoint Service Applications, HNSCs, and an App Catalog ....... 333
■Chapter 12: Installing Dev Tools ........................................................................ 455

■Chapter 13: Troubleshooting ............................................................................. 465
Index ..................................................................................................................... 485

iii



Contents
About the Author ..................................................................................................... xi
About the Technical Reviewer ............................................................................... xiii
Acknowledgments ...................................................................................................xv
Introduction ...........................................................................................................xvii
■Chapter 1: Home Lab Hardware and Software....................................................... 1
Drinking the Kool-Aid ....................................................................................................... 1
Not a Single-Server SharePoint Farm..................................................................................................... 1

Operating Systems and Software ..................................................................................... 2
System Hardware Requirements ............................................................................................................ 2
But What If I Only Have 8GB of RAM? ..................................................................................................... 3
But What If I Don’t Have Windows 10 Pro? ............................................................................................. 3
Software Requirements .......................................................................................................................... 4
Planning Your Environment..................................................................................................................... 5
Not a Comprehensive Text of All Microsoft-y Things .............................................................................. 5
What Are You Going to Call Your Domain? .............................................................................................. 8
Software Download Links ....................................................................................................................... 9
Further Reading: a.k.a. The “Do You Want to Know More?” Section ...................................................... 9

Summary ........................................................................................................................ 10
■Chapter 2: Hyper-V vs. VMware and Virtual Switch Creation .............................. 11
Hyper-V Manager............................................................................................................ 11

Which Adapter to Choose ............................................................................................... 17

v


■ CONTENTS

Troubleshooting a Configuration Error............................................................................ 17
Do You Want to Know More? .......................................................................................... 19
Summary ........................................................................................................................ 20
■Chapter 3: Creating Your Domain ........................................................................ 21
Creating the Machines ................................................................................................... 21
Inventory Planning ................................................................................................................................ 21
Dorking Your Hosts File......................................................................................................................... 22
Creating the VMs .................................................................................................................................. 24
Configure the Domain Controller (and Additional Servers) ................................................................... 33
Configuring the Domain Controller ....................................................................................................... 42
Additional Member Servers and Other Steps ....................................................................................... 76

Summary ........................................................................................................................ 96
■Chapter 4: Active Directory ................................................................................. 97
Configuring Active Directory........................................................................................... 97
Creating User Accounts ................................................................................................ 101
PowerShell Example ........................................................................................................................... 107
Thwart Those Hackers ........................................................................................................................ 107
Do You Want to Know More? ............................................................................................................... 116

Summary ...................................................................................................................... 116
■Chapter 5: Domain Name System (DNS) ............................................................ 117
DNS Zones .................................................................................................................... 117

We Are Using “Secure Only” ............................................................................................................... 117
How Does the Information Replicate? ................................................................................................ 118

Resolution and Types of DNS Records.......................................................................... 118
Host (A) and (AAAA) ............................................................................................................................ 118
Canonical Name (CNAME) Alias Record .............................................................................................. 119
Pointer (PTR) Record........................................................................................................................... 119
Do You Want to Know More? ............................................................................................................... 131

Summary ...................................................................................................................... 131

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■ CONTENTS

■Chapter 6: Joining the Machines to the Domain ............................................... 133
The Time You’ve Been Waiting For ............................................................................... 133
Do You Want to Know More? ............................................................................................................... 150

Summary ...................................................................................................................... 150
■Chapter 7: Group Policy ..................................................................................... 151
What Is a GPO? ............................................................................................................. 151
GPOs in Play ................................................................................................................. 151
LSD Overuse ................................................................................................................. 152
How It Works and the LSDOU Again ............................................................................. 152
Local Security Policy a.k.a. secpol.msc ....................................................................... 152
Sites ............................................................................................................................. 152
Domains ....................................................................................................................... 153
Organizational Units ..................................................................................................... 153

