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Creating an Office Web Apps Server 2013 farm with 2 machines

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Office Web Apps Server 2013 provides the ability to create a farm with one or more machines in it. Recently I had to create a farm with two machines, and it took a little bit to get my head around how to do it. Here is how I ended up doing it

I had the following environment:

  • Two servers: wac1.contoso.dk and wac2.contoso.dk
  • The internal fqdn of the farm should be wac.contoso.dk and the external fqdn should be wacext.contoso.dk
  • Hardware load balancer configured for wac.contoso.dk

On wac1.contoso.dk

I did the following steps:

  • Installed Office Web Apps Server 2013 and the March 12, 2013 update.
  • Used the MMC certificate snap-in to create a certificate from my internal CA based on WebServer template with:
    • Subject name WacFarm
    • Friendly name WacFarm
    • Subject alternate names of wac1.contoso.dk, wac2.contoso.dk,wac.contoso.dk,wacext.contoso.dk, wac1 and wac2
    • Allow private key to be exported
  • After the certificate was loaded in the personal local computer certificate store, I exported the certificate with the private key to a file
  • Used PowerShell to create the Office Web Apps Farm with the cmd:

On wac2.contoso.dk

I did the following steps:

  • Installed Office Web Apps Server 2013 and the March 12, 2013 update
  • Used the MMC certificate snap-in to import the certificate, I had exported on wac1.contoso.dk, into the personal local computer certificate store
  • Used PowerShell to join wac2 to the Office Web Apps Farm, which has wac1.contoso.dk as the Master
    • New-OfficeWebAppsMachine -MachineToJoin wac1.contoso.dk

The tricky part to get right was the last command. You have to run it on the machine you wish to join to the farm, and you have to reference an existing machine in the farm. It needs the reference to be able to read the farm settings.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Hi, Why do you use the "-AllowHttp:$true" parameter while building your HTTPS farm ? Jens>No special reason other than also allowing it for http.

  • Anonymous
    May 21, 2013
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    September 17, 2013
    When creating a farm - 2 nodes and you created farm with PS command: New-OfficeWebAppsFarm -InternalURL https://wac.contoso.dk -ExternalURL https://wacext.contoso.dk -CertificateName WacFarm -Verbose -AllowHttp:$true On the second node would i run PS command New-OfficeWebAppsMachine -MachineToJoin wac1.contoso.dk Why on URL wac1.contoso.dk and not on  the NLB name? Jens>The parameter name implies the machine and that is why I used that.

  • Anonymous
    December 20, 2013
    Pingback from Thats WAC.. | thenewguyuc

  • Anonymous
    December 20, 2013
    Pingback from Thats WAC.. | thenewguyuc

  • Anonymous
    December 20, 2013
    Pingback from Thats WAC.. | thenewguyuc

  • Anonymous
    December 20, 2013
    Pingback from Thats WAC.. | thenewguyuc

  • Anonymous
    December 20, 2013
    Pingback from Thats WAC.. | thenewguyuc

  • Anonymous
    December 20, 2013
    Pingback from Thats WAC.. | thenewguyuc

  • Anonymous
    December 20, 2013
    Pingback from Thats WAC.. | thenewguyuc

  • Anonymous
    January 07, 2014
    Pingback from Thats WAC.. | thenewguyuc

  • Anonymous
    November 04, 2014
    Farm is created on wac1 and you join wac2 to the farm of wac1, thats why.

  • Anonymous
    April 13, 2015
    Worked like a charm :-)