Brian Alderman

It is possible to install SharePoint Server 2016 on a single Windows Server machine which would be helpful if you are hosting just a few sites for a small number of users, want to create a development SharePoint Server farm, or in our case we want to create a SharePoint Server farm as a short term solution as we are on our way to SharePoint Server 2019 or SharePoint Server Subscription Edition.

As you know SharePoint’s data resides in SQL Server, and in previous versions of SharePoint if you ran an install of SharePoint on a single server it would install SQL Server Express for you as part of the SharePoint installation. This is not the case with this SharePoint Server 2016 or 2019, so you will have to install SQL Server (2014 SP1 or higher for SharePoint 2016) on the same server as SharePoint or a different server. In our case, this is a short term solution so we would install SQL Server on our SharePoint farm server as long as the server meets the hardware and software requirements for both SQL Server and SharePoint Server 2016.

After completing the installation of SQL Server, documenting the SQL Server instance name, and configuring the SQL Server instance for SharePoint, specifically setting the Max Degree of Parallelism (MAXDOP) to 1 allowing us to install SharePoint Server 2016.

We won’t walk through the details of the installation steps of the SharePoint Server, but these are the steps necessary to complete the installation of SharePoint Server 2016 using an account that is part of the Administrators group on the SharePoint server:

    1. Run the Microsoft SharePoint Products Preparation Tool (requires Internet access)
    2. Run SharePoint Server Setup (installs the SharePoint Server binaries)
    3. Run the SharePoint Products Configuration Wizard (Creates SharePoint databases)
    4. Configure browser settings (test by connecting to SharePoint Central Admin)
    5. Run the Farm Configuration Wizard
    6. Perform any post-installation steps necessary

Note: The SharePoint Server 2013 farm must have Service Pack 1 installed on it for a successful database upgrade to occur. Also you should run the SQL Server command: DBCC CHECKDB to make sure databases aren’t corrupt before you begin upgrade process.

Use the following steps to complete the migration of the SharePoint Server 2013 farm content and service application databases:

  1. Set all migrating databases to read-only
  2. Use SQL Server to perform a Full backup of the following databases:
    • All web app content databases
    • BDC service app database
    • Managed Metadata service app database
    • PerformancePoint service app database
    • Secure Store service app database
    • Search service app databases
    • User Profile service app databases (Profile and Social databases)
  3. Copy the SharePoint Server 2013 farm databases to the SharePoint Server 2016 farm server
  4. Using SQL Server, perform a restore of the content databases (not service app databases)
  5. Set all migrated content databases to read-write
  6. Start the service apps for the DBs copied over
  7. Use PowerShell to point to and upgrade the service app databases (recommend in this order)
    1. Secure Store
    2. BDC
    3. Managed Metadata
    4. PerformancePoint
    5. User Profile
    6. Search
  8. Create web apps that you had in SharePoint 2013 farm and point to restored content databases
  9. Verify all data accessible
  10. Perform a full search crawl of your farm
  11. Back up your new farm

For detailed information about the above steps, please visit the Microsoft site: Upgrade to SharePoint Server 2016

You have now successfully upgraded to SharePoint Server 2016, but remember this was a required interim step as you Upgrade to SharePoint Server 2019 or SharePoint Server Subscription Edition, use the respective links for assistance on performing your next upgrade.