Are Your Eyes Crossed Yet? .......................................................................................... 153
Settings ........................................................................................................................ 153
Default Domain Policy .................................................................................................. 153
Default Domain Controllers Policy ................................................................................ 154
Restricted Groups Policy .............................................................................................. 154
Local Admin Rename and New Local Admin User ........................................................ 167
Do You Want to Know More? ........................................................................................ 173
Summary ...................................................................................................................... 173
■Chapter 8: Certificate Authority......................................................................... 175
License and Registration, Please? ............................................................................... 175
Communicate Securely ................................................................................................ 176
Do You Want to Know More? ........................................................................................ 211
Summary ...................................................................................................................... 211

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■ CONTENTS

■Chapter 9: SQL Server ....................................................................................... 213
Do You Want to Know More? ........................................................................................ 256
Summary ...................................................................................................................... 256
■Chapter 10: Installing and Configuring SharePoint ........................................... 257
Prerequisites for Installing SharePoint ......................................................................... 257
Purpose of SharePoint ........................................................................................................................ 257
Using a Client Alias ............................................................................................................................. 257
Overview of the Install and Configuration Process ............................................................................. 259
Installing the Prerequisites ................................................................................................................. 260
Running Setup .................................................................................................................................... 271
Configure SQL for the Install ............................................................................................................... 278

Recap of the Needed Service Accounts .............................................................................................. 287
SharePoint Install and Central Administration Scripts ........................................................................ 293
Installing SharePoint Service Applications ......................................................................................... 299
Join the Servers to the Farm Running Central Admin on SSL ............................................................ 307
Do You Want to Know More? ............................................................................................................... 332

Summary ...................................................................................................................... 332
■Chapter 11: SharePoint Service Applications, HNSCs, and an App Catalog ....... 333
Additional Service Applications, HNSCs, and an App Catalog ...................................... 333
No “Sneaky Pete” Business, SharePoint! ..................................................................... 346
Creating a Search Service Application and a User Profile Service Application ............ 351
User Profile Service Creation ....................................................................................... 356
Managed Metadata ...................................................................................................... 397
Quotas .......................................................................................................................... 403
Additional Configuration ............................................................................................... 404
Host-named Site Collections (HNSCs) vs. PBSCs ......................................................... 405
Minimal Download Strategy vs. Publishing Infrastructure ........................................... 416
Enterprise and Standard Features................................................................................ 416
Search Center............................................................................................................... 416
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■ CONTENTS

Web Applications, Site Collections, and Quotas ........................................................... 434
SharePoint Store .......................................................................................................... 439
Publishing Infrastructure .............................................................................................. 448
Not in Conclusion, But a Good Start ............................................................................. 452
Like a Fly Hitting a Windshield ..................................................................................... 452
Do You Want to Know More? ........................................................................................ 452

Summary ...................................................................................................................... 453
■Chapter 12: Installing Dev Tools ........................................................................ 455
SharePoint Designer Installation .................................................................................. 455
Visual Studio Installation .............................................................................................. 458
Do You Want to Know More? ............................................................................................................... 463

Summary ...................................................................................................................... 463
■Chapter 13: Troubleshooting ............................................................................. 465
Networking ................................................................................................................... 465
Issues with Networking, Joining Machines, and Connections ............................................................ 465
Mstsc.exe............................................................................................................................................ 467
Incorrect Password or Account........................................................................................................... 469
DNS Records....................................................................................................................................... 469
Not Joined to the Domain ................................................................................................................... 471
A Weirdly Named DC ........................................................................................................................... 471
Mapping Drives................................................................................................................................... 472
Are the Drives Filling up on Your C? ................................................................................................... 473

Getting Scripts and Distributed Cache to Run .............................................................. 480
Scripts ................................................................................................................................................ 480
Distributed Cache ............................................................................................................................... 481

Removing Search and/or User Profile Service Application ........................................... 481
Search Service ................................................................................................................................... 481
User Profile Service Application ......................................................................................................... 481

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■ CONTENTS

Security Patches and Running psconfig....................................................................... 482
Patches vs. CU .................................................................................................................................... 482
psconfig Changes Central Admin URL ................................................................................................ 482
Getting Hyper-V Installed .................................................................................................................... 483

