I recently got a call from someone on the East Coast asking me if I would apply for a job. The list of items they wanted me to have experience with was rather impressive, some of which I had, but most of what experience I did have was with earlier revisions of the product than they were using.

For example they wanted someone with experience with SharePoint 2019. I have experience with SharePoint but not that revision. My experience is from the 2009/2010 time-frame.

Sure, I’ve setup dozens for SharePoint farms. I’ve administered a three server SharePoint farm that consisted of a SQL Server, an Index Server, an a Web Front End. However, it has been years since I touched SharePoint.

I ended up applying for the job, however I have serious doubts so to my ability to land it… but doesn’t hurt to try. Worst thing they can do is say No, and then I’m no worse off than I am now.

So as part of my prep for the job, I decided that I would fire up a SharePoint farm. Luckily, I’m at WGU still, and can find educational discounts on software pretty easily. I picked up a copy of SharePoint 2019, and a copy of SQL. (Sorry I forget the SQL revision). I setup two VMs on the ol’ Dell R510, both with 4 CPUs and 16GB of Memory, and both two with drives 80GB in size, each.

Now, just as background information, I already have two domain controllers (DNS, DHCP), and a file-server setup in the VM Infrastructure. So I’ll be joining the two new VMs to the current lab Domain.

I setup the SQL Server, with the databases, logs, and backups going to the second drive… yes, I know… in a perfect world I would have created two more virtual drives to separate out the logs and the backups; but since it’s going on one huge physical RAID 5 array anyway (even if the VM doesn’t see it that way) I really don’t think it makes that much difference. Besides, it’s a lab environment, not a production environment… If I was really serious about the backups, I would have it going to a separate NAS Server drive or something completely independent from the SQL Server or Virtual Infrastructure.

I’ll add the NAS Server to the list of things to pickup, right behind UPS and Rack and winning lottery ticket.

In any case, after setting up the SQL Server, I went ahead and setup the SharePoint Server. I set it up as a single server farm, it just happens to have the SQL Server running in it’s own VM as opposed to running on the SharePoint server itself. While it would run better if the Index was on a separate server from the Web-Front end… as stated before, it’s a lab, and it’s all on one R510 anyway. So you’re only going to get so much performance out of the decade old hardware anyway.

At this point, I ran into an issue. I was getting a generic Microsoft Web Error after I configured the SharePoint farm and was attempting to go to the Central Admin Site. Microsoft Web Errors are so generic as to be useless. So I went to the Application Log, and found the error which had something to do with encryption.

That was an “Ah-Ha! Moment” so I went to the Group Policy editor and turned off FIPS. Went back to the Central Admin Site… and BOOM! Worked. Problem solved.

Stupid FIPS.

Anyway, so setup a the Farm, generated a new Team Site, and a New Project Site… and then took the rest of the weekend off. I mean, that wasted half a Saturday, but it felt good to get some of the rust off, and at least be able to get that much accomplished.

**UPDATE 8/3 **

Of course them the recruiter ghosts me after a few emails never to be heard from again. So Typical.

Categories: SharePoint, VMWare, Work