Installing SharePoint today..? please consider x64 before you go ahead and hit setup

Over last few months I’ve been reviewing and helping a few customers deploy SharePoint. One of the things that surprised me is that in some cases where the x86 binary of SharePoint has been installed on x64 capable hardware. It’s an easy oversight especially if you grab the MSDN or a previously downloaded copy of the setup files. Make sure that you download the latest x64 version of the installer with service pack 1 if you are doing a new install. You should only deploy on x86 based hardware if there is a very compelling reason to do so.

Here are the links for the required WSS and MOSS installs.

For a WSS only x64 install :

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 x64 with Service Pack 1

For MOSS x64 install:

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 x64 edition (Note that the link contains the RTM version and a version bundled with Service Pack 1)

It goes without saying that you should use x64 OS build.

Then it’s also recommended that you consider installing the recently released infrastructure updates. These should be deployed on new servers as previously mentioned here.

Download for x64 Infrastructure update

Something’s that you may need to consider is the availability of x64 based iFilters if your deployment has a search focus and require indexing PDF files. I’ve had issues with Adobe’s IFilter (hack) and highly recommend that you explore purchasing a third party PDF iFilter from Foxit. They have a great x64 PDF iFilter which performs extremely well since it supports multi-threading unlike the Adobe one.

My installs are always done using the PSCONFIG and STSADM command line utility. Here is a quick overview of my install steps. The prerequisites for the install are that you have 5 domain accounts created in your AD. Add the “setup account” as the Local administrator to the server where you are installing SharePoint. (See my previous detailed post about accounts and setup) Essentially by using the command line tool you can create and configure the farm very easily.

Now you are done! No guid DB’s in the above install. You should be able to now navigate to Central Administration and configure your SSP and continue your farm configuration.

You can also configure My sites host and your Shared Services Provider using the command line.

If you require to build a farm then you can also use a scripted farm build as per the guidelines provided on TechNet.