Summary ...................................................................................................................... 483
Index ..................................................................................................................... 485

x


About the Author
Stacy Simpkins is a SharePoint enthusiast and consultant. He’s worked in
the food, legal, manufacturing, health insurance, and professional services
industries. He also has over a decade of federal government experience as
an IT specialist. He’s held various roles that involved architecting and
developing small, medium, and large SharePoint environments. Stacy has
worked on SharePoint environments at a regional component of the Social
Security Administration, at the Chicago office of the Blue Cross and Blue
Shield Association, at the Jackson, Michigan, office of Dawn Foods, Inc.,
and at an international law firm’s operations center located in Brandon,
Florida. He’s also worked as a solutions architect for Magenium Solutions
and as a senior consultant for Sogeti LLC. Holding numerous Microsoft
Certifications, he regularly blogs on SharePoint and other Microsoft
products. Stacy loves working with customers in assisting them in the
understanding of the capabilities of SharePoint. He enjoys speaking at
user group meetings and other technology related events.

xi

About the Technical Reviewer
Fabio Claudio Ferracchiati is a senior consultant and a senior analyst/developer using Microsoft
technologies. He works for Blu Arancio (www.bluarancio.com). He is a Microsoft Certified Solution
Developer for .NET, a Microsoft Certified Application Developer for .NET, a Microsoft Certified Professional,
and a prolific author and technical reviewer. Over the past 10 years, he’s written articles for Italian and
international magazines, and coauthored more than 10 books on a variety of computer topics.

xiii



Acknowledgments
The idea for this book materialized when I was on the Apress.com web site looking for free books to give
away at the Tampa Bay SharePoint user group (tbspug). It was at this moment, when I came across the wideopen, easy-to-read, authorship contract, that I recalled a statement that one of my recent clients had said,
“Dang, Stacy! You really should write a book!” And, so I did. I think other people had told me that in
different ways and at various times; but I hadn’t actually thought of writing a book until I was perusing the
Apress.com web site. When I saw how straightforward Apress is about the process, I knew I could do it. I’ve
always tried to share whatever I could; so, this just seemed like the natural next step.
I believe everything that happens in our lives and the knowledge that we acquire are due to a series
of events, a series of successive nows, which continue indefinitely and are interrelated. With that thought
in mind, I’d like to thank all the people who’ve contributed to my SharePoint and IT related learnings and
success. I’m pretty sure I won’t get all of you, and some of you might even wonder why you’re on this list,
saying to yourself, or maybe out loud, “But, I don’t know anything or very much at all about SharePoint,” or,
“How could I’ve possibly affected you?” Well, you contributed to my learning or success in some direct or
indirect way, either as my student, my boss, my team member, or as a mentor of some sort—you helped me.
So, with that being said, thank you to Samar Singh Tomar, Adam Watson, Keller, Area 4 circa 2008,
Jeanne J., Kelton Harris, Pablo Lomas, Allison Anderson, Lynn McCullough, Peter Nagaro, Chuck, Edward

Manuel Jr., Karen Soltis, Akbar, Anees, Faraz Munshi, Tom Takach, Hari Pasupuleti, Tom Egan, Tom
Lamantia, Trax, Beth at Magenium, Tom Simpkins, Tim Sullivan, Brad Buoy, Andrew Philipson, Leo Doyle,
Leo Lovely, John Heim, Tim “Master Sergeant B” Bridgham, Virgil Aurand, Paul “Mr. Heat Meiser” Caouette,
John Furmanek, Dan Nicholson, Seibert, Andrew Schroeder, Ari Ammon, Len Terranova, Art Garcia, Paul
Beaton and the Softball team, Ciara, Dee at Dawn foods, Hedrick, Reed Beaver, Rajai Rahaman, Fabian
Hernandez, Brian Swiger MCT, Brian Caudill, Eric Perry, Jim Heuser, Patrick Cox, Stephanie Cox, Gary L.
Cox, Brenda at HKlaw, Daniel Payne DBA, Eric Buckley DBA, Scott B. DBA at spt.local, the infrastructure
guys at Holland and Knight, the infrastructure guys at Dawn Foods, and the infrastructure guys at the
Blue Cross and Blue shield association, Ramesh Balakrishnan DBA, Bahareh Saati, Chadd Sommerfield,
Alejandro Barragan, Kim Moore, M.C. Perkins, Howard Carl, Cuy Nuegebauer, Paul Artis, Jesse Brown, Eric
Chang, Eric Andino, Rob Beverly, Shane Marler, Lourdes, Tom McHugh, Chris Jurkowski, Dan Bogstad,
Ben Uhlmann, Lucy Simpkins, Carter and Jordan Simpkins, Paige Simpkins, Wade Simpkins, Raymond J.
Simpkins II, Kristy Ukauka, Laresa Simpkins, Gloria and Tim Uhlmann, and my mother and father—Judy
and Raymond J. Simpkins, and anyone else that I forgot to mention.
I would also like to thank my editors at Apress, Gwenan Spearing, Laura Berendson, Fabio Claudio
Ferracchiati, and Melissa Maldonado, and all the other members of the team, for all their help in getting this
to press, my first book ever. And, I’d like to thank you, for actually reading this acknowledgement, if you’ve
purchased a copy, and even if you haven’t.
And last, but definitely not least, thank you to my wife, Krista, “the best wife ever” for putting up with all
the late nights and complete weekends that were absorbed by the creation of this text. I love you more than
I’ll ever be able to say in words or actions!

