SharePoint 2010 RTM Install Notes

Now that SharePoint 2010 has been released, who isn’t excited to get their hands dirty trying it out? Follow Joel Oleson’s download links to try it out like I did. After grabbing the bits from MSDN a little over 2 days ago, I have a fully functional 2010 RTM Farm to explore today!

Central Admin Configuration Wizards?

For me, the fun started with the Initial Farm Configuration Wizard. Sharepointdevwiki.com has screenshots of every step from the beta and not much has changed. When you run the setup wizard and the configuration wizard from the Start menu it feels familiar from 2007 installs. But as you can see below, when you hit this new web page for the first time, it screams CHANGE IS IN THE AIR!

New SharePoint Databases

After you install SharePoint 2010 you will see a lot of new databases on your SQL Server! Check out the 29 databases on my server which also hosts a SharePoint 2007 install:

Compare that to the 9 I had before the install and that’s 20 new databases without a real site collection yet!

Want to learn more?

1. Bill Baer knows a thing or two about SharePoint from his work at Microsoft IT and shares a comprehensive explanation of each database.
2. Microsoft provides official documentation on the databases in the form of a wall size Visio diagram describing each and breaking them into categories like SharePoint Foundation vs Server.

Install Snags to Avoid

If you avoid the snags I hit, you may get to the new Portal Template, below, even quicker than I did.

• Read Joel’s 10 Tips Troubleshooting Installations for SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint Foundation
• Over the last 2 days, I spent a lot of time getting SQL 2008 SP1 and CU2 on my lab vm. If you want to avoid the pain and it’s a demo lab you might start from the R2 CTP.

Next: Upgrade my laptop?

This first install was on a vm farm on a desktop lab machine with 8GB of RAM. My laptop only has 4GB. Considering I need the full 4GB for a SharePoint 2010 Install, I’m thinking of running an in-place upgrade on that machine. If I do it, I’ll let you know here or on twitter.