SharePoint 2016 installation step by step guide

In this SharePoint tutorial, we will discuss, SharePoint server 2016 installation step by step. Here I am trying to install SharePoint 2016 on a Windows Server 2012 R2 64 bit machine.

I have installed SQL Server 2014 Service Pack-1 which is also 64-bit.

SharePoint 2016 installation step by step

First of all download SharePoint Server 2016 from MSDN Site.

I will personally suggest you download using the IE browser. I have faced one issue when I downloaded using the Google Chrome browser. It gave me an error like SharePoint Server 2016 installation error Setup cannot find or validate an installation file and I have solved by using this article.

Once you download the setup file (.ico), you can extract it and put it inside a folder.

• SharePoint Online Browser Support
• Hardware and software requirements for SharePoint Server 2019/2016/2013

SharePoint Server 2016 Prerequisites Installation

Before installing SharePoint 2016 we need to install a few prerequisites which are necessary for SharePoint 2016. In the installation folder, SharePoint provides a prerequisiteinstaller.exe which will install all the necessary prerequisites.

Open the folder and click on prerequisiteinstaller.exe. You can see the required prerequisites like below:

Once you click on Next, in the next screen it will ask you to accept the terms. Accept the terms and click on Next as shown in the fig below:

Then you can see you will start on the prerequisites, first, it will configure Application server role, web server role like below:

You can also see it will try to install .Net framework 4.6 like below:

Once the prerequisites installed successfully, it may ask you to restart the machine, after restart also it may do some configuration if it was not fully completed before installation.

Once the prerequisites installed successfully it will display an Installation Complete message like the below. Make sure that it should not have any error before running the setup file.

After this, we can run the setup file. Double click on the setup file, then it will prepare necessary files like below:

Then it will ask you the product key. Below are the two trial product keys provided by Microsoft for SharePoint 2016. Put one like below:

• Enterprise trial product key: NQGJR-63HC8-XCRQH-MYVCH-3J3QR
• Standard trial product key: RTNGH-MQRV6-M3BWQ-DB748-VH7DM

Then accept the terms like below and click on Continue.

Then it will ask you to choose a file location, by default it will appear like below, You can change if it required.

Then the installation will start like below, it will take some time.

Once the installation over, it will ask you to Run Configuration Wizard, like below, select the checkbox and click on Close.

Once it will start the Configuration wizard it will show to keep database name and database server and the username and password like below:

This it will show a warning message that below services may be restarted.

• Internet Information Services
• SharePoint Administration Service
• SharePoint Timer Service

Then it will ask you to connect to an existing server farm or to create a new server farm. Here we will try to create a new server farm.

This step is really important here. We need to give the database server name, database name (automatically it takes as SharePoint_Config). Then we need to give a username and password which will have below access to the database server:

• dbcreator
• public
• securityadmin

While installing SharePoint 2016 one time I got an error that says the rpc server is unavailable.

Also if you will not choose a domain account you might see issues like below:

The username is invalid. The account must be a valid domain account.

Then we need to provide a Passphrase that is required to secure farm configuration data and is required for each server that joins the farm.

This is one of the new features known as MinRole which came in SharePoint 2016. It provides various roles for the server like below:

• Front-end
• Application
• Distributed Cache
• Search
• Custom
• Single-Server Farm

We are choosing here Single-Server Farm.

Then it will display the port number which has been taken, you can check the checkbox to give your own port number.

And the choose the authentication provider as NTLM. Click on Next.

Then it will display the details configuration settings like configuration database server, database name, central administration URL, authentication provider, local server role, etc.

Then it will start the 10 step process like below:

It will go on like below.

Once the installation over it will show a configuration successful message like below:

Once the installation is over, it will open the central administration wizard. There click on Configuration Wizards. Then click on Start the Wizard like below:

Then either uses an existing managed account or you can a new managed account. Then check the checkboxes of the services you want to configure. This will take some time to process.

Once it is successful your farm is ready to use. You can create a web application and site collection to use.

If you get any time out an error then check out SharePoint 2016 installation errors.

the RPC server is unavailable

In this post we will discuss how we can resolve a pathetic error that comes while installing SharePoint 2016. The error comes as The RPC server is unavailable. The error usually comes in the 3rd step while you run the SharePoint configuration wizard after installing SharePoint 2016. The error comes as:

Exception: System.InvalidOperationException: An error occurred while getting information about the user Administrator at server MySP.local: The RPC server is unavailable
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Win32.SPNetApi32.NetUserGetInfo1(String server, String name)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPManagedAccount.GetUserAccountControl(String username)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPManagedAccount.Update()
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPProcessIdentity.Update()
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPWindowsService.Update()
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPFarmFactory.CreateTimerService(SPFarm farm)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPFarmFactory.CreateBasicServices(SPFarm farm)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPFarmFactory.Create()
at Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPFarm.Create(SqlConnectionStringBuilder configurationDatabase, SqlConnectionStringBuilder administrationContentDatabase, SqlConnectionStringBuilder siteMapDatabase, IdentityType identityType, String farmUser, SecureString farmPassword, SecureString masterPassphrase)
at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.ConfigurationDatabaseTask.CreateOrConnectConfigDb()
at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.ConfigurationDatabaseTask.Run()
at Microsoft.SharePoint.PostSetupConfiguration.TaskThread.ExecuteTask()

the RPC server is unavailable SharePoint 2016

I was trying to install SharePoint 2016 on my Windows Server 2012 R2 machine and also I was using SQL Server 2012 enterprise edition. The installation was successful, but when I run the configuration wizard it gave the above error.

Then I google and did the below approaches:

• ipconfig /flushdns
• ipconfig /registerdns

Also, I tried adding the IP address of DC into the host file that also did not work.

Then I uninstall everything and again install SQL server 2014 this time.

Again the same issue comes, same error.

the RPC server is unavailable SharePoint 2016

Here I am going to explain what are the steps I followed to solve the issue. But all the steps may not be necessary. The below step I did and it started working.

I was using the main Administrator (MYSP\Administrator) domain account in the configuration wizard. Basically, I was giving this account and database name.
I think there was some issue with the account.

So I first go to Server Manager -> Tools -> Active Directory Users and Computers. There I created a user.

Here the user is a member of local users groups.

Then open SQL Server Management Studio (Logged in windows authentication). Add the user into SQL server 2014. For this expand security tab -> Logins (Right Click) -> New Login…

Then in the Login Properties dialog box for the user. Click on Server Roles then select the below server roles:

• dbcreator
• public
• securityadmin

Then click on the User Mappings tab, Select the db owner role checkbox for the below databases:

• master
• model
• tempdb

After this now I run the configuration wizard and this time I gave the database name and my newly created username and password. And it worked successfully.

Also, Microsoft has released a patch that can be downloaded from the below link:

• Download from this link

Download it, install it, restart the machine and try configuring again. This also works for me once while I was installing in another machine.

Also, make sure the firewall settings are disabled. You can check it by following the below steps:

Go to Control Panel -> click on System and Security. Then click on Check firewall status. Here I have disabled the Firewall settings.

SharePoint 2016 16 Hive Folder

Let us discuss the SharePoint hive folder, popularly known as the 16 hive folder, is the folder that got created while installing SharePoint 2016.

SharePoint 16 hive folder contains lots of important files to support SharePoint like web.config, Features, Web Parts, User Controls, Help Files, etc are stored in the SharePoint 2013 server file system inside the 15 Hive.

Below is how the 16 hive folder in SharePoint looks like:

SharePoint 16 hive folder location is: C:\Program Files\Common files\Microsoft Shared\Web Server Extensions\16

• ADMISAPI: It contains soap services for Central Administration. If this directory is altered, remote site creation and other methods exposed in the service will not function correctly.
• Bin: The directory contains all the core binary files, utilities used by SharePoint Services. command-line tools such as STSADM.EXE also present in this folder.
• Client: This directory contains files that are used for creating office apps.
• Config: This directory contains files used to extend IIS Web sites with SharePoint Server. If this directory or its contents are altered, the web application will not function correctly.
• GAC: This folder contains Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Runtime.Portable.Resources.dll and Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Runtime.Resources.DLL.
• HCCab: This directory has a set of cab files that has content information used by the SharePoint help system.
• Help: The folder contains an HTML help file (.chm) used by the configuration wizard.
• ISAPI: This directory contains all the standard Web Services for SharePoint and resources and configuration files that the web services use.
• Logs: This is the folder where we can have all the SharePoint-related logs will see. This is important when any problem or error occurs in SharePoint you have to trace the logs files in this folder to get the error messages.
• Policy: This directory contains the SharePoint 2016 Server policy files.
• Resources: This directory contains the core.resx file used for creating language packs for SharePoint. By which different SharePoint sites with different languages and cultures can be created.
• Template: It contains the core website functionality like the features, templates, configurations, resources of a website.
• UserCode: This directory contains files used to support the sandbox solution.
• Web Clients: This directory contains files related to the Client Object Model.
• Web Services: This directory is the root directory where SharePoint back-end Web services are hosted, for example, Excel and Search.

You may like following SharePoint 2016 tutorials:

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• We’re having a problem opening this location in file explorer SharePoint 2016
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• How to make SharePoint 2016 site read-only?
• Sign in as different user is missing in SharePoint 2016/2013
• Create a timer job in SharePoint 2016/2013 Programmatically
• Content type in SharePoint 2016 tutorial
• Enable anonymous access sharepoint 2016/2013

This SharePoint 2016 tutorial, we learned how to install SharePoint 2016 step by step.