Building Configuration Manager 2012 Hierarchy – Part 1 Installing prerequisites

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Throughout this blog series, we will drive the installation of a greenfield configuration manager 2012 hierarchy composed of a central administration site (Tier 1 CAS), a primary site (Tier 2) and a secondary site (Tier 3).

The below figure shows the hierarchy design:

Contoso

 

As this is a new installation, we would need to extend the Active Directory schema.

  1. Open Active Directory Users and Computers tool, click on View options and ensure Advanced Features is enabled
  2. Run Command Prompt with elevated privileges and run extadsch.exe, located at \SMSSETUP\BIN\x64 or \SMSSETUP\BIN\i386 on the installation media
  3. Verify that the schema extension was successful by reviewing the extadsch.log located in the root of the system drive

Next, we need to create the System Management container and set the rights for site servers in order to be able to publish information.

1. Click Start | Administrative Tools, and then click Active Directory Users and Computers

2. On the View menu, click Advanced Features

3. In the console tree, expand contoso.com, and then click System

4. On the Action menu, click Properties and click the Security tab

5. Click Add and Click Object Types

6. Under Object types, click Computers, and then click OK

7. In the Enter the object names to select field, type CM12-CAS and then click OK

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8. Under Permissions for CM12-CAS$ , click Full Control under Allow, and then click Advanced

9. Under Name, click CM12-CAS$ , and then click Edit

10. In the Apply to field, click This object and all descendantobjects, and then click OK

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11. Click OK

Repeat steps 5 through 13 to add CM12-Primary and CM12-Secondary as site servers to publish to AD

Next, we need to install the Operating System required components for Configuration Manager

1. From the CM12-CAS server, open Server Manager and select Features

2. Add the following features including all dependencies that are require and press Next:

  • BITS Server Extensions
  • Remote Differential Compression

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3. On the WEB Server (IIS) Page add the following role services and press Next:

  • Application Development
    • ASP.NET
  • Security
    • Windows Authentication
  • IIS 6 Management Compatibility
    • IIS 6 Metabase Compatibility
    • IIS 6 WMI Compatibility

4. Verify that all components are installed successfully

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It is now time to install the SQL Server. I have already slipstreamed the SQL Server 2008 R2 with SP1 and I’d recommend you do the same.

For details please refer to the following Microsoft support article. https://support.microsoft.com/kb/955392

Make sure you install .NET Framework 3.5.1 before launching SQL installation.

1. Start the installation of SQL

2. Click on New SQL Server stand-alone installation or add features to an existing installation

3. The Setup Support Rules window will be displayed

4. Click OK, enter the Product Key and click Next

5. Accept the License Terms, click Next and click Install to install the SQL 2008 Setup Support Components

6. Click Install to install the SQL 2008 Setup Support Components

7. Select the following features for the SQL installation and specify the Shared Feature Directory, then click Next:

  • Database Engine Services
  • Reporting Services
  • Management Tools – Complete

8. Use the Default/Named Instance, Instance ID, and Root directory. Click Next

9. Select Use the same account for all SQL Server services

10. Change SQL Server Agent Startup Type to Automatic

SQLServerAgentAUTO

11. Press Collation TAB and verify that SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS is the selected collation

12. Use Windows authentication mode (Default) on the Account Provisioning Tab. Click on “Add Current User” button at the bottom of the window

13. Click on the Data Directories Tab and specify the target directory for each of the following, then click Next

14. Select Install the native mode default configuration (Default) and click Next

15. Verify that the installation components summary is correct, make note of the location of the ConfigurationFile.ini, and click Install

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SQL Server memory should not be left to its default configuration of unlimited memory usage. Follow the below steps to configure SQL Server memory to have a maximum memory.

  1. Open SQL Management Studio select the SQL Server “CM12-CAS” object, right click and select properties
  2. On the left pane menu select the Memory option and under Maximum server memory (in MB) select the desired amount

SQLMem

Finally, install .net framework 4.0

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This come to the end of Part 1 Installing prerequisites  for the blog series on Building Configuration Manager 2012 Hierarchy.

In this part, we’ve extended Active Directory, created the System Management container and set the configuration manager servers permissions.

We’ve also installed the core operating system components and the SQL Server.

In the next blog article, we will proceed with the deployment and configuration of the Central Administration Site.

Cheers!! Smile