Installing SharePoint 2013 on a Single Server without a Domain Controller and using SQL Server Express

As most of you may already be aware of, there is an option for a Stand-alone installation of SharePoint 2013 which uses a SQL Server Express instance as DB. As a developer wanting to try a few things out, I tried this installation first, however I was a little disappointed because of the multiple issues I ran into in this mode of installation, it was multiple uninstall - reinstall cycles with no luck! So I wanted to give the regular Complete installation a shot, but on a single virtual machine with a single core and 4GB of RAM running Windowa Server 2008 R2, it did not sound easy! But it turned out otherwise, fairly simple with a few workarounds though!

This blog describes the steps I took to install SharePoint 2013 in the Complete installation mode.

The installation of SharePoint 2013 in the Complete mode is fairly simple with a few clicks and some patience. It took about 15-20 mins for this to complete. Next is the SharePoint Products Configurations Wizard.  On the screen shown below, the wizard doesn't allow to proceed without selecting the right version of SQL Server and specifying a domain account.

I could have setup an Active Directory on the same box, but it is not recommended to install SharePoint on a Domain Controller. The other option was to setup a second virtual machine as AD-Controller and third as SQL Server. But then, I would have to manage three servers! So I closed the wizard window.

Please note that following steps are good only for a development setup.

Next I installed  SQL Server SQL Server 2008 R2 Expression Edition on the default instance and not the named instance.

 

Note that SharePoint 2013 only supports SQL Server 2008 R2 (versions > 10.50.1600.1). You may use this link to install  SQL Server 2008 R2 Express SP2.

Once the SQL Server Express installation was complete, the trick is to use the powershell command: New-SPConfigurationDatabase to create the Config DB. You can specify the local account here! I could use the Powershell to create the SharePoint_ConfigDB successfully.

 

Once this was done, I went back to the SharePoint Products Configurations Wizard, and this time I had the default option of Connect to an Existing Farm checked. A few more clicks and I was ready to explore the new SharePoint 2013.