Installing Sitecore 9 – How I did it

Hello happy people 🙂

Sitecore has done some pretty amazing stuff over the years and Sitecore 9 is definitely one of them. There are a lot of great posts out there describing what is new in Sitecore 9, why not read jammykam’s “blog series” about Sitecore 9:
Sitecore 9 is here!
Sitecore 9 : Config Patches – Layers & Roles
Sitecore 9: Dynamic Placeholders

Sitecore has done a great job on the documentation – read, learn and be amazed 🙂
https://doc.sitecore.net/developers/

Sitecore also introduced a new tool for installing Sitecore, SIF – Sitecore Installation Framework. (It’s all about powershell these days). I do however miss SIM but I have a feeling that SIM will soon be our little helper for installing Sitecore 9 🙂
Anyways Rob Ahnemann has a good post explaining the setup: Sitecore Installation Framework (SIF) and HTTPS Everywhere

I wanted to share with you guys how I installed Sitecore 9 on my dev machine, let’s do a step by step installation 🙂

Go to the Sitecore 9 page:
https://dev.sitecore.net/Downloads/Sitecore_Experience_Platform/90/Sitecore_Experience_Platform_90_Initial_Release.aspx

Download following:
Installation guide (Section: Release information)
Packages for XP Single (Section: Download options for On Premises deployment)

Put the zip in a folder, (here we will run powershell script to intall sitecore 9):
c://Sitecore/Install/version number

Unpack it, you should have two zips:
Sitecore 9.0.0 rev. 171002 (Cloud)_single.scwdp.zip
Sitecore 9.0.0 rev. 171002 (Cloud)_xp0xconnect.scwdp.zip

Open the installation guide and locate chapter Prerequisites and Requirements and read it through. Here I did the Enable Contained Database Authentication, I suggest you do the same.

Lets continue and follow the installation guide how to install SIF, locate section Installing the Installation Framework Module Using MyGet.

The Sitecore Gallery is a public MyGet feed that is used to download and install PowerShell modules created by Sitecore. The Sitecore Installation Framework is available through the Sitecore Gallery.

To set up the Sitecore Installation Framework:
1. In Windows, launch PowerShell as an administrator.
2. To register the repository, in a PowerShell command line, run the following cmdlet: Register-PSRepository -Name SitecoreGallery -SourceLocation https://sitecore.myget.org/F/sc-powershell/api/v2
3. Install the PowerShell module by running the following cmdlet: Install-Module SitecoreInstallFramework
4. When prompted to install, press Y, and then press ENTER.

Great, thank you for this 🙂

Now its time to install and setup solr, it’s all in the Installation Guide, but I’m a lazy developer 😉
I read Kam’s(Unicorn guy) great post, The lazy developer’s way to install Sitecore 9, where he pointed to Jeremy Davis great post on how to setup solr using powershell – LOW-EFFORT SOLR INSTALLS

Just follow his instructions, here is the powershell script which will do all the wonderful magic to install and setup solr on your dev machine:
https://gist.github.com/jermdavis/8d8a79f680505f1074153f02f70b9105

I almost got it to work, I simply could not get the service to start. I got the annoying error:
Start-Service : Failed to start service ‘solr-6.6.2 (solr-6.6.2)’.
At line:6 char:5
+ Start-Service $svc
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+ CategoryInfo : OpenError: (System.ServiceProcess.ServiceController:ServiceController) [Start-Service],
ServiceCommandException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : StartServiceFailed,Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.StartServiceCommand

So I went for another approach – using the srvany.exe.

srvany.exe is an additional Microsoft Windows application which allows an executable to be run as a service

If you don’t have the srvany.exe, download it from here:
https://www.getfilecloud.com/supportdocs/download/attachments/12517981/srvany.exe?version=1&modificationDate=1458765893000&api=v2

Put it in a desired folder(I have it in the same folder where Jeremy’s powershell script created C:\solr)

Open your command prompt(as Admin) and enter the following:
sc create “solrservice” binPath= “\”C:\solr\srvany.exe\”” start= auto

Now you will have a “empty” service, next will be to add some parameters to it. We will do this by manually updating the registry.(That’s why NSSM – the Non-Sucking Service Manager is so great because it will do this for you, unfortunately I could not get it to work)

Open the registry editor(regedit). Navigate to the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\services\solrservice.

Create a new key named “Parameters”.

For the new key “Parameters”, create following string values:
AppDirectory with value:
c:\solr\solr-6.6.2\bin

Application with value:
c:\solr\solr-6.6.2\bin\solr.cmd

AppParameters with value:
start -f -p 8983

Start the service “solrservice” from the control panel. Go to Services and then click on solrservice to start.

To verify it works, in your command prompt enter:
netstat -nao|findstr -c”:8983″

Solr is up and we are happy 🙂

Time to install Sitecore 9, again Kam’s great post pointed me to a great tool – SIFless.
This tool will indeed make your life easier it’s almost like the SIM. Read and be happy – Introducing SIF-less for Easy Sitecore 9 Installation
Thank you Rob Ahnemann 🙂

So download the SIFLess.zip file:
https://bitbucket.org/RAhnemann/sif-less/downloads/SIFLess.zip

Unzip it and put it in your Installation folder – c://Sitecore/Install/version number

Run the SIFLess.exe
Enter the fields, here is how I did it:

Hit the test button to verify the settings you entered.
(We want them all to be green)

Finally hit the Install button (uncheck the Generate File Only) and now the magic happens, it will install sitecore 9 with all its loveliness 🙂

Thank you Rob, Jeremy and Kam for making my life easier!

That’s all for now folks 🙂