There are 6 articles I started to write in the end of 2008 and they were queued in March 2009 for publishing. After that articles were reviewed by several guys, changed and published in June 2009. Unfortunately, the “part 2” was not updated since December 2008, and that very early draft version was published accidently That version was a bit messy – a lot of copy-pasting issues with the wrong section titles, wrong references, and some stuff were not elaborated properly. And it’s when discussion started Let’s say people where really surprised to read that bullshit.

Unfortunately, I had limited internet access at those days and everything I saw were comments that I got by email. I was a bit confused by people reaction, because I had no idea that wrong articles had been published.
In a couple of days that “draft-version” mistake was noted and fixed by uploading the right version of article.

Please ignore all comments, because they doesn't relate to this updated article and are about draft version.

It will be updated soon.

2) Office on MOSS Application server is “good-to-have”. (see my previous reply, even not all agree with my points) I don't see real disadvantages of having Office on Application Server, that stop you install it there.

3) Re-installation of SharePoint is not supported automatically. It's well-known issue, because SharePoint doesn't remove some corpses and doesn't clean database. You need to complete several manual operation, to remove it completely, otherwise it can't be installed correctly in some cases.
There are some descriptions
- http://blogs.technet.com/victorbutuza/archive/2...
- http://www.sharepointblogs.com/spfromscratch/ar...

4) Thanks for this note, I actually meant “Central Administration” service. Mistyped. Will fix this in article

Thanks for you comments

Installing office apps on the sharepoint server is not a best practise scenario. Okay are you talking about best practise for development, POC or production.

You do know when you install office app on sharepoint servers, you also bring with it all issues and fixes for office. imagine you have to apply a hotfix for word 2007 and you are doing it on a server. what if the hotfix breaks you sharepoint server? do you think microsoft tests their hotfixes on server installation or clients installation? even worse imagining opening a virus infected file on the server. with the office application on the server, you will be inclined to carry out client-side/user-side activities on the server. That in it self is not a best practise.

just imagine, you are sitting at domain controllers getting some back up done. you are waiting and to kill time you open the browser on the DC to check your gmail? make sense? certainly not.

at the end of the day, are you writing about common installation scenarios or best practises. maybe the blog should be re-titled. also would be good if you can make the readers aware of the issues with installing office app on server and also it is not required.

Thank You
Sarbjit

i hope you see my point?

i think the best way is have a dedicated machine for CA on a sharepoint server. put the office there.

as for autodesk, yes it is on the clients, where the CAD/CAM folks are doing their work. i don't need to put autodesk on the sharepoint server just in case i need to make some changes to the autodesk documents. autodesk client is meant for the client.

it is not even good to have office application on servers.

There are several cases when you don't have the right office version on the client and need to make some changes to you farm as admin. Having offices installed on app server provide you all required features, when you logon on you server's remotely.

Another thing I kept in mind when wrote about installing Office on application server (not 100% sure, but it helped me last time) is rendering office documents in browser, what requires some additional files from office installation.

So, in most cases it's “good” to have Office installed on Application Server, but it's not obliged in most cases.

Regarding AutoDesk: if you want to expose you autodesk functionality to the client via browsers then I believe yes, you need to install in on SharePoint server to have a tight integration (or you suggest to install autodesk on each client app?)

i think there are a lot of new folks to SharePoint which are going to get the wrong information because of this.

You make some valid points, but a lot of your statements are false. Furthermore, it's a good practice to differentiate when you're talking about WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007.

Adding the Windows Internal Database role on your server is not a best practice or a requirement for that matter. WSS 3.0 stand-alone installations use WID as a data store when a SQL Server instance is not available. In your article you mention the need to install SQL Server 2005 or 2008 (FYI: SharePoint supports SQL Server 2000 as well) so WID won't even be used in this case. As for MOSS 2007, if a stand-alone (aka Basic) installation is selected, SQL Server 2005 Express Edition is installed and *not* WID.

Installing Microsoft Office 2007 and SharePoint Designer 2007 on Application Servers is **NOT** required or recommended. SharePoint doesn't require these applications installed on the server to open Word, PPT, Excel, etc. documents – that's just nonesense. If you want to open Office documents stored in SharePoint, you'll need these applications installed on your client machine, that's it. Same goes with SPD2007 – if you want to open your site in SPD, you only need to have it installed on your client machine.

“Take into account that uninstalling of SharePoint is not supported.” — That's not true, or even logical for that matter. There's a difference between unsupported and doing something wrong (even though I don't see how you can go wrong with uninstalling SharePoint).

“Navigate to the Central Administration site and disable “Web Application” role for all servers in farm, except application servers. This action will disable “Central Administration” site and IIS won’t use additional resources to host this application.” — Oh wow, this is a big No-No. The WSS Web App role is what makes a server a Web Front End. Without this, content won't be rendered. Enabling it on Application Servers defeats the purpose of having a scalable web solution. Disabling the WSS Web App service doesn't disable the “Central Administration” site on your servers either; there's a separate service for that. Furthermore, the Central Administration site is only hosted on one server by default (unless configured otherwise). Your guidance should state that the WSS Web App service be stopped on any server not rendering content to users (i.e. any server that isn't a Web Front End).

There should also be a section for Service Accounts in your article. This is a crucial part of planning the installation and deployment of any SharePoint Farm.

I hope this clears up some of the points mentioned in this article.

Muhanad Omar

for such functionality you need to have Office installed