xv



Introduction
This introduction covers a few of the key concepts we use throughout the book. For example, mapping
drives, pinning items to your Start menu, turning off the user account control prompts in the home lab (not
in production), and running things administratively. It also provides a brief overview of each chapter.

Let’s get the brief overview out of the way and then discuss the other things.

Chapter 1: Home Lab Hardware and Software
This chapter discusses the minimum requirements for building a home lab on your PC, laptop, or server,
and goes over some planning for the home lab environment.

Chapter 2: Hyper-V vs. VMware and Virtual Switch
In this chapter, you learn how to create a virtual switch for your home lab and begin creating the home lab.
You also skim the surface of the Hyper-V vs. VMware battle.

Chapter 3: Creating Your Domain
You create an Active Directory domain controller in your home-lab. This way, your SharePoint will not
run on top of the domain controller. You’ll create the virtual machines (VMs) that operate SharePoint, or
whatever you decide to run. You can use this book and the home lab for more than just SharePoint.

Chapter 4: Active Directory
In this chapter, you build out and partially configure Active Directory. You’ll create a few users and
organizational units.

Chapter 5: Domain Name System (DNS)
DNS is a key component to any Windows-based domain. You’ll learn about host (A) records, canonical
name (CNAME) records, service location (SRV) records, and more!

Chapter 6: Joining the Machines to the Domain
This is where the machines that you created in Chapter 3 are joined into the domain that you’re creating.
The concepts from Active Directory and DNS start to make more sense.

xvii

■ INTRODUCTION

Chapter 7: Group Policy
You’ll create a restricted groups policy to control members of the local administrators group on your
member servers. You’ll also create a group policy that renames the local administrator account on your
member servers.

Chapter 8: Certificate Authority
In a production environment, it is always a best practice to run everything over a security protocol such
as Transport Layer Security (TLS) or its predecessor, Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). In an attempt to provide
create a more realistic environment, you’ll create a certificate authority and issue a certificate so that you can
configure SharePoint to communicate over SSL.

Chapter 9: SQL Server
This chapter covers configuring SQL Server in a home-lab setting. It provides references for using more
than one service account, if you wanted to go the extra distance, as you would in a production environment.
When you’ve completed this chapter, you’ll have a working SQL server that interfaces nicely with SharePoint.

Chapter 10: Installing and Configuring SharePoint
This chapter provides you with the instruction for getting a SharePoint 2016 farm configured using the
minimum role technology. You’ll have central administration running on a vanity URL and over SSL.

Chapter 11: SharePoint Service Applications, HNSCs,
and an App Catalog
You’ll configure quite a few service applications, create some host-named site collections (HNSCs), such as
it.tailspintoys.com and tbspug.tailspintoys.com, and create an app catalog.

Chapter 12: Installing Dev Tools
You’ll learn about installing Visual Studio for SharePoint and the method that works best. You’ll also install
SharePoint Developer and connect to one of your HNSCs.

