Sitecore 9 QuickStarts: Installing Sitecore 9 In Development Environment

Installing Sitecore 9

Now that you are back from Sitecore Symposium and the announcement has been made you are likely wanting to get started installing it.  This article will help you get it set up and offer tips on places where you could run into issues.

WARNING: The focus of this blog on the local developer environment install and getting you started. If you are installing in any other environment you will want to follow a different set of instructions. If you need help with that let me know I would be glad to help personally or direct you to someone whom can help.

Just like my you are probably lazy and will want to follow the Lazy Way to Install Sitecore 9 and that is right. However before following the lazy way you need to download the right version. As of this article it is the Sitecore 9 Initial Release.


Once you have the Sitecore 9 downloaded, you will want to use Jeremy's Gist script.  This article explains how the Low Effort SOLR Install script works.

SPECIAL NOTE FOR Windows 8 or 10: If you have not already you will need to enable the Local Admin account. After you have done this you can create a local admin account for SOLR to run under as well as set up app pool users.

If you are new to SOLR, please be aware that SOLR is a Java technology so you will required to Install Java to run it. If after install SOLR will not start then you probably have to install Java. You can confirm this by opening a command prompt (Run as Administrator and then CD SOLR\solr-6.6.2\bin changing the version if you have a newer version of SOLR.  Then type solr start. You will get the error saying:

error: java.exe not found

If java is installed and still get the error check the path in your environment variables JAVA_HOME. Mine was set to the wrong path, an older version of Java.

You can confirm SOLR is running by going to the admin https://solr:8983/solr if you changed your port then this may be different but if you stuck with the defaults it should show the SOLR admin

Save yourself some time and get the pre-requisites installed:

• Install Microsoft Web Platform Installer
• Search for "Web Deploy 3.6 For Hosting Servers" make sure it is this version because if it does not say For Hosting Servers it will bite you later.
• Install SIF. To do so open Windows Powershell ISE (Run as Administrator)
• In console at the bottom run Register-PSRepository -Name SitecoreGallery -SourceLocation https://sitecore.myget.org/F/sc-powershell/api/v2
• Then run Install-Module SitecoreInstallFramework 
• Then ensure you have the latest by running Update-Module SitecoreInstallFramework

Once you have SOLR installed and the pre-requisites then follow the Lazy Way to Install Sitecore 9 I used the Rock Paper Scissors UI mentioned in the article as it will generate the scripts and run them if you would like.

When I installed the first time, I unchecked the checkbox so it would run automatically but then ran into issues with permissions writing to the host file. A better approach is to set the permissions on the host file then open Windows Powershell SPE (Run as Administrator) then in the command window enter this command:

Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned

After that then run the generated script.  This worked well for me. I have now copied Jeremy Davis' script along with Kam's to my R2D2 Unit for transport to any dev machine that needs it in the future.

Possible Issues and Troubleshooting

First Time Install

I mentioned a couple things inline in the install section but there are a few other things that may help you will resolving issues.

ISSUE: Error requesting 

http://xp0.sc/sitecore/admin/PopulateManagedSchema.aspx?indexes=all: The remote server returned an error: (500) 

POSSIBLE RESOLUTION: Check event log and in my case it said "Login failed for user 'collectionuser'. Reason: Could not find a login matching the name provided. [CLIENT: <local machine>]"  Now in my case I had to add that user to my database and ensure it had access to the proper permissions. If you are using another user for the collection user then you need to edit the connectionstring.config however note that there are now 2 connectionstring.config files.  The first in in App_Config but the other is in \App_data\jobs\continuous\IndexWorker\App_config\ConnectionStrings.config make sure you change both.

ISSUE: Error hitting xconnect in browser:

Handler "ExtensionlessUrlHandler-Integrated-4.0" has a bad module "ManagedPipelineHandler" in its module list

Now there is the normal spot in "Turn Windows Features On" for .NET 4.7 however there is also the other spot that is not as obvious place under "Turn Windows Features On" under "Internet Information Services > World Wide Web Services > Application Development Features" Navigate there and check ASP.NET 4.6

Re-Running The Install

Now if you ran the install and it failed, upon running it a second time you may run into other issues.
The first error you will get is:

 You must remove all users with password before setting the containment property to NONE.

The issue that the users cannot be deleted by the SIF process. the fix then open SQL Management Studio and delete the SQL Server user from the databases that were created. This stack exchange post describes it in detail.

If you need help installing Sitecore 9 let us know and we will be glad to help out. I myself have only installed it in a local dev environment at this point but I am sure I will be doing it in a cloud capacity before you know it as well.

If you are looking for a mentor to connect with you on a regular basis for Sitecore or any other technology, Read Watch Create can arrange an introduction. Email me at chris.williams@readwatchcreate.com and I can arrange for mentoring sessions at a reasonable rates.