So the first part to the madness that should be understood is that IIS 7 (standard for Windows Server 2008) is a lot more granular in nature than IIS 6 which is the standard web publishing application on Windows Server 2003.  From even when you’re starting your installation of the Web Server role to installing the individual components, it’s far more granular and modular, and probably confusing to some administrators that are used to just clicking “IIS” from Add/Remove Program in Server 2003.

So where to begin, well, once you’ve got your Windows Server 2008 box up, operational, patched, service packed, sysprepped (if you’re using Virtuals, you end up requiring that you have different SIDs and computer names right?), IP’d and joined to a domain, the fun begins in installing just the framework prior to SharePoint.

Step 1 – Open up the Server Manager, this typically appears when you power on the server, but if not, you should be able to find it fairly easily from the start menu.  Select and expand the roles label from the tree in the left pane, then select “Add Roles” from the right pane.

Step 2 –   If this is your first time installing a role, this would probably be helpful to read “Before You Begin”.  Definitely read through it at least once, after that, feel free to click the check box to skip it in all future instances.  Click on Next.

Step 3 – Select the Web Server role from the list of server roles. Note that you will be prompted to select additional features for the Web Server role to operate properly.  Select “Add Required Features” else turn and back away, and perhaps reconsider what you’re looking to do.

Step 4 – Once you’ve accepted the need for additional “required” features to be installed, you should see something like the below stating that you have selected the “Web Server (IIS)”.  Click on Next.

Step 5 – The role installation wizard presents an overview of the Web Server (IIS) role which again is fairly useful for an administrator to read through the first time.  Click Next.

Step 6 – Select the individual server roles that you require for your SharePoint installation.  I’ve found that the basic role services that are installed with IIS 7 are barebones, which from a security posture is fairly helpful so as to not have to remove several roles, but it will make you stop and think through what roles you do indeed to make the system operational.

Step 7 – The first thing to select of course to make your platform usable by SharePoint is the ASP.NET development platform.  Once you’ve selected this, you will be prompted to add additional roles that are required for ASP.NET.  Select the “Add Required Role Services” else, much like before, be prepared to have a difficult time installing SharePoint services on your server.

Step 8 – Select the additional roles that will assist in your SharePoint implementation, in my case this also includes “Logging Tools” to diagnose issues that may come up.

9 – Select the appropriate authentication providers that you wish to be able to utilize.  For me, I’m going with a fairly vanilla SharePoint installation and configuration, so I’ll select “Windows Authentication”.

10 – Additionally, so as to not bother with going back and installing later, I’ve selected the “IIS Management Scripts and Tools”.

11 – Lastly, the “Management Service” to be able to better manage the IIS 7 instance on the server from the server or remotely.

12 – After selecting the roles that are appropriate to support your SharePoint services installation, click on Next, which then will bring you to a page that lists all of the components that you are looking to install.  Do a quick read through to ensure that you’ve got the components, roles and features that you require and click on Install.

13 – Observe the installation process as can be seen here:

14 – After a few minutes, the installation progress bar will complete and an installation results page similar to this will be presented.  Click on Close after you’ve observed that your installation results were successful.

15 – After you’ve completed your IIS 7 installation, you’ll see that there are 24 installed role services related to IIS running and operational on the server through the Service Manager roles summary.

Next on Tap:

• SharePoint on Windows Server 2008 – Installing and Configuring SQL Server 2005 on a single node
• SharePoint on Windows Server 2008 – Installing and Configuring Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Standard Edition
• SharePoint on Windows Server 2008 – Configuring Kerberos based Windows Integrated Authentication

So after inadvertently forgetting to move the 70-630 exam so that I might be able to get some study time in, I decided to suck it up and go take the exam at the time I’d originally scheduled it for… The exam went by pretty quickly as I completed it in about 35 minutes – only to press submit and have a sinking feeling that I failed from lack of studying (I guess I like to go for perfection).

But no, actually I passed with flying colors this morning. Overall the exam was pretty simple and quite easier than the WSS exam which actually required knowledge of infrastructure and how the platform really works. Best of luck to those that are off to take this exam!