Chapter 13: Troubleshooting
Hopefully, you won’t need to use this chapter; but, if you do, it provides guidance to help with certain
sticking points that sometimes occur.

xviii


■ INTRODUCTION

Mapping Drives, Pinning Items to Your Start Menu, UAC, and
Admin Mode
Drive Mapping
Throughout this book, you’ll be mapping drives on the fly. We’re not going to cover a persistently mapped
drive, although there is nothing stopping you from looking that up, and I would recommend it if you’re
not sure what “mapping drives” means. The Universal Naming Convention path, or UNC path, consists of
ServerName\ShareName. When you map a drive to a drive, you use the server name and the ShareName.
Every Windows-based hard drive has a drive designation, and that, followed by a dollar sign, is the
ShareName.
So, if you wanted to map a drive to the C:\ for a server named SP2016WFE, you would open Windows
Explorer, type \\SP2016WFE\C$, and press Enter.

Pinning Items to Your Start Menu
After you get an application installed, you’ll want to have some quick access to it from your Start menu and
from the taskbar. To do this after you install SharePoint, you navigate to the Start menu and type SharePoint,
as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Pin it to your Start menu

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■ INTRODUCTION

Once, the search results show, you can pin the SharePoint-related items to your Start menu and or to
your taskbar. I recommend not pinning the Post Setup Configuration Wizard to your taskbar. When you’ve
finished pinning the various shortcuts to your Start menu, it will resemble Figure 2.

Figure 2. Start menu example

Turning Off the UAC
The User Account Control in windows provides an added layer of security that virtualizes where programs
can run when they need to run administratively. And, every time an admin needs to run a program
administratively, she’ll get prompted to allow. This is great in a production environment; but it can be
annoying in a home lab.
Here are the steps to turn off the UAC prompts:

xx

1.

Open a Run bar, type secpol.msc, and then click OK.

2.

Once the Local Security Policy editor opens, navigate to Local Policies ➤ Security
Options, and then scroll down to the User Account Control policies toward the
bottom of the screen, as shown in Figure 3.

■ INTRODUCTION

Figure 3. secpol.msc

3.

Switch each UAC policy from Enabled to Disabled.

■ Caution This creates a security hole and is not advisable in a real-world environment. It is only provided
here as an option, and that is why it is not an exercise!

Admin Mode
After you pin the management shell and the central administration icons to the taskbar as shown in Figure 4,
you should right-click each and select Properties (see Figure 5).

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■ INTRODUCTION

Figure 4. Taskbar with new shortcuts

Figure 5. Click Properties
After the Properties window opens, click the Advanced… button, as indicated in Figure 6.

xxii


■ INTRODUCTION

Figure 6. Universal naming convention paths
Once the Advanced Properties window opens, select “Run as administrator” and click OK, as shown in
Figure 7.

Figure 7. Run as administrator

xxiii


■ INTRODUCTION

Commonly Used Shortcuts
In this book, we use keyboard shortcuts, the Run bar, and commands quite a bit. Table 1 lists some of the
commands that you’ll use, along with brief descriptions.

Table 1. Keyboard Shortcuts and Commands Used in this Book

Command\Keyboard Shortcut

Description of Run Command

Windows key + R

Opens the Run bar

Cmd

Opens the Command window

ipconfig

Opens the ipconfig information

nslookup

Opens a command-line interface to DNS

Ncpa.cpl

Opens the Network connections

Regedit

Opens the registry editor

Control netconnections

Opens the network connections

Msinfo32

Opens the system information

Sysdm.cpl

Opens the system properties

Dsa.msc

Opens the Active Directory users and computers

Dnsmgmt.msc

Opens the Domain Name System manager

Gpmc.msc

Opens the Group Policy Manager

Control Panel

Opens the Control Panel

Notepad

Opens Notepad

Virtmgmt.msc

Opens the Hyper-V Manager

Adsiedit.msc

Opens the Active Directory Service Interface editor

Summary
The goal of this book is to provide you with a more in-depth understanding of the various components of
any environment that you’ll be administering SharePoint, or any application or platform. It will also leave
you with a fully functional farm that capitalizes on the minimum role technology. You can use your home
lab for anything, though. In other words, it doesn’t have to be strictly for SharePoint, as you’ll see as you go

through the chapters in this book. Enjoy!

xxiv